Art Above Everything: Stories that Heal — Stephanie Elzondo Griest
About Stephanie Elzondo Griest
Stephanie Elzondo Griest is a professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of six books and her latest book is Art Above Everything: One Woman’s Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life. Stephanie is well acquainted with the healing powers of storytelling and of water. She has traveled the globe speaking with many creative people. Her curiosity and energy has taken her to 50 countries and 49 states collecting material for her stories.
Writing Across Borders: Stephanie Elizondo Griest on Language, Place, and the Power of Story
Stephanie talks about her family and how her father who was in the US Navy band told her stories about his travels all over the world and having her grandmother as a penpal provided a foundation for writing and storytelling. She speaks four languages: Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and English. Stephanie believes that in writing stories she has to really get to know a person. She wants to witness the seasons of the year, the celebrations, and how the community marks the passage of time over the course of the year. Learning the language, learning the landscape, and doing really deep dives help her get the shape of a person. Her interviews.can extend beyond hours, even weeks, sometimes months and even the course of a year. She’s written many articles and six books as well as teaching. She feels it's not enough to write but also to empower people to tell their own story, which is why she’s devoted to teaching. She’s taught for the past 13 years at university and for the past 25 years at community centers, literary conferences, and festivals all around the world.
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00:00:05 Pam Ferris-Olson Today on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast on womenmindthewater.com, I'm speaking with Stephanie Elzondo Griest, a professor of Creative Nonfiction, and the author of six books. Her latest book is Art Above Everything: One Woman’s Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life.
Stephanie Elzondo Griest is the latest guest on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast on womenmindthewater.com. The podcast engages artists in conversation about their work and explores their connection with the water. Through their stories, Wo(men) Mind the Water hopes to inspire and encourage action to protect water and all the creatures that depend on it.
00:00:55 Pam Ferris-Olson I am pleased to welcome Stephanie Elzondo Griest on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast. Stephanie is well acquainted with the healing powers of storytelling and of water. She has traveled the globe speaking with many creative people. For example, Stephanie connected with a woman in New Zealand who in a moment of life-threatening conflict was soothed by the sound of water. This woman was inspired to create musical performances that celebrate life and raise the spirits of others. In this way that woman assisted others to overcome dark forces.
00:01:34 Pam Ferris-Olson Welcome Stephanie. Your curiosity and energy has taken you to 50 countries and 49 states collecting material for your stories. Your own story began in Corpus Christi, situated along the Gulf Coast of Texas. The bays and channels there are polluted by many miles of petrochemicals and refineries. You’ve documented the relationship between pollution and cancer, as well as your personal story of survivorship. What is it about storytelling that has driven you to collect and tell these stories?
00:02:12 Stephanie Elzondo Griest Well first, I just want to say thank you so much for having me on the show. It's really an honor to be here with you today. Thank you for that. Storytelling is just my lifeblood. I became enchanted by stories as child. I was so lucky to have a father who had himself traveled deeply in the world. He was a drummer for the US Navy Band and he was stationed on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific for over a decade and performed every night.
00:02:47 Stephanie Elzondo Griest And when I was little, he used to take the globe. I had a globe on my on my shelf that I loved looking at at night. He would take it down and he would spin it and put his thumb on it and wherever it stopped he could tell me a story no matter where in the world it stopped including out in the middle of the ocean. He could tell me a story about that ocean because he’d already been there. So just from such an early age I have always known that I too wanted to travel the world and be a collector and a gatherer of stories. And so that was my driving mission as a child. I found my voice through letters. I had a grandmother I loved very much, who lived far away, and we began a penpalship that lasted for a decade until her death.
00:03:39 Stephanie Elzondo Griest And very soon after that, I went to college studied journalism, and then I was just off to the races. And I've been running ever since.
00:03:47 Pam Ferris-Olson Lovely.So do you believe that everyone has the right to tell another person's story? What parameters do you use to determine if you are the right person to tell someone's story?
