Michigan 20

Listen to Michigan 20, a 21-year-old woman from Detroit and Harper Woods, Michigan, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 21

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/08/1996

PLACE OF BIRTH: Detroit, Michigan

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: African American and Jamaican

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: current senior in college

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The speaker lived in Detroit, Michigan, until she was 10 years old. She then moved to a suburb on the eastern border of Detroit called Harper Woods, where she lived until she was 18. After that, she spent three and a half academic years in East Lansing, Michigan.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The speaker’s mother is from Kingston, Jamaica. She comes from a highly educated family; both of her parents have master’s degrees.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Jason Dernay (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 02/01/2018

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

[Interviewer: Do you have any siblings?]

Yeah, I have two sisters, one brother, and, like, a foster-brother person. My brother is 21; uh, my sister is 18; my sister’s 16, and then who’s, like, the foster-brother person is 22; he might be 23, yeah.

[Do you have any stories about having fun with your brothers and sisters?]

Um, [laughter] nothing wild. I don’t know. We don’t really — there’s kind of a bunch of us, so we don’t really get together that often.

[Well, what did you personally do for fun when you grew up?]

Uh, played soccer a lot, and my dad was our soccer coach; um, acted, did a little bit of all of the sports: lacrosse, tennis, baseball, softball. Soccer, definitely soccer; volleyball, but I was wasn’t that good at it, though.

[Do you have any soccer stories?]

Soccer stories: Um, I know one girl; she was on my little sister’s team; she was, like, the goalie. She would dive for the ball, and she got her jaw broken ‘cause someone kicked her in the jaw, like, and she was, like, 10, and, I was like, that is a bad-ass little girl. She wanted to keep playing too.

[How do you like MSU?]

It’s a cool school, um, a little too white: I think there needs to be more diversity. I like the classes a lot. I like my major, uh, one of my majors, R.C.A.H: small college, big university. That’s sort of, like, our selling point. I love it.

[What’s your favorite thing about R.C.A.H?]

Um, probably the variety of classes; I’ve taken some weird classes. I took, like, a, uh, uh, m- music class where we learned how to do Appalachian yodeling. Um, what else have I taken? I’ve gone to prison; I’ve taught theatre at prisons before through one of my classes; I go to East Lansing High School; I teach social justice to them through one of my classes. So, there’s just, like, a bunch of weird, community-engagement stuff.

[What are you hoping to do once you graduate?]

Act. I mean, I’m still trying to look for where I want to go: D.C, Atlanta, New York. Um, I’m hoping this summer to find programs to get into. I’ve been applying for a lot of them, so I hopefully can get some training and not be in East Lansing because that is not the goal.

[What’s your favorite form of acting?]

Um, so far, just straight-up theatre; I haven’t really had many experiences with film. Um, I’d like to get into it more; of course, more training is always necessary. But theatre, drama; I don’t know if I’m — I can’t be funny on purpose. I’m, like, unintentionally funny. I don’t really know if I have comedic timing or anything, but, yeah.

[What’s your favorite class this semester?]

My favorite class this semester: It might be my Race in Casting class with Ann; she’s teaching that. Um, we talk about the history of, like, race in theatre. We’ve talked about minstrel shows, and now we’re on to, um, melodramas, and then we have read An Octoroon by Dion Boucicault, and then we’re going to read The Octoroon by Branden Jacob Jenkins. Uh, we have to watch a wild-west show, movie, thing. It’s just, really interesting; it’s just: There’s no right answers, and then my brain hurts, and then I’m like, ah, this is so difficult, but I really like it. …

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jason Dernay (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 02/02/2018

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

The archive provides:

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• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.

• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.

• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

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