Our Spanish news team, ¿Qué Hay de Nuevo, New Hampshire? is entering a new chapter.
In March, we said goodbye to Gaby Lozada, the first reporter for our team that brought stories and news about our communities, from business leaders profiles to breaking news about a proposed asphalt plant in Nashua.
And now we’d like to introduce our new reporter: Lau Guzmán. She covered Latino communities in Connecticut for two years as part of the Record-Journal’s Latino Communities Reporting Lab, and moved to Manchester just a few weeks ago.
Our editor Daniela Allee interviewed Lau for Que Hay’s listeners, and below is a translation of that interview.
Puedes leer esta entrevista en español aquí.
What do you think about New Hampshire and Manchester?
Well, I moved to Manchester over the summer, so recently it’s felt very green, very nice, with a lot of nature around. Little birds wake me up during the morning, so I think this is a very lush state. There’s a lot of nature.
Tell us a bit about yourself. Where do you come from?
I'm Colombian, in fact from Bogotá, if you haven't noticed from the accent]. I have a very strong Bogotano accent in Spanish, but I've been in the U.S. for six years. I moved to New York to go to college and have been living in New England for six years.
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Curious, bubbly and fearless.
Have you always been that way, or do you think you went through an evolution?
Yes, I think especially in the fearless part.
Like many people that move here, without family and all that, you have to learn how to solve things by yourself. Like, how to get health insurance or how you can get help to move from one place to another, things like that. So, in these situations, you notice you are all by yourself, so you have to be fearless. There's no other way.
How has that influenced your work?
I feel that it’s given me more empathy for people who come here and start from scratch. I have a lot of advantages, like for example, I speak English fluently … but I can't imagine the migratory process: how to enroll your children in a school without knowing anybody or without speaking the language. I think this gives me more empathy with people who packed up their whole life and started over here. This allows me to connect more with people I meet during reporting, a deeper connection because we both know what it’s like to miss our families, or for example, having a national holiday that no one cares about. Those types of things give me empathy. We have a shared vocabulary.
How did you get into journalism?
Would you believe me if I say it was an accident? I joined a college blog during my sophomore year, and I ended up liking it. So I decided to study journalism. I became a Report for America corps member, and now I'm here. It wasn't something I had planned on when I was a kid, like wanting to be a doctor or a singer, but it's something I found and enjoy.
We have talked about this but, what do you like to report about around Latino communities in New England?
I think it is a chance to challenge stereotypes. I think that people generally think we are only a certain way, that we are very Anglo-Saxon or super Yankee in New England. Well, I think it is a chance to say that we’re actually a more diverse community than what you think, and we have people from everywhere, like from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, even from Haiti and from Congo. There really are people from around the world here.
What type of journalism do you like to do?
I personally like community-oriented journalism. Generally, we as journalists create a lot of content about the community but not for the community. Things like summarizing what the education board talked about, or how to get a good job, things that are useful for communities that go beyond just reporting about communities.
What are your goals as the new member of our team?
First of all, get to know the community really well, and then, publish cool stories, exciting things that people care about, that are new and different from what we have done before.
What excites you about New Hampshire, or what has excited you so far?
I like the diversity. In Connecticut, there weren't too many immigrant communities, you mainly heard English and Spanish while in the supermarket, but that was it. But here, while shopping, you can hear many languages that you can't recognize, and you think, “That’s cool. This is a diverse community with people from all over the world who bring their food, costumes, traditions, clothes, and all that.”
So that’s really captured my attention since moving here.
Did that surprise you when you got here?
Yes, because I thought New Hampshire was very New England, as in really Yankee, and that everything was in English and there wasn't too much diversity. But it amazed me the diversity you can find here.
Share any story idea to Lau: lguzman@nhpr.org , or send a text via WhatsApp.