The newly formed Xrossing Borders Collaborative at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies hosted a creative story celebration earlier this month at UCLA.
“This event took inspiration from the new collaboratives that are being formed in the Department of Education, including the Xrossing Borders Collaborative,” said Marjorie Elaine, a professor in the School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. “Our team brainstormed and came up with this idea to create a story festival. We were inspired by some colleagues in Italy that had done an essay contest on immigrant child language brokering, and we decided to expand it a little to explore a broader notion of border crossing, including cultural and linguistic aspects.
“In this time when we are erecting walls and are more polarized than ever, I think it’s more important than ever to see the beauty and the power of what is learned from crossing borders, and what possibilities it opens up for us rather than to stay safely inside our walls.”
The story festival generated 45 creative submissions from participants in the United States, Germany and Italy in multiple formats such as written stories, art and video, and languages, including Chinese, English, German Italian, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. Several stories were displayed and presented by the participants, and plans are in the works for displaying the stories and artworks in a digital museum.
“We hosted this story celebration to share creative stories from young language brokers to understand what they think about language. What are their experiences, what are their feelings, what do they learn and what do they want to learn about language brokering,” said Jiaao Liu, a graduate student in the UCLA Department of Education, who helped to organize the festival. “We were gathering stories about their personal thoughts and experiences.”
The stories of one group of participants shared their reflections on “Rez Dogs,” a show that is UCLA’s “Common Experience” this year, and around which Professor Elaine organized a Fiat Lux class. Eight of the participants in the story celebration were participants in the Fiat Lux. “Rez Dogs” follows the lives of four young people living on a reservation in Oklahoma as they navigate adolescence and seek new possibilities, and students discussed the film in relation to the larger theme of border crossing (including the borders that cross Native people) and used it for inspiration for their own stories.
UCLA student Yuri Vasquez submitted a collection of video clips portraying her own experience working alongside her mom and aunts in a family business at an early age, learning how to navigate the world of adulthood.
“Crossing borders is not just a physical act. It can also be something emotional and spiritual for every individual,” said Vasquez. “My video piece represents me crossing the border of adolescence into adulthood at an accelerated pace. Coming from a family of immigrants, you’re almost pushed to accelerate your growth to help your own family and to also navigate the world as also a first-generation student.
“’Rez Dogs’ showed me that growth is not linear, it is turbulent and the experience of crossing borders is always present,” said Vasquez. “Choosing to find significance in these small, present moments, we seek resonance and amidst the complexity, to find the resilience to cross our borders with mindfulness. We do this little by little, and ‘Rez Dogs’ shows that each step is important.”
Other participants submitted stories of crossing borders of language, race, culture and other topics relevant to their lives.
“While some borders we choose and others are forced upon us, every one of us carries a story shaped by movement, across languages, across cultures, across invisible lines, that others say, do not cross,” said Jason Nunzio Dorio, associate director of undergraduate programs for community engagement in the UCLA Department of Education, who helped to organize and spoke at the festival.
“The long arc of history shows that people have always found ways to transcend borders. Through creativity, through courage, through disruption, and through the simple, powerful, and everyday work of fostering community, honoring dignity and showing up for one another,” said Dorio. “We remember that communities survive and thrive because people dare to imagine a world bigger than the borders around them. Because when we cross, transcend, and disrupt borders, especially those driven and drawn by fear, we step into a history much larger than this moment.”
The story celebration was hosted by the Xrossing Cross Borders collaborative with support from the UCLA Global Advisors Council. Content from the story celebration will be available as part of a digital museum currently under development. Planning for a new story celebration for next year is underway.