Using the asylum interview as a case study, this workshop examines what happens when people are forced to tell their stories repeatedly in high-stakes, transactional contexts—asylum interviews, social worker intakes, medical assessments—where narratives must yield specific survival outcomes. We'll explore the fundamental differences between these extractive systems and oral history practice, and develop concrete strategies for working with narrators with awareness of potentially harmful prior storytelling experiences, whether disclosed or not.

Fanny García is the Founder & CEO of Narratives in Practice, LLC, a trauma-informed and ethical storytelling consulting firm helping people capture stories that create meaning and change. García’s path to oral history began through her grassroots activism as a social worker, where she supported survivors of sexual assault and people living with HIV/AIDS. During this time, she wrote "Portrait of Ten Women," a play based on oral histories with Latinas living with HIV/AIDS. Since 2019, García has led "Separated: Stories of Injustice and Solidarity," an oral history project documenting the experiences of families affected by the Trump Administration's Zero Tolerance immigration policy. She approaches her work using applied oral history methods, ensuring that her projects directly benefit the communities who share their stories by collaborating policy change advocacy and socioeconomic support. García is a graduate of UCLA and Columbia University. 

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