Ana Luisa Cardona

Interview with Ana Luisa Cardona

October 24, 2015

East Lansing, Michigan

Chicana por mi Raza

We interviewed Ana Luisa Cardona on Saturday, October 24, 2015. To start, parking was an ordeal, but we managed to fit four cars in a driveway made for two! We began with a tour of the house, then set up our continental breakfast.

Maria and Ana went to the basement to look at Ana’s archive while we set up the cameras and the lighting in a very small space. Our first issue was working around where Ana would be comfortable, but making sure it wasn’t too comfortable. We also had the opportunity to look at the archive downstairs, but just briefly. After breakfast and adjusting the lighting several times (and downgrading from three-point to one-point lighting), we started the interview.

The two of us were seated on a tiny (noisy) couch, and we couldn’t actually completely see Ana during the interview because of the tight space and set-up. Blake, as the person in charge of the tape log, had to have a second timer running on his slate app because the tight quarters didn’t allow him to see the timestamp on the video. The time passed really quickly and we got a little over two and a half hours of film.

During the interview, Ana made reference to many people with whom we were not familiar. We figured out most of them throughout the interview but it was difficult with all of the names (sometimes just first names) that she was throwing out. She was very interesting and fun to listen to, and when it was all over she said that she was glad that we had done the interview - she’s hoping that once this is out there, grad students won’t barge in asking for follow-up interviews!

After we finished the interview, it only took us about 20 minutes or so to clean up except for the lighting because it had to cool down. We had a late lunch and got to hear some more stories from Ana. After we straightened up and returned everything that we had moved in her house we packed up the cars and left. It was supposed to rain all day, but it held off until we had to carry the archive outside, then it really started to pour - just our luck! Fortunately, Professor Cotera did the hard work of keeping the box safely preserved in transit.

Back in Ann Arbor, we had to transfer the media from the camera’s SD card to a computer and to the external hard drive. This is the scary part, but luckily ours had sound and looked good. Unfortunately, we didn’t set up the zoom recorder correctly so we actually don’t have the backup sound. We’ll explain to everyone how to avoid this mistake!

Also, we would recommend using your own SD card so you don’t have to worry about taking it back to the ISS within the three day period where they will immediately erase everything on it. Also, know that it is not physically possible for one person to pick up the camera equipment and the lighting; you need two people to split up the load.

We’re looking forward to editing the video down into more manageable pieces. And we still have to go through and scan all of Ana’s archive, upload to medici, and tag everything. That will be interesting! The clip below is not an edited portion, just a random piece of the interview taken out to upload to youtube and give you all a preview.