Fall 2015 - People and Stories

Word of Mouth
Newark group
connects text to
life experiences
“The human species
thinks in metaphors
and learns through
stories.”
--Mary Catherine Bateson
Board of Directors:
Georgia Whidden, President
Michelle McKenna, Treasurer
Claire Jacobus, Secretary
Elizabeth Fernandez
Virginia Kerr
Sheila Kohler
Mimi Mead-Hagen
Anne Seltzer
Anne Sobel
Pamela Wakefield
Mary Wisnovsky
Executive Director:
Patricia Andres
Development Associate:
Cheyenne Wolf
Founder:
Sarah Hirschman
Newsletter Editor:
Anndee Hochman
by Alma Concepción
When I read “Juan Darién,” a fable-like
story by Horacio Quiroga, with seniors at
Villa Victoria Housing in Newark, the
phrase, “the little tiger…fell asleep with
his head pressed against the maternal
breast” triggered an unexpected response.
“There is no sorrow like losing a child,”
Elena told the Gente y Cuentos group. “I
lost mine. He was killed here in Newark.
The mother in this story was lucky to find
comfort in someone who could fit right
into that place, and maybe that is why in
the story the baby tiger gets to be
transformed into a baby boy.”
Elena and the other Spanish-speaking
residents at Villa Victoria ranged in age
from 70 to 83. All were originally from
Puerto Rico; one of them was raised in
Newark. Their comments always
connected the poetics of the text with
personal experiences: cherished
memories of childhood, tales of factory
work and poignant moments linked to
traumatic events in their lives.
In “Bajo el sauce llorón” by Senel Paz,
this line triggered long-ago memories: “I
wake up in the morning and I like it. I
hear the cows mowing…she [the cow]
comes down…and I look at her…and we
talk.” Carmen responded, “I remember
my days in Puerto Rico. We lived in the
countryside, and my father had cows and
horses…I miss waking up with the
sounds of the birds and the animals. I can
identify with the boy because I learned to
talk to the plants.”
When discussing family relations in
Paz’s story, one participant commented,
“Our parents weren’t perfect, but they
taught us some rules that have helped us
survive.” Another said, “My daughter and
her husband gave me their child to raise
when they knew they were going to die.”
The main character of “La noche que
volvimos a ser gente,” by José Luis
González, works in a factory: “In the
assembly line...I had to insert the tubes,
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two of them, in each radio...I thought I was
going mad.” Irene identified with this
character. “I worked in a leather factory
here in Newark,” she said. “The first day I
arrived they had me hold a piece of cow
skin which another worker was holding on
the other side. We had to slip it in a very
fast machine in a matter of seconds…This
would go on all day until we completed
500 pieces. All this without resting, not
even to go to the bathroom.”
It is always a learning
experience for me to
witness how words
elicit memories of
sorrow and hope.
When I finished reading “La prueba,” by
Rodrigo Rey Rosa, a story about a child
whose parents don’t speak to him, we were
moved by Matías’ recollection. “The
problem in this story,” he said, “is that
there was no communication in this family.
I know about that. My mother never spoke
to me about anything, but she sure knew
how to punish me. She used to beat me up
for no reason at all. And my father watched
and said nothing.”
After reading “No era bonita la tía
Cristina” by Ángeles Mastretta,
participants said that Cristina was a woman
with no particular attributes, yet intelligent
enough to stand on her own two feet
without bending to rules she cannot follow.
We had read two other stories with strong
women characters, and Celina said, “I like
the strategies of these three women! We
women here are all examples of women
with talent who find strategies to survive
under the most difficult circumstances!”
It is always a learning experience for me
to witness how words elicit memories of
sorrow and hope. The tales recounted at
Villa Victoria were told with great passion
and detail, laughter and joy as participants
connected to the poetic language and to
musical references, revealing the long
musical and oral history at the core of
Latino culture. Most of all, they reaffirmed
human solidarity and faith in life.
