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Volume 8, Number 2 - Spring 2010
P
& S Founder Sarah Hirschman Publishes Book
She began with one group—Puerto Rican women in a Cambridge, Massachusetts housing project—one story and a yen to connect with others in the shared realm of literature. Today, the literature-to-life program operates in more than half a dozen states, drawing readers of all kinds—people in basic-education programs, women and men in prison, at-risk youth, senior citizens, bilingual immigrants—into lively and profound discussion of short stories.
More than three decades after launching People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos in that Cambridge housing project, founder Sarah Hirschman has put down her own story in words; her book, People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos: Who Owns Literature? Communities Find Their Voice Through Short Stories (iUniverse, $13.95), outlines the program’s genesis, explains its method and shares “poetic moments” from groups Hirschman led over the years.
People & Stories began with a personal passion; soon, the responses of her first readers showed her the potency of group discussion. “I saw how surprised people were by what some of the others said. I realized that there’s a kind of discovery that happens that is extraordinary.”
Those early groups also proved to Hirschman that her hunch was correct: literature could be relevant and accessible to those beyond the university’s walls. Once, a man sweeping the floor in a Trenton church overheard Hirschman’s discussion of a story by the Peruvian writer José María Arguedas and commented afterward that “when God wanted to send a message to the people, he sent the arco iris (rainbow).”
“That really hit me, that a person who did not know how to read or write, upon hearing that quite complex story, would come up with something so beautiful.”
Another time, in a desperately poor Argentina barrio, Hirschman read a story about actors; one woman said she wished a ballet dancer could perform in her town.
“It sparked this woman, the idea of actors and the theater, and all of a sudden she had this desire to have something like that in this place that had no sewers, no water. These moments really keep you going, no matter how difficult things are.”
There were challenges along the way, as People & Stories evolved from a one-woman volunteer operation to a national program with paid staff and government grants. But the essential concepts of People & Stories remained steady.
Hirschman still believes that trust—in people, in literature—is the program’s essence. Coordinators must have faith that “a fabulous literary text has so many secrets within it, all you have to do is to find a way where you bring people…to have a look at it and see what happens.
“The basic idea that I got from [Paulo] Freire,” the Brazilian scholar whose theories about education as empowerment impressed Hirschman and informed People & Stories, “is that while people may have nothing to draw on in an academic sense, they have lots to draw on because of their very rich, very complex life experience.”
Over time, she said, the shared experience of reading and discussing stories together can build not only a literary “treasury” that participants can draw on, but an evolving, surprising conversation in which people are free to try out ideas and change their minds.
Beyond the audience of People & Stories coordinators, site directors, funders and friends, Hirschman hopes the book will resonate for those who work with community groups or who teach people of any age in basic-education settings. She also hopes it will find audience among what she calls “literary people.
“Obviously, this is all about the power of literature. It shows literary people,” including writers, critics and academics, “that their works could be interesting to a very vast public. It gives another view about what literature can do.”
People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos: Who Owns Literature? (iUniverse, 2010). Available at www.iuniverse.com, www.amazon.com or your favorite store.