The Borough We Became: Queens Residents On Life During COVID-19

The Borough We Became: Queens Residents On Life During COVID-19

By Queens MemoryEducation
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The Borough We Became: Queens Residents On Life During COVID-19 episodes

  • Episode 2: Onward

    The Queens Memory Project brings you the second episode of season two of the Queens Memory Podcast. This season we have collected documented experiences of Queens residents during the COVID-19 Pandemic.


    In this episode we hear from two nurses who work on the front lines of the pandemic. Their testimonies in the early weeks and months provide insight to the devastation COVID-19 has reaped and the responses of New York hospitals. Also on this episode, Marah Rocco of the Rockaways shares how she has brought people together to release anxiety in a fun and primal way.

    It’s not too late to submit your story to the Queens Memory Project. Go to QueensLib.org/covid to submit an audio recording, text, video, or photos that you feel documents your experience of COVID-19.

    32 min
  • Episode 1: Adjustment

    The Queens Memory Project brings you the premiere of season two of the Queens Memory Podcast. This season we have collected documented experiences of Queens residents during the COVID-19 Pandemic. 


    Episode one features testimonies of two residents who live near hospitals and the blaring realities they face, as well as others who struggle to find a sense of normalcy, who feel as though they have lost time, and those who have lost loved ones to the virus.

    It’s not too late to submit your story to the Queens Memory Project. Go to QueensLib.org/covid to submit an audio recording, text, video, or photos that you feel documents your experience of COVID-19.

    18 min
  • Snapshots of Queens: Documenting Our Streets
    This video is a compilation of crowdsourced submission to the Queens Memory Covid-19 Project. The video includes written accounts and images of our contributors' experiences of documenting Queens, on Memorial Day weekend and during a Black Lives Matter protest. Contributors recite written texts that they have shared through the project for archival preservation. To see more contributions, visit https://queenslib.org/covid
    Natalie Milbrodt (Audio Submission: 2020-6-9): “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking… some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.” Christopher Isherwood wrote that 90 years ago in Berlin, between the two world wars. An outsider from England, he witnessed rising fascism and a society and political situation with no certain outcomes. I often think of the work we do as the Queens Memory Project as an opportunity to create an historical record for people whose lives will not overlap with my own. And I turn to Isherwood to think about my role in this time. Am I a camera, my shutter open, quite passively recording and not thinking? Was he, really? As an archivist, I feel my choices of who we record, when, what we record, make us active participants in the shaping of popular understanding, both now and especially in the future. But I also feel a certain remove. You’ll see this footage I took of a Black Lives Matter march was from my own fire escape, literally above the fray, outside of it like Isherwood observing life in Berlin from his boarding house window. And what is the role of someone who documents but does not march? Is that valuable? Is it valid? And by choosing to make this my contribution, am I tipping my hand too much? Curtailing our opportunity to serve as a platform for opposing perspectives within the communities we serve? Because what we say and do has real consequences, now in this present moment. We too are a country on the precipice of transformative change and uncertain outcomes. So, I will continue to do my best to rise to this moment, thinking of our shared future and contributing my own, imperfect record of being alive in this time and place.
    Sam Addeo (Written Submission: 2020-5-26, 2020-5-28/ Audio Submission: 2020-6-9) :This photo was captured on Memorial Day Weekend. I was taking a bike ride from Greenpoint, Brooklyn to Roosevelt Island and passed by Rockaway Brewery. Instead of closing shop, the brewery moved its operations to the vacant parking lot across the street...Everyone on this street was either walking to or from Rockaway Brewery! We all wanted a street drink....I captured this photograph on Citi Bike on my way to Roosevelt Island on Memorial Day Weekend...I took a two hour bike ride through Queens and stopped to take some photos along the way. I was happy to see everyone outside enjoying the city's green space and the nice weather, like me.
    5 min
  • Season Trailer: The Borough We Became: Queens Residents On Life During COVID-19

    In the spring of 2020, New York City was the center of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and Queens had the highest numbers of diagnosed cases and hospitalizations. Many Queens residents were living and work­ing on the front lines, providing essential services and supporting family and community members.

    These personal stories were not well documented by the media as news of the pandemic moved at a stunning pace. Without real-time documentation, memories can fade and facts can be misremembered, making it difficult to reconstruct lived experience. After March 20th, as the city was urged to stay at home, we collected first-person accounts from the communities affected in the most acute ways.

    This new season of the Queens Memory Podcast will feature these first-person accounts from our community as we get through this historic pandemic together.

    2 min

About The Borough We Became: Queens Residents On Life During COVID-19

From the publisher's feed

On Thursday, April 9th, 2020 the Queens Memory Project launched a COVID-19 documentation project in Queens, New York. The project, found at https://queenslib.org/covid, has the active support of a…