Javed has been living in Hudson since 1997 when he was entering third grade. In this interview, he talks about running his first business, a pizza shop, which opened four months ago; his experience in Hudson schools; his parents and brothers; temporary stints living in Rochester and Brooklyn; the Bangladeshi community in Hudson; his relationship to Bangladesh; his interests in designing alternative energy and electric vehicles.
I grew up in Toronto, Ontario, did my PhD at Cornell in Ithaca, NY, and now live in Kingston, Ontario where I teach English and Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. In Kingston, I run the Swamp Ward and Inner Harbour History Project which has an oral history component and which aims to document working-class, immigrant, and community experiences. I am touched that the OHSS and this narrator have trusted me to help facilitate the telling of Hudson’s histories.
Oral history is an iterative process. In keeping with oral history values of anti-fixity, interviewees will have an opportunity to add, annotate and reflect upon their lives and interviews in perpetuity. Talking back to the archive is a form of “shared authority.”