I was excited to log on to Zoom for my coaching session with Felipe, a young man from Colombia preparing for a storytelling event in his high school featuring immigrant voices. As I started to inquire about his story, he interrupted me to ask if he could say a few words first.
Felipe shared that after my colleague mentioned that I was also from Colombia, he googled me, read articles I had written, and listened to my stories online.
“Lorena, I want to tell stories that change stereotypes of Colombia too,” he said.
I was stunned. In one sentence, Felipe unknowingly validated why I write and tell stories.
Like Felipe, my English was limited when I first moved to the U.S. Over the years, I became proficient. However, my expansive vocabulary also made me more aware of how people and the media portray our beloved home country.
Despite routinely being rated as one of the happiest countries by Gallop, Colombia is too often portrayed as a country riddled with violence, drug cartels, and poverty. Although I experienced violence in our neighborhood as a child, the drug war was never the country’s only story.
It saddened me that Felipe heard echoes of the same stereotypes in his classroom twenty years later, but I told him this is why we need more people like him to share their experiences
A few weeks after Felipe’s performance, we received a call from a woman at the office. She told us that her nephew had encouraged her to reach out and start telling her stories, too.
I smiled. It was Felipe’s aunt.
World of Stories performers from Falmouth, MA (Felipe in the back row)
By Lorena Hernandez Leonard