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This is the individual and collective story of a group of Latinx women in New York City. Over the course of a year, twenty-four women participated in Story Circles, with three to seven participants in each, sharing their journeys to the United States: the trauma beforehand, the obstacles and brutality of migration, and the struggles, challenges, and opportunities they encountered in the United States. The women (cisgender, heterosexual, LGBTQ+) came from Latin America and the Caribbean; they are undocumented, most live in western Queens, and most have children.
We used a digital storytelling method to facilitate their creation of recordings and videos that reflect the stories of themselves that they wish to tell and to use the power of storytelling to empower them in their own lives.
The process of storytelling was also a process of healing. In the conversations, we witnessed a cross-pollination of knowledge between participants and between the project members and participants, as well as an understanding of their personal lives in the larger social and political arena, giving them a sense of self-awareness, self-esteem, and self-confidence. The voices in the video speak from a position of strength and leadership. They make visible the ties of the networks that help them move forward and give them the extraordinary motivation to build on these ties, to give back to the community and to others.