In the spring of 2020, New York City was the center of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and Queens had the highest numbers of diagnosed cases and hospitalizations. Many Queens residents were living and work­ing on the front lines, providing essential services and supporting family and community members. 

These personal stories were not well documented by the media as news of the pandemic moved at a stunning pace. Without real-time documentation, memories can fade and facts can be misremembered, making it difficult to reconstruct lived experience. After March 20th, as the city was urged to stay at home, we collected first-person accounts from the communities affected in the most acute ways. 

This season of the Queens Memory Podcast features first-person accounts from our community as we got through this historic pandemic together.

This episode of the Queens Memory Project Podcast was conceived and produced by the Queens Public Library Teen Advisory Board.  The Queens Public Library Teen Advisory Board is a yearlong program were members take the lead in creating and implementing a project that helps their peers and community.  This year’s TAB decided to work on a podcast to interview the voices they felt have been left out of the conversations around Covid-19.  After much discussion, TAB members decided to highlight the voices of their peers and their experiences with quarantine and distance learning.  After spending the first half of the school year learning the basics of podcasting, members worked together to write the interview questions and were responsible for interviewing, producing, and hosting the episode.  Once they learned the basics of creating a podcast episode, the TAB members set out to interview people across generations and life experiences to ask the question “How are you doing?”  Answers varied widely and touched upon the topics of virtual school, the disruption of daily routines, new skills learned during lockdown, and social media use. Interviewees often chose to highlight the positives of their experiences in quarantine.