This paper describes both a community-based project on preserving heritage and the impact of that project in a university classroom. Stockton, California is designated as a "minority-majority" city — less than 50% of the population is Anglo-American, and more than a hundred different languages are in regular use every day. As various immigrant groups become more settled, however, second and third generation family members often learn only English and begin to forgo elements of their traditional heritage. In order to trace the changes that occur over the generations, faculty and staff at the University of the Pacific recently received a grant to interview 54 Stockton residents, representing three generations of nine ethnic groups: Mexican, Hmong, Italian, Native-American, African American, Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, and Cambodian. The project, culminating in public readings and performances, was intended as an act of preservation.

Pacific students took questionnaires and CDs of interviews and transformed them into coherent narratives. While the stories (soon to be available on the internet) preserved family narratives, they also recorded the fact that maintaining heritage remains a serious on-going concern for virtually all of the project participants. This was especially true for members of communities with strong oral traditions, such as California and Miwok Indians and the Hmong. This paper will outline and examine the ways that this concern manifested itself, discuss the personal impact on students working on the project, and suggest ways similar projects could be conducted by other teachers.