Gracias

This project would not have been possible without the help of many people. Thank you to all my student collaborators including Lupe Medina, Sam Quintell-Lenzi, Carlos Martinez, Leah Clark, and Allie Mellinger for assisting me during the interviews and taking pictures. Thanks to Mark Kolat for all of his work in the initial transcription of many of the interviews and Jose Diaz from the OSU library. To my friends, Meghan Dabkowski and Christina García, for proofreading ¡gracias de todo corazón!

To all the participants of this oral history project, ¡ustedes son las estrellas en este libro! Este libro es un homenaje a sus vidas y el trabajo que hacen para nuestra comunidad.

Gracias to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Ohio Hispanic Heritage Project at The Ohio State University for providing two grants to help me during the initial collection of stories and later for continuing to support the production of this book and hire a student worker to help me complete it!

Thanks to my map maker, Josh Sadvari, who gathered the data necessary to design the wonderful maps about the Latino population in the state of Ohio.

Lastly, Ashley Miller and Mike Shiflet from ODEE, thank you for all your hard work and support!