American Dreaming (2021)

American Dreaming is a research report on the experiences of undocumented storytellers involved in the immigration movement and the impact on their mental health, with best-practice recommendations for individuals and organizations working with storytellers. I designed the report and launch package and illustrated the participants' quotes.

Full report here (PDF).

Report cover in cool aqua, green, and blue. An illustration of a curving road leads from the bottom left into the top right corner. The serif title text says 'American Dreaming: The Roadmap to Resilience for Undocumented Storytellers'. The sans-serif subtitle says 'Looking back at a decade of advocacy and the mental health impact to storytellers.'

A spread of the report. The left page bears the large quote 'It is such a force — like a thousand raging bulls just charging you. That is what it means to be undocumented.' The right page has a letter to the reader from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jose Antonio Vargas.'

A spread of the report with key findings about the demographics of the undocumented storytellers interviewed. 80% have moderate to high PTSD, 98% have low depression, and 95% have high resilience. Two intertwined arrows labelled 'social support' and 'resilience' illustrate the correlation between these. On the right are answers to the questions, 'How do undocumented storytellers remain resilient?': Agency, Support, Inclusion, Legacy, and Solidarity'.

A aquamarine green spread with the quote 'Whenever I was tired, whenever I was upset, whenever I felt defeated, I would keep going. Because I know that I carried the story of every singlke person I have ever met and who had ever shared their story with me. I carried that with me and I felt that if I didn't keep going I would let them down.' On the right is the soft illustration in this webpage's thumbnail of a broad blue-skinned woman, eyes closed, curled around a round egg or stone she's holding to her chest.

A typographic spread of the report, elaborating on Agency: Our power is in us, not solely in our stories.

A typographic spread of the report, elaborating on Support: We must support each other and a pie chart showing the self-confidence of the storytellers (22% low, 75% moderate, 2% high).

A spread with a deep blue-green background. On the left is an illustration of two hands holding each other, surrounded by little red sparks. On the right is the quote 'After that day it all changed because not only did I feel pain with people, but months later there was a huge network of undocumented youth across the country that were all moving in step together. And it just shows a kind of collective pain. Like what collective pain can do to people and force them to act, especially if you're not just accountable to yourself but you're also accountable to all of your peers that feel the same thing.'

A spread with a soft cool-toned illustration of a woman looking in an arched mirror. Her reflection is a wobbly-looking stack of abstract shapes.

A spread with an illustration of one large speech bubble, crowding out and pushing others to the edges of the page.

A spread with an illustration of a single person in a crowd, facing in the opposite direction. To the right is the heading 'Inclusion: We are complex and will not sacrifice our complexity for a simple, generic story.'

Back cover of the report. A large hand reaches out from an arched doorway.

I also created several social graphic carousels with recommendations for the report launch week.