00:04:00 Stephanie Elzondo Griest Yeah, that's a question I take very seriously. I have a set of rules that I've implemented for myself. That I've really tried very hard to uphold and the first is: I really study the languages, the people that I write about. So over the years that has entailed me studying Russian. That was actually one of my majors in college. I've studied Mandarin Chinese and I have been studying Spanish for about 30 years, quite intensely.
So those are the languages that I've used in my own journalism. So I believe that living, really having an embodiment of the language, is profoundly important. I also believe it's really deeply important to spend long quality time with the people that you write about. I have spent a year in the places that I've written about. So a year in Moscow, a year in Beijing. I spent a year living in Mexico. And I also spent years living and working on the Texas Mexico border, which of course is where I'm from. As well as the New York and Canadian border, because one of my books is partially based on the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne.
00:05:15 Stephanie Elzondo Griest So I really believe in witnessing the seasons of the year, witnessing the celebrations, witnessing how the community marks the passage of time over the course of the year. So which is why I've kind of settled on a year. So learning the language, learning the landscape, and then doing really deep dives in my interviews. My interviews tend to go on for not only hours, but days, but weeks, but months. I have some people that I've interviewed over the course of years for the books that I write.
00:05:47 Stephanie Elzondo Griest And then one of the final components of that is, that after I write the piece I share it with the people that I'm writing about and I really honor the changes that they wish to make. So then it becomes more of a collaborative experience. And often I find that the real interview begins, then when they receive what I have written, how they see how I have synthesized everything, and they realize, “Oh, this is where she's taking the story. I should tell her this story. I should tell her that story.” So sometimes really, very rich interviews transpire from the first draft of what it is I'm writing.
00:06:27 Stephanie Elzondo Griest And then I suppose the last step of this idea of, you know, really returning agency to people, telling their story, is teaching.
00:06:58 Pam Ferris-Olson I gotta say Stephanie, from all that you told me, your devotion to telling the story and learning the culture and the language, you must be 1000 years old and you don't look it.
00:07:11 Stephanie Elzondo Griest I am 51 for the record.
00:07:14 Pam Ferris-Olson Well, wonderful. Not wonderful that you're, I mean, we all want to be younger but I love what you're doing. I love the idea of giving people agency because that's what it's about. People are so empowered by somebody being interested in their story. So why have you chosen to write stories from a woman's perspective?
00:07:39 Stephanie Elzondo Griest Well, I am a self-identified woman. So it is the perspective that I feel I have some insight into. I was raised by a powerhouse woman, my amazing mom and I also feel so there's that, there's that sort of personal lineage. I also feel that we're in a time of crisis. I think a world crisis. I feel that with the rise of extremism around the world, women have really seen their own rights curtailed throughout the planet. And so I really believe in lifting, uplifting these marginalized voices. And women are very much marginalized in so many countries around the world.
00:08:33 Pam Ferris-Olson So true. So when you set out to write, how do you go about selecting a theme?
00:08:40 Stephanie Elzondo Griest There is something. One aspect of being a writer that I really love and appreciate profoundly, is how when you're truly, truly open stories find you. And you get signs from the universe that indicate you're heading in the right direction. There have literally been moments, I refer to them as angel screamers, you know. And it's like in when you suddenly hear the choir angels going [sings], you know, “listen up because you have found your story.” So those sorts of things have happened to me throughout my life, you know, a moment when I am open, ready to receive. And the universe just puts this extraordinary image in my mind that I cannot shake. And I know I must pursue it in some way. Sometimes it happens as an image like a camera image. Sometimes it happens, as you know, meeting a person who will say this certain thing that just reorients my brain. But I've just really learned to trust my instincts on this by this point.
00:09:48 Pam Ferris-Olson So how do you locate the women whose stories you tell?
00:09:51 Stephanie Elzondo Griest I would say that every woman came to me a different way. A few actually literally arrived almost at my doorstep. I am a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. And so a couple of these women came as guests at the university and I was blown away by them. And, you know, exchanged information and eventually flew out to their homeland so I could interview them on their own, in their midst of their own communities. And then other times, you know, once I was on a magazine assignment in Iceland. And so I thought, “Oh Iceland, let's see. There must be a woman with an amazing story out there.” And sure enough I found eight actually. Incredible women with powerful stories. So every single story came to me someplace different.
