Interview 036 with Farayi Wiley
Listen to African American Farayi Wiley share about living in the San Francisco Bay Area of California during the Covid-19 pandemic. She shares about the joys of working from home in finance and gaining back three hours on weekdays from her commute to work. She studied economics and political science at Princeton University and her ancestors were slaves in Alabama and Georgia during American chattel slavery. Her grandparents were part of the Great Migration. They migrated up north to Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to work in the steel mills. We met working at Prep for Prep in New York City. Farayi: “So, when you ask me: Will the pandemic be a major historical event? I can’t tell you, because I just don’t know who’s going to have the power to tell their story.” Sonja: “This is also why I’m doing this podcast. As a teacher, I’m like: Who am I to go out collecting oral history? But then, who else is doing it? It’s not my job. I mean, I still have a job. I just thought: It’s really important that people in the future hear that whatever narrative is being told about Black people, that we can counter it.” Farayi: “Your project is very important, because I think that people need to realize that everyone — you said, like, who am I to collect stories and to share stories — everyone needs to own that they have the power to tell the story — whether they’re telling their own story or they’re helping to facilitate someone else tell their story.”
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