Rosette Nsonga Oral History

Rosette Nsonga is a 51 years-old Ugandan woman who came to the US in 2017. This interview explores her background in order to understand the person she became, going from her childhood in Uganda to her arrival in California. She explains the difficulties she went through through concerning education, gives more details on the East African community in San Diego and the importance of preserving her culture. She also insists on the importance of telling her story as a way of raising awareness on some global issues such as human trafficking and women’s rights. Her story and fights for human rights resonates more than ever with the current context of racism and fight for equality and justice as she says “I am tired of people who abuse people’s rights here“.

In short, this interview covers topics such as the COVID-19 pandemic, human and women’s rights, UWEAST, her writings, human trafficking and education in Uganda. Rosette and Anaïs met thanks to Professor Yen Espiritu, who is teaching the class Race and Oral History. The interview was conducted via Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that the interviewee and the interviewer were in 2 different countries. 

This interview was conducted by Anaïs, a second year exchange student from France majoring in Ethnic studies at UCSD and in political science in France. She is very interested in journalism and storytelling.

Note : the text highlighted in red has been added after the interview, (redacted) means that it has been deleted.