Living Archives Highlight, Alex Bui & Hau Nguyen

The Living Archives project is gathering, preserving, and sharing the stories of Mecklenburg County residents who navigated the COVID-19 virus. Begun in 2021, the project was re-launched in Spring 2022 with a renewed understanding that the COVID-19 experience was on-going and complex. The project was designed with an equity lens, focusing predominantly on Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Indigenous voices often excluded from archives. Over 350 neighbors shared their experiences in audio-visual interviews, poetry, art and written pieces and all of these narratives are available on YouTube and, beginning in June, in perpetuity at the digital Spangler Robinson Carolina Room of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.

Out of 24 storytellers, Alex Bui, president of the Vietnamese Association of Charlotte, and Hau Nguyen, owner of Banh Mi Brothers, stories were highlighted.