Martha Aladjem Bloomfield is an award-winning author, oral historian, artist and independent scholar, who has written several books about immigrants, migrants and the formerly homeless. In an effort to help dissipate prejudice and discrimination and foster civic engagement through positive dialogue, she conducts oral histories to discover peoples’ voices and stories to share with others.
Internationally acclaimed, award winning documentary filmmaker Jacky Comforty, wrote The Stolen Narrative of the Bulgarian News and the Holocaust with Martha Aladjem Bloomfield published by Rowman and Littlefield in their series Lexington Studies in Jewish Literature which has just come out in April 2021.
Martha’s first book, The Sweetness of Freedom, Stories of Immigrants (co-author, Steve Ostrander) (Michigan State University Press, 2010) based on oral histories won a national IPPY Award (an Independent Publisher Book Award, Silver Medal for Multicultural Adult Non-Fiction) and a Michigan Notable Book Award, 2011. My Eyes Feel They Need to Cry, Stories from the Formerly Homeless (Michigan State University Press, 2013) is also based on oral histories as well as Hmong Americans in Michigan, (Michigan State University Press, 2014) a first book about Hmong people in Michigan. Romanies in Michigan (Michigan State University Press, 2019) is groundbreaking as it is the first book in the United States to include oral histories of Romanies.
She has presented papers at the state Michigan Oral History Association meetings, the national Oral History Association meetings and the International Oral History Association meeting in Prague, the Czech Republic. She organized a symposium on homelessness with Czech colleagues, which the American Embassy sponsored in Prague in 2010. I also organized a symposium with Bulgarian colleagues on “Civic Engagement, Social Responsibility and Justice,” in 2013, also sponsored by the American Embassy in Sofia.
Martha Bloomfield gives workshops on oral histories and marginalized peoples to organizations, libraries, and schools. She adapts her programs to all ages and venues to inspire people to discover their own and others’ stories through their voices, artifacts, historical documents, and family photographs. She is a member of the Michigan Humanities Council Arts and Humanities Touring Directory. https://touring.michiganhumanities.org/project/martha-bloomfield-author-stories-of-immigrants/