"Gathering Strength" Digital Stories: Immigrant & Refugee Communities Ending Violence
Editor’s Note: In 2015-16, StoryCenter worked with the Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence (API-GBV) to support leaders from the Gathering Strength initiative in sharing their stories. We led two digital storytelling workshops with participants, and API-GBV showcased them at a closing event for Gathering Strength participants and partners, held in August 2016 at the Oakland Museum of Art. This article, prepared by API-GBV staff, offers an overview of the first day of the event. We share it now in recognition of this year's "16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence" campaign. View our "16 Days of Women's Rights Stories."
We have all been fired in the kiln of past hurts. … Among the ash traces, our roots grow like live coals illuminating our past, giving us sustenance for the present and guidance for the future. (Anonymous API community activist)
For four years, the Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence (API-GBV) has been leading the Gathering Strength project (GS), which holds an overarching theme of storytelling as it supports California’s API immigrant and refugee communities in ending violence. In August of 2016, project advisors and participants came together for 2.5 days, to strengthen and expand the GS community, honor and celebrate individual and collective accomplishments, and co-create a bold vision for the next phase of this work. The meeting was held at the Oakland Museum of Art.
Heiwa Taiko performs at the Gathering Strength meeting
Heiwa Taiko’s deep and thunderous reverberations called participants from the Redwood Burl reception area to enter the Lecture Hall (Heiwa means “peace” in Japanese). Powerful performances by this group of “dynamic and energetic grandmas” conveyed shared values of intergenerational leadership, mind-body-spirit practice, and transcending traditional gender norms in diaspora.
Beckie Masaki with API-GBV formally welcomed participants and shared the ‘origins story’ of GS: a story about how powerful change can occur when we create beloved community and invest in individuals and programs to be the leaders of that change.
Nancy Wan then introduced the 15 short videos that were created during the two StoryCenter workshops held over the past year. These workshops offered Asian and Arab immigrant and refugee advocates the rare opportunity and a supportive space to deeply explore previously unexamined crevices of their hearts and minds -- parts that are rarely brought into the light, but that evoke the penetrating emotions that drive the storytellers’ dedication, deep empathy, and love for their work. Each story is an account of epiphanies, ruptures, and awakenings that come from grappling with conflict, dwelling in complexities and contradictions, and coming to terms with the paradoxes that make up the oppression and the liberation of API communities (here is an example from one of the two workshops).
Following the video screening, five storytellers led self- and collective reflection as “conversation catalysts,” by modeling openhearted vulnerability to spark meaningful conversation. Questions for storytellers included:
- What was it like, watching your digital story again now?
- How does it feel to see your story among the others?
- Who were you hoping to speak to with your story? What do you hope they'd hear?
- Was there a moment in someone else's story today that really resonated or struck a chord with you?
One participant reflected,
“Showing the movies with others felt like a collective moment of our journey together. Through the Gathering Strength cohort, I have gained a sense of expansiveness to be able to think and reflect on our work together critically and creatively. This definitely would not have been possible without the support and advocacy of APIGBV staff who have demonstrated what it means to empower other API women in ways that lift up voices that, although they have not yet been heard, contribute to the field of anti-violence work in new ways.”
The group came back together after lunch to continue the creative storytelling theme through an exercise involving a shift from the self to storytelling as a collective, moving out of the literal and into the deeper realm of metaphor. Beckie Masaki and Nancy Wan were inspired to create this story circles and movement activity and want to give their deep appreciation to Norma Wong Roshi, and the Taoist teaching of “the Ox Herding Pictures,” by Zen master Kuòān Shīyuǎn, a parable of the stages along one’s journey towards truth, or the realization of Oneness.
Images used in “Nine Story Circles” activity”
First, participants were invited to walk around Nine Story Circles – each representing a key inflection point on the quintessential human drama of endeavor, struggle, revelation, and return. In recognition of the fact that ‘progress’ does not always occur linearly, participants were encouraged to freely to roam around the room. Next, they were asked to stand in the space that spoke the story of, “Where do you find yourself in the present moment?” and to reflect individually of with others near them on, “What has your journey been, that finds you in this moment?” Participants were then asked to stand on the space they felt called to go next, where they responded to the question, “What brought you here?” with others on that particular circle. These “stories of the future” offered an opening for participants to attend metaphorically to each speaker’s expectations, desires, anxieties, or fears. The exercise closed with whole-group reflections about any ah-ha moments or insights gained. One participant noted,
“One thought, in particular, has really stuck with me: that each of us thought our individual stories were so small, so unworthy of being told, even embarrassing. And yet, when we saw them all together … we could see how strongly so many of those themes and stories resonated with all of us. We could see the patterns and the narrative threads of alienation, oppression and resilience that wove through so many of our lives. It was really stunning. And then to take all that in, and realize that our stories are virtually invisible in the media and to the mainstream … wow, that made me feel that participating in this project was a fierce act of resistance, in solidarity with my warrior sisters!”
This article was prepared by API-GBV staff. For more information about Gathering Strength, please contact Beckie Masaki at bmasaki@api-gbv.org.
Looking for more information about StoryCenter's work on gender-based violence and human rights? Find project updates on our Silence Speaks Facebook page.