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Cultures clash &
lives unfurl in
Newark housing
by Scotia W. MacRae
So here I am, this Amazon of a blond,
white woman, walking into Villa Victoria,
a housing complex for seniors in Newark. I
am here as the English coordinator of
People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos. Alma
Concepción, a dancer as well as a program
coordinator, is leading the group in
Spanish. We enter the complex and sign in.
Previously we coordinated an eight-week
session, so this is the second time around
for the two of us and for our small but
enthusiastic cadres of participants. One of
the previous members of my group, Joan,
has died, and I miss her.
The guard gets on the intercom and yells,
“Peoples and Stories in the community
room!” Alma repeats the announcement in
Spanish.
I head to my side of the community
room—actually two rooms divided by a
kitchen—with its fake fireplace below a
huge, blaring TV. I have finally figured out
how to turn the blasted thing off.
First into the room is Domenica, from a
tight-knit Italian family. She usually knows
if another participant can’t come because of
a doctor’s appointment or the graduation of
a grandchild. The others, all African
Americans, join her.
We have read a variety of stories, some
of which pertain to race, but we have not
directly discussed the topic. I suspect it’s
because participants need a certain level of
trust to reveal their true feelings about an
explosive subject—one that is much in the
news now. We ask participants to fill out a
form that says, “Please tell us about
yourself.” In the space that calls for
ethnicity/race, Mildred, a retired teacher’s
aide, wrote, “Human.”
I know from a previous session—the
story was “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier,
about a poor black family in rural
Maryland—that several of the residents
came from the rural South. When I talked
about how I loved the summer because I
could run around in the grass without my
shoes, my group was incredulous. “We
Word of Mouth
would never do such a thing,” said
Mildred. “My mama always made sure we
wore our shoes.”
Today we are reading “Everyday Use,”
by Alice Walker. An African-American
mother and daughter have cleaned up their
three-room cabin in rural Georgia and the
yard around it, which serves as the living
room in summer. They are awaiting a visit
from the other daughter, the bright, sassy,
sophisticated one who has changed her
name from Dee to Wangero. Once she
arrives, Dee/Wangero tries to commandeer
various items that she previously scorned,
such as the dash of the wooden butter churn
whittled by her aunt’s first husband and the
handmade quilts stitched by her
grandmother.
Today, I ask Mildred if the cabin sounds
like the one she grew up in—I already
know that she came to Newark from
Georgia as a child. I gather that her
family’s house was a little less ramshackle
than the cabin described. I ask her if she
remembers any of the items there. “No,”
she says. “There wasn’t anything much.
“But then,” she says, “we came up here
because my daddy was going to be
lynched.”
Stunned silence. No one speaks.
Finally Glen, who was a manager for the
Schrafft’s restaurant chain in its glory days,
asks, “Why?”
“Because he was proud,” Mildred says.
“He didn’t look down when white people
were around. And he spoke his mind. The
husband of the white woman my mother
washed for told my daddy one day that
people were going to come for him. So he
stole off in the night. We stayed with my
mother in Georgia for about six months
until she had enough money to head north
to meet him. I arrived in Newark when I
was nine years old.”
I do some rapid math in my head; that
would have been around 1944, since
Mildred has said she is 80. Lynching? I
think. In a country that was waging a war
for the future of Western democracy?
Here in this modest community room
with its fake fireplace, without fanfare or
drama, we have broken a barrier and
arrived at a new level of honesty. We finish
our discussion, we have our refreshments,
Alma and I drive back to Princeton. But I
will not forget this afternoon. Not ever.
“Great stories happen
to those who can tell
them.”
--Ira Glass, radio host
Coordinators:
New Jersey
Patricia Andres
Alma Concepción
Margaret Griffin
Ana Graciela Mejia Guillon
Scotia W. MacRae
Angélica Mariani
Assenka Oksiloff
Gloria Perez
Jo L. Schmidt
Marcy Schwartz
Patricia Smith
Diane Wilfrid
Pennsylvania
Scott Feifer
Anndee Hochman
Lawrence McCarty
Word of Mouth
“…think of your own
childhood, how
important the bedtime
story was. How
important these
imaginary experiences
were for you. They
helped shape reality,
and I think human
beings wouldn’t be
human without
narrative fiction.”