00:10:37 Pam Ferris-Olson So the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast focuses on stories about the interconnectedness of people and water. With that in mind, let's focus on two stories that you've written: one about the indigenous people who live at the Mexico-Texas border, and another that focuses on the New York Canadian border. So do these people have a similar relationship with water?
00:11:02 Stephanie Elzondo Griest That is a wonderful question. They do in this sense that the river has become the natural border between nations. And so in South Texas we have the Rio Grande, which was in 1848 was the Treaty of Guadalupe Gallego that became the border between Texas and Mexico, Rio Grande. And at the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne they are engulfed by the Saint Lawrence River and that is in some parts also the natural border between the United States and Canada. Now the Mohawk did not acknowledge the border except as something that adds a bureaucratic nightmare into their everyday life. But they are their own independent, sovereign nation and they have beautiful, sacred stories of the water stream. And the Mohawk were traditionally fisher people. And they also were traditionally trappers. And so they saw this water system as absolutely integral to their way of life.
00:12:17 Stephanie Elzondo Griest Very tragically, in the 1950s when the Saint Lawrence River was dammed, that first of all flooded all of the beaver huts. It also flooded some of the housing at Akwesasne. Once the area was dammed and electricity was abundant, some multinational corporations came in including Alcoa, Reynolds and GM. And those three companies for a period of 20 to 30 years began dumping their PCB laden waste into the water streams not only in the Saint Lawrence River but also in the Grass River. And so that made it not possible to fish anymore. Fishermen began noticing when they were bringing up fish. It was, you know, fish sometimes had two heads. They had tumors. It was no longer safe to eat. And so to this day, pregnant women are advised not to eat anything from the Saint Lawrence River. Children are advised not to eat fish from the Saint Lawrence River. So that is taking away the, you know, the fish and the fur that had sustained the Mohawk since time immeasurable. So absolutely devastating.
00:13:50 Stephanie Elzondo Griest The Rio Grande, on the other hand, has also become a river of death in a different way. It has become the border that one must cross to go from one nation to the next. And in an earlier time, I think, that it was sort of seen as like a baptism, literally immersing yourself in a water and, you know, moving from one world into the next. Now, however, especially in Texas the Governor has literally put razor wire in the actual water of the Rio Grande. They’re like razor coils. There's a floating border wall in some of the water in the Rio Grande. People die, drown, in the Rio Grande every year making their attempts to cross. It is, utterly devastating. What is, what has been happening? So the politicization of the waterway in South Texas has made it a hard river indeed, even though it's also very much a beautiful. I mean, aesthetically it's a beautiful place but it has taken on this darker meaning for migrants as well as people who care and love and respect migrants and all they bring to this country.
00:15:15 Pam Ferris-Olson So in your latest book, Art above Everything: one woman's global exploration of the joys and torments of a created life how did you learn about the woman that you interviewed? And why did you want to tell her story?
00:15:31 Stephanie Elzondo Griest OK. Yes. So I'm assuming we're talking about Mihirangi, yes? The Māori powerhouse singer. Yes. So I really wanted to have this as global a look as possible. So I wanted all of the continents except for Antarctica. I wanted all the islands, all the continents represented in this book. I wanted all the major languages represented. I wanted all the major religions represented, and I also wanted all of the major art fields represented.
So that meant a very ambitious book and without question, I wanted an indigenous voice in this book. More than anyone I wanted an indigenous representation. And while I was writing my last book All the Agents and Saints based in the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne. The Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne is a very empowered nation and they are a people that has really built their life on resistance. And so in doing my extensive reading about the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne, I kept seeing and reading references to the Māori. Māori being kind of like considered, you know, an indigenous community that is really, really become deeply empowered and really lives in their power. And so I was a fan from afar of how they have done this. And I knew that I wanted to find a Māori. A Māori woman. So then I just got on, you know, Google and just started typing, you know, different word combinations and very quickly Mihirangi came up. Mihirangi is Māori.
