"I am a man." "Yo existo." #BlackLivesMatter. If you've never felt your humanity denied, you might not understand why some people have to declare their right to exist. We are all just "cells and bodies," after all. And that is a connection the Ohio Migration Anthology, in all of its volumes, is working to make. 

From African Americans whose families came during the Great Migrations to people from other countries seeking safety today, the Ohio Migration Anthology centers art from Ohioans of all cultures and walks of life through poems, short stories, visual and tactile art, interviews, essays, and more. In the human experience, migration is as basic as breathing; it's as old as time. People move for opportunities as well as survival, and the courage it takes to migrate is a an act of love.

In her review of Volume 1, Marina Manoukian writes:  "What comes out of reading about these experiences? What comes out of knowing about the different things people endure on their way from being in one place to another? To read about the movement of others isn’t about preparing for the inevitable — it’s about finding the intersections that inevitably remake us all."

From the beginning, the Ohio Immigrant Alliance has partnered with the Cleveland Association of Black Storytellers to connect African American experiences to those of international migrants making Ohio home. In 2023 we continued this partnership and, thanks to support from Ohio Arts Council, Ioby, and Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, we added multimedia content and an ADA-accessible website, and began partnering with the Illustrated Memoirs youth project in Volume 2. Gloria Kellon, whose medium is the quilt, was also featured in Volume 2. Kellon narrates American history with Black protagonists through cloth, batting, and string, documenting tragic stories like the Mothers of Gynecology as well as the triumphs of leaders such as Barack Obama and Venus and Serena Williams.