Simmons College

More than 150 members of the Simmons community attended a February screening and discussion of the film "Some Kind of Funny Porto Rican? A Cape Verdean American Story" featuring filmmaker Claire Andrade-Watkins '74.

Pictured are Denise Pappas '71, '85 SM; Claire Andrade-Watkins '74; and Cheryl Howard, '71

Andrade-Watkins, who was a history major at Simmons, created the film during a span of more than 20 years. The documentary focuses on the close-knit Cape Verdean community of the Fox Point section of Providence, RI, and how this community was separated during the urban renewal of the 1960s and 1970s. The story is told through the voices of the Cape Verdean elders. The film speaks to a range of subjects including immigration, oral history, race, ethnicity, civil rights, and community organizing.

Pictured are Janie Ward, associate professor and chair of Africana Studies; Lisa Smith-McQueenie, assistant dean of student life and multicultural affairs; Cheryl Howard '71; Dawna Thomas, assistant professor of Africana Studies and Women's Studies; Loretta Williams, director of the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights; Claire Andrade-Watkins '74; Lorita B. Williams, executive director of the Office of Alumnae/i Relations

The event was attended and supported by the Women's Studies Department, the Graduate Program in Gender/Cultural Studies, the Black Student Organization and the Office of Alumnae/i Relations. The Africana Studies Department, Multicultural Affairs and the Simmons Institute for Leadership and Change sponsored the event.

Click here for more information on the film.