--Paul Auster
Coordinators:
New York
Alma Concepción
Deborah Salmon
France
Katia Salomon
Volunteers at
Bo Robinson
cross borders
to lead group
by Anndee Hochman
Liz Fernandez noted that the rooms had
no windows. Sally Maruca was struck by
the posters with simplistic aphorisms on the
walls. Ted Fetter regarded the participants
through his own lens as former manager of
the New Jersey court system. For Nina
McPherson, the group was part of a
personal re-entry plan after living in France
for almost twenty years.
But no matter what led them to the
Crossing Borders program at Bo Robinson
Education and Treatment Center in
Trenton, no matter their first impressions,
just one or two sessions left these four with
a shared certainty: in that room, both they
and the Bo participants would be changed.
Maruca took part in People & Stories’
first training group, years ago, at Martin
House. Though she thought the concept
was “spectacular—reaching people through
literature,” her plate was full: raising five
children while teaching elementary school
in Trenton.
When her schedule finally eased and she
attended her first session at Bo, she was
stunned by the variety of the inmates’ lives.
“They ranged in age, they ranged in their
academic training, they ranged in their
political views. What continues to amaze
me is how quickly we’d bond as a group.
“The leader sets a tone that is nonjudgmental. I think that is perhaps one of
the most important things to do in any
situation where this program is going on.”
Fernandez had never been in a prison or
jail before, but she did not feel nervous
being around men who had been convicted
of serious crimes. “My heart went out to
them. Right away, I knew it was going to
be an important undertaking.”
Fetter felt the same way. “Regardless of
what they were charged with or convicted
of, they were real people. That was what I
knew before I participated in any P&S
program.
4
“But P&S has strengthened that [idea].
Not only are they real people like you and
me, but they are very talented, very
insightful, very subtle in their wisdom
about personal interactions and family
dynamics.” He recalled being especially
moved by inmates who talked of their
longing to reunite with relatives: a baby
daughter, a girlfriend, a mother.
“A lot of the time, I
was thinking about
my own flaws and
failures and
connecting to them
as equals. We were
experiencing, through
literature, that nothing
human was alien to
us; we all shared that
capacity for extreme
behavior and depth of
feeling.”
For McPherson, being a Crossing
Borders volunteer fused her lifelong
passion for literature—she’d been a teacher
in China and had worked as a literary
translator—with a more recent interest in
the problem of mass incarceration. And
after returning to the United States from
France in 2010, she was eager to find ways
to re-engage with the community.
What she didn’t expect was such
profound personal connection. At times,
she felt like a big sister to some of the men;
at other moments, they were the ones
proferring advice. During one session, she
recalled, a Bo participant said, “‘You come
in here, you don’t know what we’ve done,
and we just share.’ I said, ‘You don’t know
what we’ve done, either.’
“A lot of the time, I was thinking about
my own flaws and failures and connecting
5
to them as equals. We were experiencing,
through literature, that nothing human was
alien to us; we all shared that capacity for
extreme behavior and depth of feeling.”
For Fernandez, there were some indelible
moments, including one that came reading
a story involving a soldier with posttraumatic stress disorder. A Bo participant
said, “I suffered from PTSD,” and an older
inmate challenged him: “But you didn’t go
to war.” No, the young man replied, “but I
saw my baby shot in his crib, and my wife
was killed, too.”
Maruca recalled one of the men
approaching her at the end of a session to
say, “This is the only place I don’t feel
judged.” She remembered another who was
illiterate, and how closely the others
listened to his keen observations. “I learned
something every time, even if we did the
same story again,” she said. “People would
point out things completely different from
what they’d noticed the time before.”
And Fetter was impressed by one man,
convicted of drug offenses, who shared his
emphatic pledge that, this time, he was
going to live differently. “He didn’t
hesitate to tell me that he was going to stay
on the other side of the criminal justice
boundary and not get caught up again. He
was very sure that, this time, he had his
problem licked.”
