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Library

Olivia Williams

June 16, 2019

|

Hudson, NY

Song

Recorded by

Lailye Weidman

This interview is available in-person only. Please get in touch if you would like to listen.
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Summary:

Olivia (Liv) Williams is a 25-yr-old poet, educator, healthcare worker, and single parent of a baby boy, Levi, living in Hudson, NY. She shares stories about a range of topics including growing up in a Christian home, going to Catholic school and later public school, navigating identity and sexuality, youthwork callings and ideas for new youth programs, Jamaican Patois in her upbringing and its return in her parenting, finding poetry community in Troy, resisting depression as a label, different permutations of queerness in her life and in Hudson, and hopes for her son’s future and her own future. Levi is also present for the interview and can be heard playing, crying, going down for a nap, and sleeping.

This interview will be of value to poets, writers, religion scholars, linguists, philosophers, and psychologists, as well as those interested in the creative and spiritual lives of single parents, people investigating expansive approaches to wellness and mental health, historians of Hudson and the region, gatherers of LGBTQ and/or Jamaican American stories.

Themes:
Jamaican Community
,
Art and Artists
,
Spirituality
,
Mental Health
,
LGBTQ+
,
Writing
,
Interviewer Bio:
Lailye Weidman

Lailye Weidman is a 40-year old white, queer, cis woman of Anglo-European and Jewish Ashkenazi-European heritage. She is a professor of dance at Hampshire College, an independent choreographer/dance artist, and editor living in Northampton, MA.

Additional Info:
Interview language(s):
English
,
Audio quality:
Low

Audio Quality Scale

Low - There is some background noise and the narrator is hard to hear.

Medium - There is background noise, but the narrator is audible.

High - There is little background noise and the narrator is audible.

Permissions: 

This interview is hereby made available for research purposes only. For additional uses (radio and other media, music, internet), please click here to inquire about permissions.

Part of this interview may be played in a radio broadcast or podcast.

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.”

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