Ancha Santana interview

Interview with Ancha Santana by Jessica Jiang. Ancha is a community organizer and licensed mental health counselor at Brown University. She specializes in crisis stabilization and urgent needs. Ancha identifies as a queer; Black; African woman. She was born in Cape Verde and has lived in Pawtucket; Rhode Island since the age of eleven. Topics in order of discussion include: Cape Verdean community in Rhode Island; class status and race in Cape Verde; growing up with other first generation immigrants; problems with racism at universities; whiteness in Providence queer communities; lack of spaces for queer BIPOC to gather in Providence; queer nightlife in Amsterdam and Providence; planning the Queer and Trans POC Dyke March; the COVID-19 pandemic and its burden on Black and Latinx communities; working as a counselor at under-resourced schools; substance abuse prevention; frustrations with working at Brown; imposter syndrome. This interview was created as part of the Queering Oral History course - an oral history course at Brown University in Spring 2020 and taught by Dr. Virginia Thomas. Students were trained in oral history practices and interviewed members of the Rhode Island LGBTQIA community.