When Stephanie Hanzel, longtime
coordinator of the Bo group, decided to
leave People & Stories this year, the
Crossing Borders volunteers agreed that
they would carry on the experience. They
would lead the group themselves, taking
turns and making accommodations for one
another’s busy schedules. All four took part
in a training session with P&S executive
director Patricia Andres.
“As a writer [of Canadian historical
fiction] I knew all about poetry—the
shadows, etc.,” Fernandez said. “But the
interesting thing was to learn how a
coordinator can get the participants to talk”
by framing open-ended, inclusive questions
rather than ones that elicit a yes, no or
single-word response.
She also learned to love the short story:
the economy of form, the use of very few
characters, the differences between a tale
relayed in third person and one with a firstperson narrator. “You start to recognize
what you like: something that’s straight
chronologically or something that jumps
Word of Mouth
around [in time].”
In the training, Maruca gained a deeper
understanding of the five-part scaffold—
poetic moments, contrasts, shadows, issues
and personal connections—that undergirds
a coordinator’s questions; she worried a bit
about how to rein in digressions about
individual experience and tie them back to
the text.
“I learned something
every time, even if we
did the same story
over and over…
People would point
out things completely
different from what
they’d noticed the
time before.”
Fetter said his participation at Bo, along
with the training session itself, has changed
the way he reads. He was always a
bookworm—the kind of kid who read
under the covers, with a flashlight, when he
was supposed to be asleep. Today, he hears
the echoes of other voices and perspectives
between the lines. Whether delving into
non-fiction favorites—history and public
affairs—or contemporary fiction, “I am
now able to reflect back on some of the
interpretations the men at Bo have made.”
McPherson can’t think of enough
adjectives to capture her Crossing Borders
experience at Bo: Focused. Authentic.
Emotional. Intelligent. Multi-generational.
While a new job with the Princeton Prison
Teaching Initiative may limit how often she
can lead sessions, she believes People &
Stories has profoundly transfigured how
she views the world.
“This was a life-changing experience for
me,” she said. “I just don’t see the walls
anymore between people who are on the
inside and on the outside.”
“There’s always room
for a story that can
transport people to
another place.”
--J.K. Rowling
Word of Mouth
Stories coax out
“inner readers”
at Interim House
“Story is yearning
meeting an obstacle.”
--Robert Olen Butler
Thanks to our funders
The Bunbury Company
Church & Dwight
City of Trenton
The Community Foundation of
New Jersey
The Edward T. Cone Foundation
F.I.S.H. Foundation
FNP Cares, Inc.
The Green Foundation
J. Seward Johnson Sr. 1963
Charitable Trust
Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Jewish Community Foundation of
MetroWest New Jersey
Lawrence Township Community
Foundation
Leon Levy Foundation
by Anndee Hochman
All Simone Ward knew was that
someone was going to tell a story. Maybe it
would be like those times her mother used
to read to her: Goldilocks, The Three Little
Pigs, and her favorite by Dr. Seuss, Green
Eggs and Ham.
But when Simone, 39, walked into the
living room of Interim House that
afternoon, what she heard was “The
Shawl,” a complex tale of intergenerational
trauma and redemption by Louise Erdrich.
She was hooked. “It was like I really was
there. It was so interesting to me: the lady,
the baby, her husband, and she was
cheating on her husband. She left home and
left the son behind and threw the daughter
over the carriage.”
In the story, that abandoned boy grows
up to be an abusive, alcoholic father of
three; when his own son challenges him
physically, the father reveals his childhood
trauma, and both characters are changed by
the telling.
“The father explained to [his son] some
things he’d been through. That was very
interesting. You never know what a
person’s gone through,” Simone said.
Across the room, Alison Cook, 35, felt
“The Shawl” strike familiar tones. “I found
that story really deep. There were so many
different ways I could relate to the people
in it. Not just the alcoholism, but the family
issues, the sacrificing, the daughter who—I
think—sacrificed herself.”
