Pandemic Diaries collection

2020-2021

The Pandemic Diaries collection dates from August 2020 to July 2021, and consists of interviews, poems, essays, and recollections about the COVID-19 pandemic. The 268 entries from 238 narrators were collected through audio files submitted mainly via an online form on the History Now: The Pandemic Diaries Project webpage. Most entries in the collection were unsolicited contributions. Library staff also established partnerships with various organizations and conducted interviews with people associated with those organizations. New York Public Library (NYPL) curator Julie Golia; NYPL curator Paloma Celis Carbajal; and Hudson Park branch staff members Chris Ruiz and Emil Allakhverdov conducted the interview entries.

General entries to the project usually disclose how the narrator heard about the COVID-19 virus, the first reported local COVID case, the stay-at-home order, and the pivot to online learning and work. The entries' audio files average thirty minutes. Most entries mention national and local politics and news. Submissions are spoken word poems, essays, interviews, or structured as journal entries.

Additionally, several American university professors asked their undergraduate students to submit entries to the project for a course or a program. Undergraduate students from Brooklyn College; John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York (CUNY); Lehman College, CUNY; and Marist College also submitted entries to the project. The student entries often divulge the technical and emotional difficulties of online learning and foregoing prom and high school graduation.

While most entries describe living through the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, some submissions recall the experience in Great Britain, South Korea, Mexico, Italy, Canada, China, and Japan.

The rest of the collection holds entries from NYPL staff collaborations with various organizations.

The thirty-six World Central Kitchen (WCK) interviews were conducted by Golia or Sam Chapple-Sokol, Editorial Director at WCK. Golia and Celis Carbajal co-conducted one interview in Spanish and English. The entries collectively offer insight into WCK's local, national, and international response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The twenty-two New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) interviews provide a glimpse into the department's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Narrators describe how their jobs changed during the pandemic response and the friction between the department and the leadership in City Hall.

The Muslim Quarantine Journal entries, submitted in collaboration with the Strangers Poets, consist of three interviews conducted by Golia and one narrator reading her journal entries aloud. All four narrators discuss being Muslim and read sections of their diaries.

The CUNY Mexican Studies Institute entry by Mexican writer Darío Aguilar Peregrina mentions his book about a lesbian cadet in the Mexican army and calls for more Latinx representation in United States literature.

The Union Square Hospitality Group interview with CEO Danny Meyer offers a New York City businessman's perspective on the restaurant industry's shutdown and reopening during the COVID-19 pandemic.