Reflection of event "CDA Virtual Kids Camp" - Denise Mosso Ruiz

In the second week of August 2020, I hosted a three-day event, hosting a workshop per day which was called “ CDA Virtual Kids Camp”. Day 1 consisted of story time where the children’s picture book “Julian is a Mermaid” by Jessica Love was read, day 2 consisted of an arts and craft session where crowns were made as the craft, and day 3 consisted of a kid friendly workshop where we explored a family photo and talked to kids about family archiving. These workshops were aimed towards the age group of 5 through 9-year old’s or grades from kindergarten to third grade.  The workshops were all bilingual (English/Spanish) which was the hardest part for me because I have never hosted and translated an event. However, I will say the event was a success.

The theme for the events was exploring the topic of gender expression which I introduced with the book, Julian is a Mermaid. At first, I was a little nervous talking about this topic since people might think the audience were too young to talk about this topic with. However, the book teaches young listeners self-expression, self-love, and empathy/ appreciation for others. Although this book is not based on a true story, the book centers on a person with an identity that has been historically marginalized. At the Community-Driven Archives Initiative (CDA) at the Arizona State University (ASU) Library, we center the knowledge of community members through representation and engage them with archives by allowing them to tell their own stories. 

The book points out that we are reading about Julian who uses he/him/his pronouns and is a Afro-Latinx gender-nonconforming child. I think talking about these topics teaches children about autonomy and self-determination as they will have awareness about their identity. According to Christia Spears Brown in her article “It’s Never Too Young to Talk about Race and Gender”, children are capable of understanding identity, the only problem that can come out of talking about gender, gender/sex and race is that children will talk about and see identity. However, children can experience it and are affected by these disparities that adults do not want to talk about to them and there aren't many things to read when it comes to talking about this with children. Gender is something that is taught, as it is a social construct from colonization. Gender has changed over time as gender has not always existed in the binary or male and female, as you can learn more about this concept in this video.

Overall, this event was hard for me considering that I was nervous as I am not open with my family about my queerness. My experience in discussing gender and sexuality with my family has not been welcoming. However, I will say that this event was successful, and I was happy that my two nieces were able to come to the event. Everyone who participated was attentive and the kids who attended the photo analysis workshop answered the questions and were able to leave with the understanding on why we analyze photographs and why it is important to share their stories. It was so adorable to see everyone bring a family photo or bring in a picture of themselves. Although there aren't many studies on teaching concepts that existed before colonization, I think this workshop proves that children have the capacity to learn so much more than what they are taught, and to understand who they are and that they are people who should be accepted as they are.

Contact me, Jessica Salow, with feedback at Jessica.Salow@asu.edu, as I would love to hear from you your thoughts regarding the work, we here at ASU are doing in community archiving around Arizona. We also want your feedback on what you would like to see from us in future blog posts. And if you would like regular updates from the CDA team please follow our CDA Facebook page or the CDA Instagram page to keep abreast of the virtual events we are doing monthly. We have also made some changes to our website to better describe the community-driven archives initiative at ASU Library so please visit that page to learn more about our work or to connect with the rest of our team.

See you soon!