At Interim House, an inpatient program
in Philadelphia for women in recovery
from substance abuse, Simone and Alison
are former addicts; Alison served time in
prison. But in People & Stories, for ninety
minutes a week, their inner readers
emerged.
“I liked school; I really liked the
teachers,” Simone recalled. “I used to like
to participate a lot when the teacher said,
‘Who wants to read this paragraph?’ Now I
like to read stories inside of magazines—
Redbook or People. And I read the Bible
every night.”
6
Alison, 35, struggled with reading as a
child. “They put me in special classes,” she
said. “I hated reading out loud in class. I
used to stumble over my words. The first
book I got all the way through, when I was
in fifth grade, was A Thousand Ways to
Sink a Sub.”
She went to college—two years at
Kutztown for art education—but recoiled at
some professors’ styles. “They had their
own way of how they saw the story or the
novel. They didn’t take other people’s
perspectives. Stories, just like artwork, can
be interpreted in so many different ways.”
Prison changed Alison’s reading habits.
“I had so much time,” she said. “Instead of
laying around being depressed, I started
reading romance novels. That’s all they
had. The stories were all the same, but I
just kept reading and got better and better. I
love books that make me say, ‘Oh, that’s
deep.’ I like to think and expand my
horizons.”
Simone and Alison carried their own
lives—struggles, sorrows, glints of hope—
into that Interim House living room. Both
loved how the discussions allowed those
stories to emerge. “Any group like that, if
people are comfortable, they share things
about themselves that you wouldn’t
normally know.”
“The Home-Coming,” by Milly Jafta,
coaxed out some of those revelations. The
brief tale of a mother who returns to her
village after a forty-year absence made
Alison recall being raised by her sister
instead of her mother, about the father who
left when she was two and resurfaced in her
life when she was 13. “My father, the
stranger,” she said, echoing Jafta’s phrase.
“I’m not really close to my family. I
separated myself from them.”
For Simone, it was a different part of the
story that struck home. Weeks afterward,
she remembered the final scene, when the
mother, accompanied by her grown
daughter, walks toward the waiting
villagers. The daughter stuns her by asking
if she is walking too fast; from that gesture
of kindness, the mother understands that
she has truly arrived.
“Her daughter was walking fast and said
that she would come be by [her mother’s]
side and take her time to get home,”
Simone said. “She was real happy when
she got there.”
7
Stories: bread
that nourishes
readers’ souls
Talking with Mimi Mead-Hagen
What impressed Mimi Mead-Hagen was
that People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos
wasn’t about food or shelter.
She first learned of the organization from
a newspaper article. People & Stories had
just received a large grant from the
National Endowment for the Humanities,
and Mead-Hagen took note: a small nonprofit had managed to garner major funding
from a federal agency. “I remember
thinking, ‘How did they do that?’”
Later, she met several board members
and gleaned more about the People &
Stories mission and method. “Many
organizations promise to meet urgent
human needs for food, shelter or early
childhood education,” she says, “but
People & Stories just came at it from a
totally different angle and reached the soul
of people.”
Mead-Hagen visited a session at Bo
Robinson Education and Treatment Center,
led by P & S executive director Patricia
Andres. There, she noted how the
technique of asking open-ended questions
worked to draw out listeners and gently
nudge them to participate.
“I remember there was one gentleman
who said he’d never had stories read to
him, growing up. Now he realizes the value
of reading stories and said he’s going to
read to every child he can.”
What’s more, Mead-Hagen glimpsed
how literature could become a path toward
change. “As much as you can give people
food and a home, you’re not going to
change their lives until you actually engage
them through their heart and soul. Through
these readings, people see others in
conflict. As they read and discuss the
different options, they may think: I
probably had options, too.
“That’s when the realization hits: Wow,
there are different opportunities than I ever
realized! It may seem unlikely, but it really
works. It’s bone-chilling and exciting. It’s
fun to sit in on these readings and see how
people get engaged and interested.”