00:17:09 Stephanie Elzondo Griest She is an incredible musician who was actually born into a lineage of musicians. Her mother was a singer in the style of Chaka Khan and her father was a drummer. And when I learned that that really spoke to me because my mother loves Chaka Khan and my father is also a drummer. And actually when I reached out to Mihirangi, I had just lost my father and she had also lost her father. And when we made that connection on Skype, I was like, “OK, I'm sold. I'm interviewing you.” And Mihirangi really blew me away; both with the struggles that she has endured in her life and also how unbelievably hard she works for her art.
00:17:51 Pam Ferris-Olson So Stephanie, if I was to tell your story where would that story begin and what activity should I focus on to reflect on who you are?
00:18:02 Stephanie Elzondo Griest I do think that a really significant part of my personal story is that I am from Nahuatl. And what is Nahuatl? Nahuatl is an Aztec word meaning “the land in between.” So I'm biracial. I am bi-ethnic. I'm bicultural and bilingual. I live in this space in between nations and people and languages and landscapes and ancestry. And so it is difficult to reside in that space. I feel that all the work I've been doing in my entire creative life has been an attempt to fuse those sides of me together.
00:18:46 Pam Ferris-Olson Well, I think you do a beautiful job of it. I have to say that typically I ask guests to suggest how others can make a difference but I want to ask you, for those people who believe that they don't have any power to make a difference, that they don't have the energy and commitment that you have, that their voice isn't strong enough to be heard, what would you say to them?
00:19:14 Stephanie Elzondo Griest Thank you so much for that. Yes. You know, indeed I feel sometimes like, you know, 1000 marbles are just cascading over our heads. You know, every moment of the day, all the problems of the world and it's very intense. I think marble is an apt metaphor because, you know, hits, it bounces and it rolls. And also if we were to attempt to chase all of them, we would trip and fall and not succeed in catching a single one of them. So I think at this time it's really important to pick your marble. What marble do you want to focus on? And don't let that one go. And then as you chase that marble, you know, maybe your marble is your equivalent of the Grass River. Right? Is there one river water stream in your community that is toxic? Is there one issue in your community that you feel you have the energy and you have the commitment to pursuing? And then, think. First of all, identify the marble and then think about what love can you bring to it? It can be any love. If you just love baking cookies, how can you bake cookies in a way that's going to benefit that river? How can you knit in a way that's going to benefit that river? How can you draw in a way that's going to benefit that river? My case, it's telling stories. How can I tell stories in a way that's going to benefit that river?
That's how we do it, my friends. If all of us were to just pick one marble and give it everything we have to the love we have for that marble, we could actually start to turn this ship around.
00:20:58 Pam Ferris-Olson That is so well said. I really appreciate that. And I really appreciate the fact that you have been on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast. I highly recommend listeners take time to read something Stephanie has written. Her writing is engaging and inspiring. She has written, as she said, for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and many other publications. She is the author of five books and her sixth Art above Everything: One woman’s global exploration of the joys and torments of a creative life is due out this summer.
00:21:33 Pam Ferris-Olson Listeners should know that I’ve been speaking with Stephanie Elzondo Griest. She’s a professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Stephanie is a prolific writer who has traveled to 50 nations and almost every state, to engage in intimate conversations with female artists about their lives and their work.
00:22:00 Pam Ferris-Olson Stephanie is the latest guest on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast. The series can be viewed on womenmindthewater.com, Museum on Main Street, and YouTube. An audio-only version of this podcast and a transcript are available on womenmindthewater.com, on iTunes, and Spotify. Wo(men) Mind the Water is grateful to Jaine Rice for the use of her song Women of Water. All rights for the Wo(men) Mind the Water name and logo belong to Pam Ferris-Olson. This is Pam Ferris-Olson.
