Friday October 25, 2024
By Teagan King
Minnesota educator and author Marian Hassan is creating Sing-Again Lullaby and Oral History Project to preserve Somali language and storytelling: Marian Hassan
Minnesota educator and author Marian Hassan received a grant from the Minnesota Humanities Center to support her new children's book project that preserves the Somali language and traditional stories.
Hassan's Sing-Again Lullaby and Oral History Project seeks to turn oral history and storytelling into a written children's book through interviews with Somali elders who share the traditional songs, poems and stories of their childhood, which were historically told verbally instead of through writing.
"If the Somali language is lost, the culture and all of the depth of this rich oral history will go away," she said. "The project is titled Sing-Again, so in my vision, it's a chance to enjoy and celebrate language. This story is not grim displacement and becoming a refugee, that's not the story that we want to constantly be surrounded with."
Hassan received a Minnesota Legacy Cultural Heritage Grant for $121,394, which she said will mainly go toward the book's publishing, though it will also help cover the videographer costs to record traditional songs for an audio component of the project. The grant can also help Hassan expand Sing-Again from the Twin Cities to other regions in the state, including St. Cloud.
Preserving Somali language and culture can be difficult because the written version of the language was only introduced in the 1970s. Plus, displaced communities are often focused on survival rather than efforts like language preservation, Hassan said.
According to U.S. Census Bureau data, Somali is the second most common non-English language spoken at home in Minnesota, though an increasing number of Somali families face difficulties communicating with one another across generations.
Hassan's project is meant to bridge those gaps by connecting parents and grandparents who may not speak English with their children who may not speak Somali, she said, while also providing schools materials that create a multicultural classroom experience.
"It's important to expose (children) to the stories of others, and that's how we form a sense of connection, our shared humanity," Hassan said. "This project is an opportunity for the larger community to also experience part of the Somali culture and our efforts to belong but also not lose who we are in that process."
Sing-Again is expected to be completed in May 2025. It will be available as an illustrated volume of bilingual lullabies and stories, and additional resources and recordings will be compiled on a website to share resources and archive the stories.