Word of Mouth
As a young girl, Mead-Hagen devoured
Nancy Drew mysteries late at night. As a
teen, though, she gravitated toward sports,
science and math. “I’ve gotten back to
reading more, which has been fun,” she
says. “I just finished The Queen of Water; I
just happened to pick it up.”
While raising two sons, Mead-Hagen also
worked in development and missionbuilding as Director of Advancement for
Princeton Junior School; she was proud to
garner 100 percent participation from
parents in the school’s fundraising efforts.
“It may seem unlikely,
but [P&S] really
works. It’s bonechilling and exciting.
It’s fun to sit in on
these readings and
see how people get
engaged and
interested.”
Later, she worked with Isles, a Trenton
non-profit that helps people achieve selfreliance through job training, GED
programs, entrepreneurship and urban
environmental projects. She consulted with
the Adult School for its 75th anniversary
celebration—that’s when she met People &
Stories board members Claire Jacobus and
Anne Seltzer—and joined the P & S board
last fall.
Mead-Hagen is frank about the fiscal
challenges facing People & Stories, as well
as other non-profits, in these postrecessionary years. “These are hard times,
and a lot of people are looking to fund
organizations that are providing the basics.
What P&S does is different and may have a
greater value than [people] think.
“One thing the board is looking for is to
increase individual giving. That’s
something I’m very familiar with.” She
looks forward to spreading the word about
what People & Stories can accomplish. “I
think this organization has a wonderful
story to tell.”
____________________
“The stories we tell
literally make the world.
If you want to change
the world, you need to
change your story. This
truth applies both to
individuals and
institutions.”
--Michael Margolis
The Milken Family Foundation
National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the
Humanities
New Jersey Council for the
Humanities
New Jersey Office of Faith Based
Initiatives
New Jersey State Council on the
Arts
NRG Energy, Inc.
The Patricia Kind Family
Foundation
PNC Bank Fund at PACF
Princeton Area Community
Foundation
Pryor and Arlene Neuber
Charitable Trust at PNC
Rita Allen Foundation
The Unitarian Universalist
Congregation of Princeton
Individual donors
140 Eas
er SStt.
Eastt Hanov
Hanover
Tren
entton, NJ 08608
On the Bookshelf…
140 Eas
er SStt.
Eastt Hanov
Hanover
Tren
entton, NJ 08608
Phon
e:
Phone:
609-393-3230
it
e:
Webs
Websit
ite:
eopl
ean
dS
www.P
ies
.org
www.Peopl
eoplean
eandS
dSttor
ories
ies.org
Why Read? by Mark Edmundson. New York:
Bloomsbury, 2004.
by Patricia Andres
Part literary criticism, part reflection on
years of teaching college English, Mark
Edmundson’s Why Read? is ultimately a
celebration of the benefits of reading
literature. Resisting the rarified air of theory,
Edmundson immerses his students in the
larger questions of how reading literature
changes and enlarges their lives.
For example, Edmundson writes,
“Immersing herself in Proust, the reader may
encounter aspects of herself that, while they
have perhaps been in existence for a long
time, have remained unnamed, undescribed,
and therefore in a certain sense unknown.
One might say that the reader learns the
language of herself; or that she is humanly
enhanced, enlarging the previously
constricting circle that made up the border of
what she’s been…that her
consciousness has been expanded.”
But, in addition to recognizing unnamed
aspects of the self, Edmundson argues that
the humanities tap into that which is highest
and best within us, and that humanistic
study poses questions that potentially
transform not only the self, but the world:
“Who am I? What might I become? What is
this world in which I find myself? How
might it be changed for the better?”
Immersion in Shakespeare, Wordsworth,
Dostoyevsky, Sophocles—this, according to
Edmundson, is the antidote to all that’s
inadequate in our cultural construction and
conditioning. So, “why read?” Edmundson’s
answer: to find “other, better ways to
apprehend the world….Imagine a nation or
world, where people have fuller selfknowledge, fuller self-determination …not
just in the material sphere, but in the circles
of the mind and heart.”