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My Turn by Dmae Lo Roberts

From The Asian Reporter, V35, #8 (October 6, 2025), page 6.

The power of personal stories

Since July, I’ve been holding storytelling events through MediaRites, a nonprofit I run. I conceived of the idea of "The –Ism Storytellers Project" last winter. I wanted to find a way to bridge the ever-widening divides between people and come together in small groups to hear personal stories in shared humanity.

Much of my early career as a radio producer and a playwright was built on telling my own personal story. Mei Mei, A Daughter’s Song was a deeply honest radio docu-play exploring the relationship with my mom as we journeyed to Taiwan together to unearth her World War II traumatic childhood as a young girl sold into servitude. While it was painful, it helped me understand why we were such different people. I turned the docu-play into a stage play and much later into a film, which can be viewed online at <www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wzoSplJJ54>.

I truly believe when someone tells you their personal story, it is a gift to both the listener and storyteller. The idea was simple. I chose people I knew to curate and host four storytellers from specific communities to tell a 10-minute story to an audience of less than 50 people. The theme was "Courage, Grace, and Grit." The storytellers were artists and performers as well as community members.

I envisioned this as a statewide project and started in Astoria, Oregon. The host was multimedia writer Susan Banyas, a former Portlander now living in Astoria. She selected people she knew in the community: a forester, a farming couple, a Vietnamese refugee who is a visual artist, and the publisher of a local arts magazine. It was an appreciative crowd that included the city’s mayor.

Three Portland events followed and featured affinity groups. I curated a Mixed Race Storytellers one, writer Sandra de Helen curated Elder Queers to tell stories, and actress Shareen Jacobs curated and hosted Black Femme storytellers. These were the terms the hosts wanted to use. The audiences ranged from 15 to 50 people. After each person told their stories, the audience lingered for at least a half-hour to talk with them and each other.

The stories were heartfelt and inspiring. At the Elder Queers event, visual artist Horatio Hung-Yan Law spoke of discovering his creativity during the AIDS crisis. "For gay men coming out during that time, liberation came with a terrible price amid the joy of discovering one’s gay identity … It was also tainted with uncertainty and the prospect of horrible sufferings and death … It dawned on me that if I were at all serious about this art thing, I better start doing something about it … [so] I realized I need to listen to my heart … It is said that art is about living."

Veteran poet speaker Kathleen Saadat told a story at the Black Femme and the Elder Queers events about the courage it took to climb up a rock wall. "The grace, the goodwill, the kindness, the empathy, the caring — all of which helped me up the rock. They pushed me up the rock; they pulled me up the rock. It was grace. Not what you say before dinner, but it was that feeling of having a group of people that cared about you, wanting you to succeed."

At the Mixed Race Storytellers event, Margaret Lieder, a nonprofit worker, announced that day would have been her mom’s 96th birthday and told a story about her surviving Hiroshima. "When the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, my mom was home. She wasn’t in the city, but she was the oldest of the children at home. She would’ve just turned 16, and the family sent her into town to find a relative. They didn’t know what that terrible bomb was. So she went into the city and she searched and she saw hell."

Each event has made me a little teary because they succeed in getting people to look at each other as human beings. It provides a personal connection that does not happen in other performance settings. The events held so far were recorded and filmed and can be viewed on the MediaRites’ YouTube channel.

Two more events are planned — one in Eugene with the unhoused community hosted and curated by Eliza Roaring Springs, a longtime theater friend, and another in The Dalles this fall with Larry Toda, a MediaRites’ board member who has a family history there.

At the conclusion of the –Ism Storytellers events, a podcast with these amazing personal stories will be created. More events will take place next spring with a new theme — "A Sense of Belonging" — which readers are invited to attend. To learn more, or if you’re interested in hosting a storytelling event, e-mail <mediaritespro@gmail.com> or visit <www.mediarites.org>.