Stories

So with my grandmother that passed away a few years ago, whose hands you drew,
that was a really close connection. That meant a lot to me.

Storyteller Goli Hashemi and art student Lily Crawford, participants in our Stories of Home project Material Memories workshop, meet for the first time in this recorded conversation about what it was like for Goli to see her tender story about inherited silver spoons and their journey from Iran to the U.S. come to life through Lily’s black and white illustrations, and what it was like for Lily to make art, for the piece.

“I remember watching a hummingbird that just kept zooming in and out of the apple tree branches, and I noticed that it kept going back into that tree. And so I kept looking around and trying to see if I could find a nest …”

Anne Haven McDonnell, poet, professor, and avid birder, shares memories of how she came to love the natural world and talks about producing an audio segment featuring her friend and fellow birder Janie Chodosh, a research ecologist.

“… we would hear a knock on our classroom door, and it was the Border Patrol. They gave a name to the teacher, and a student got up and left. And there was one very good friend of mine– that happened to her. And I never saw her again.”

Marta V. Martinez, Director of the Rhode Island Latino Oral History Project, shares memories of growing up in El Paso, Texas and talks about what it was like to interview Victor Morente, who came to the U.S. from Guatemala at the age of six.

“Somehow the idea of these beads– of shapes separated but together– started appearing everywhere, for me. In aerial photos of large circles chalked six feet apart on the grass at Dolores Park in San Francisco, to keep people socially distant …”

Amy Hill, StoryCenter’s Silence Speaks Director, frames her daughter’s obsession with a simple children’s craft as the backdrop for weaving her own pandemic moments together with a story contributed by Jacqueline Stewart. Featuring the music of Max Avery Lichtenstein.