ANNIE KUSTER wants
you to PASS THE MIC
Podcast
A summary of the conversation is provided below.
The Why: A Passion for Empowering Others
Annie explained that she first took a course on Andean women with a professor who is Quechan, an indigenous community in the Andes of Peru. At 18, she went to work with the community and found that although she and they were the same age, their trajectories were different.
“Number One: A lot of these women saw themselves as mothers, which is very beautiful in some ways and very different than how I was trying to portray them as this young person with all these hopes, dreams, and goals,” Annie said. “Two, they had these really strong stories and wisdom from their experiences that they had never shared before, because nobody had thought to ask them.”
“You’d be surprised how powerful it is to simply ask somebody’s story. Validating that it is meaningful and it is purposeful.”
That summer sparked Annie’s interest in the ethical responsibility of storytelling.
“Ethical storytelling means asking ‘What does it mean to tell somebody else’s story?’ and ‘How can we really validate people’s experiences and pasts by asking their story?’”
Nayaraq Stories provides workshops and coordinates with gender initiatives in the Andes. The goal is to bridge the gap between the local women and communities being served and the outside NGOs, multilateral organizations, and well-meaning Westerners. The outside groups are encouraged to listen to these communities – especially those who have been silenced historically.
The How: Pedagogy of Empowerment
Annie believes a lot of this agency is from creating space for women to discover what they already know about themselves. Workshop attendants, she described, may have not had the time, energy, or tools to think about processing their experiences or sharing their own wisdom because they have focused on trauma or stress or day-to-day responsibilities.
The workshops create a space for empathetic listening, story sharing, and learning from each other. At the conclusion of the classes, Annie says, women realize they have been doing this thing their whole lives.
“You’d be surprised how powerful it is to simply ask somebody’s story. Validating that it is meaningful and it is purposeful,” she continued. “It sounds very simple, but it is very powerful.”
The What
Nayaraq Centers the Margins by Building Trust, Training the Trainers, and Widening the Scope of What Storytelling Includes
She lived in proximity to the communities getting to know them during the summer of 2013 and transitioning to work longer term.
More recently, Nayaraq Stories focuses on a train-the-trainer model to give community members agency to facilitate workshops. They have worked recently with She is the Universe and their global community circles. Trainers from the Dominican Republic and Brazil are now equipped with the skillset to go into their communities and share Nayaraq Stories’ pedagogy with their respective women’s community groups.
“We really want to take a backseat – to your point of centering the margins – and we call it ‘Passing the Mic’ giving the leverage and voice to those who have never had it before,” Annie said.
Nayaraq Contextualizes Storytelling Methodology and Approaches for Feminisms in Different Regions
To Annie, feminisms is about choice.
“It’s about giving women the opportunity to choose what type of woman they want to be and what type of feminism they want to embody,” Annie said.
Annie described that there was an intense Catholic, conservative culture. They also have a balance in the Andes that centers ‘machismo,’ boys, and men. Simultaneously, the indigenous she worked with worship Pachamama, or mother earth. There’s a deep respect for femininity in nature, in mountains, and in water.
Annie remembered seeing portraits of the Virgin Mary in Cusco, Peru that depicted Mary as a combination of mountains as her body and river as her hair.
“It was a gorgeous implication of femininity found in nature and in religion,” Annie said.
That being said, she caveated, this feminist respect did not always find its way into the households.
“There’s many cases of gender-based violence and sexual assault” Annie explained. “There’s not a ton of bodily autonomy. People are being taught about sex education after they have given birth. There’s a multitude of issues there.”
Nayaraq takes this context and builds a choose-your-own-adventure approach for each participant. Women who attend can participate as fully as they want to in the workshops or not at all. Storytelling can take many forms in written word, spoken word, artistic expression, photography and description.
“We want to dismantle the idea that the only way you can be a good storyteller is to be a good writer,” Annie said.
While the participation is voluntary, the results are nearly always universal participation. At a workshop in Peru, storytelling on a final evening included photos, pictures, personal anecdotes, and a choreographed dance.
The Future is Female: Excitement and Hopes for Nayaraq Stories and Global Feminisms
Annie said she is excited that global feminisms is, one, becoming more aware about people who traditionally existed in the margins and, two, is engaging men and boys.
“If men and boys are knocking it down from above, then we’re not going to get anywhere,” she said.
Annie continued by describing that centering the margins on a high level has led to the desired experience for Nayaraq Stories on the ground level. By recognizing, validating, and empowering historically marginalized women, Nayaraq is balancing competing power dynamics.
“I think that centering the margins is what makes me most excited about Nayaraq as well [as Global Feminisms],” she said. “We found a tool to get people who are historically marginalized to want to speak and found a way to get those who have possibly done the marginalizing to begin listening.”