Daniel Clarkson Fisher

CJOHP.org homepage.

The Chinese Jamaican Oral History Project, my M.F.A. thesis project, is officially live online at CJOHP.org! Please have a look and give a listen.

The project will be ongoing, but debuts with an initial group of narrators that includes:

• Brian Chang
• Suzanne Kong
• Patrick A. Lee
• Dr. Anne-Marie Lee-Loy
• Dr. Keith D. Lowe
• Eustace Lyn
• Joan Lyn
• Stephanie Lyn
• Kay Moosie
• Jenna Tenn-Yuk
• Carol Williams-Wong
• Tony Wong

You can see each narrator’s portrait and listen to their interview by clicking on their name.

In addition, please do take a look at the interactive timeline (which I spent a lot of time on) and additional resources page, and follow the project on social media.

(Photo by Daniel Clarkson Fisher for the Chinese Jamaican Oral History Project.)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Daniel Clarkson Fisher (daniel.c.fisher@ryerson.ca)

The Chinese Jamaican Oral History Project Will Launch Its Website and a Digital Storytelling Exhibit at Ryerson University During the 2019 DocNow Festival

TORONTO, May 23, 2019 – The Chinese Jamaican Oral History Project, a new initiative that aims to record and preserve stories from the Chinese Jamaican community in Toronto, will launch an interactive website (CJOHP.org) and a digital storytelling exhibit in June. The project is one part of DocNow 2019, a documentary festival featuring innovative work from students in Ryerson University’s Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Documentary Media program.

An opening reception will take place on Wednesday, June 19th, from 6:00 – 9:00 pm, at the Image Factory (IMA 324) in Ryerson’s School of Image Arts building (122 Bond Street). The public is invited to attend, and can RSVP at https://bit.ly/2YJgrDE. The exhibit will also run in the Image Factory until June 30th.

“This project began with the vision of the late, great Chinese Jamaican photographer Ray Chen,” says Daniel Clarkson Fisher, the MFA candidate behind the project. “In the fall of 2015, he tried to organize an oral history project with a group of interested parties from within the community, including my partner Stephanie Lyn. After Ray died, though, the project seemed to as well.” However, when Fisher was accepted into the Documentary Media program, he saw an opportunity to revive it. “Stephanie and I always had a lot of faith in Ray’s idea, and when I got into the MFA program I saw that it offered many of the things that were needed to make it a reality: time, equipment, supervision, etc. So I jumped at the chance to get things going. And I like to think Ray would see the work that’s been done as a very solid start toward his vision.”

I’ve just received word that my proposal was accepted, and I’ll be presenting at the 6th Emerging Scholars Symposium on Oral History, Digital Storytelling, and Creative Practice at Concordia University’s Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling!

The subject will be my M.F.A. thesis project: The Chinese Jamaican Oral History Project (CJOHP.org). I’ll also discuss the major ethical challenge of representation in my research-creation. “As a white man who has married into the community, but is not of it, I am approaching this subject as an outsider,” I say in the proposal. “As such, I have had to devise strategies that reflect my affinity with [oral historian] Jan L. Peterson, who has said that ‘in terms of White researchers researching across differences, letting go of prior notions of who and what defines research; questioning choices that are made regarding research design and analysis; and interrogating White privilege, biases, and assumptions we bring to the process are all critical to transformational research that seeks to improve human conditions.'” [1]

I’ll present with other emerging scholars in Montreal on March 22nd. For more information about the symposium, visit this page on the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling’s official website.

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1. Jan L. Peterson, “The Intersection of Oral History and the Role of White Researchers in Cross-Cultural Contexts,” Educational Foundations 22, nos. 3-4: 50.