Celebrating Immigrant and Refugee Stories of Home
Amy Hill
Artwork by Patricia Rojas
Editor’s Note: In September, we received a generous offer from one of our webinar participants to help document and write about our work. What follows is her article about a recent online story screening of work from our Stories of Home project.
By Camie Bontaites
Several weeks after attending the online screening of StoryCenter and Wellness in Action’s Stories of Home project, I am still contemplating my definition of “home,” and I’d wager the other attendees are doing the same.
The project, a collaboration between StoryCenter and Wellness in Action, asks its participants, who are recent immigrants to the U.S., or have family who are recent immigrants, to explore memories and objects that help them define “home.” The screening allowed us to see and hear their stories through photos, drawings, poetry and striking visual metaphor.
Patricia Rojas, Program Director of Wellness in Action, began the event by framing her own story. She is an immigrant from Columbia. After being in the U.S. for 20 years, she now lives a transnational life, and this, she declared pointedly, affects how she defines “home.” The stories that followed, produced as short videos, were artfully unique variations on this theme.
Salome Mwangi told the story of visiting her grandmother who didn’t have many resources, but knowing her granddaughter was accustomed to eating breakfast, engaged in a labor of love—digging a sweet potato from her garden, and watchfully baking it as she prepared the tea. A quote from a Gikuyu song ushered in the story. The visuals were elegant, and brought us into that kitchen, letting us glimpse her brief, but powerful, memory.
Interviewed during the screening, Mwangi noted, "I'm realizing that we all have stories to tell. It could be in the little things, it could be in the large things. Sometimes we miss out on telling stories because we think it's just the big stories or the life changing, but for me the sweet potato was life changing."
And then, she got to the heart of why we were all there. "There are stories in all of us, and we can help each other tease out the stories that make us who we are."
Stories of Home was initiated in the wake of the 2016 election, when a xenophobic, anti-immigrant climate was building across the country. The project brings small groups of immigrants and refugees together for participatory digital storytelling, creating a safe environment where they can share their journeys and reflect on what home means to them. They draw, collect, and create images, and they learn to use simple digital tools to produce short videos. They find new ways to represent themselves, and to tell stories on their own terms.
As the storytellers worked with StoryCenter staff to create their videos, they were asked questions to help them engage with their memories. If they’d chosen an object, they were asked to describe its physical attributes, how it reminded them of who they were, how it signified home. When choosing photos of themselves, they were asked how they saw themselves. What was their public image? How was it different - or not - from before they came to the U.S.?
In Let’s Break an Egg, Beatriz told a story of a traditional healer in Oaxaca who performed an egg cleanse to dissipate negative energy. The story reminded her to “embrace my ancestral magic, own it, transition it to my daughter.”
Lena, a Muslim Arab woman, told how the kindness of a stranger in the wake of 9/11 changed how she saw home. “Home is more an atmosphere, people helping each other, standing with each other…”
As those of us in the online audience listened and watched, the comments section on the right side of the Zoom screen chattered with support and gratitude to the storytellers for their vulnerability and creativity.
Trang danced slowly by the seashore and spoke, in spellbinding poetry, of how they had considered surgery for a condition that left their palms excessively sweaty. Then came a beautiful shift in perspective: "I can create water by rubbing my palms together. I'm a water bender. My ancestors, we are water people."
Min summed up what so many of the others had come to, in the end. “Since my original home is gone, I had to find a new home… I started to work with people and found my voice... finally I have built a new home in my heart. Home was a person. Home is a community now.”
The screening ended with a short presentation by Parul Wadhwa, artist-in-residence at StoryCenter, who for the past year has been working to create a participatory virtual reality (VR) component for Stories of Home. Parul, who piloted an online VR workshop in June to support three alumni of previous Stories of Home digital storytelling workshops, presented a work-in-progress. In The Ribbon, she used 3D film techniques to bring the story of Anju Subha, who came to the U.S. some years ago as a refugee from Nepal. A beautiful image of the red hair ribbon Anju wore as a schoolgirl when she was growing up in a refugee camp in Thailand was brought to life on the screen. It wove through the visual story, as a ribbon, then as a story thread, and finally wrapped around her younger and older selves, entwining the two together. In the video, narrated by Anju, she recalled, “I still feel the texture, the way my forehead wrinkled in concentration as I tied the bow.” The light in the image became filtered, leaves gently fell, and our perspective shifted as the lens pulled away. Anju ends by stating, “I had almost forgotten all this, and now it’s coming to me like a river.”
------------------------------------
My own writing and projects have, for a long time, been centered around the power of story. I know from my research that there is evidence from therapists, psychologists, teachers, community leaders, and more that when people are given the opportunity to tell stories in their own way, to render themselves visible in the way they choose, they affirm who they are, and they invite others to see them, and the world, with new perspectives.
I was struck by how the Stories of Home storytellers that night all agreed that they had changed through the process of storytelling. Retelling and reimagining their stories through art and objects had been about discovery. They considered their stories to be versatile—even infinite—in the ways they could be told. Their stories were dynamic, affecting those who listened to them, and helping to challenge stereotypes and redefine empathy. For each one, the project has been a starting point in exploring home and identity. As Trang said, “I am water, flowing back home.”
View a video of the screening here, to see stories and short interviews, or watch the rest of the stories screened at the event below. Please contact Amy Hill if you would like to support the project.
Special thanks to the East Bay Community Foundation, the California Arts Council, and an anonymous family foundation in the Bay Area, for funding this work.