Around 40 people gathered at The Bull Thursday night for Self Narrate’s first time featuring stories in Spanish during its regular meetup.
The event focused on personal stories about finding community throughout life. Self Narrate, a local nonprofit founded in 2013, aims to teach storytelling skills and create safe spaces for self-expression. During regular events at The Bull, people gather to “storytell” about varying topics.
For this event, Self Narrate partnered with the Latina Women’s League to feature stories in Spanish for the first time. In doing so, the group hoped to reach more of the immigrant community in Gainesville.
Veronik Rodrigues, the community engagement coordinator for the Latina Women’s League, helped come up with the idea for the event. About two years ago, Rodrigues came to a Self Narrate storytelling event with her husband and listened to people share their stories, all in English.
Now in her new role, she thought the league should do a storytelling event with Self Narrate, so people representing the Latin community in Gainesville could share their life stories.
Rodrigues reached out to Self Narrate and said the group was excited about the idea and collaborating. She made sure the event was happening during UF Gator Salsa’s event to give the club more visibility.
“Every story that you share is just one step closer to build connection, to build community, to learning about someone's life, to learn about someone's past, and that changes people's life,” Rodrigues said.
On Thursday, Rodrigues also shared her own story about moving to New York from Brazil when she was 18, then coming to Florida and finally to Gainesville in 2020. She hopes they can host multi-language events in the future, so people from all cultures and backgrounds can tell their stories in their preferred language, she said.
Karolina Banda, a member of Latina Women’s League from Cartagena, Colombia, immigrated to the U.S. 20 years ago. She spontaneously stood up and shared her immigration and community story with people at The Bull.
Banda said she felt motivated to come to the event knowing it was for sharing stories about finding community, because it's an important topic to talk about “during hard times like these,” she said.
Banda didn't go to the event thinking she was going to speak, but as she listened to others share their stories, she felt inspired. Even though she didn't have a speech prepared, she tried to recollect memories from her life where community was important and present for her.
She shared a memory from when she bought her first car after immigrating. Her coworkers celebrated the accomplishment in that moment with her, she said. She also talked about how motherhood connected her with other women going through the same experience and found community there.
“We have to keep doing events like these,” Banda said. “It’d be nice to have more spaces like these to connect more [with the community], and I think there are a lot of topics that can be shared that unite people.”
Alexandra Hernandez, a 22-year-old UF history and philosophy senior and president of UF Chispas, came to support the event because she’s interested in storytelling.
“I think we need to see our stories as a tool like advocacy, because it really helps us connect people with our issues and causes,” Hernandez said.
Chispas is a UF club that focuses on advocating for the immigrant community. It holds service events, advocates for immigrants and has educational sessions about issues that affect immigrants while building an inclusive community around campus and the city.
Sara Flowers, 19-year-old UF sociology major, came with Chispas to support and learn more about the immigrant community in Gainesville.
“These stories give us a lot of insight into the personal experiences they've gone through,” Flowers said.
Contact Ornella Moreno at omoreno@alligator.org. Follow her on X @ornellamorenom.
Ornella Moreno is a senior journalism student with a concentration in psychology in her first semester at The Alligator. She covers El Caiman Ave. Previously, she worked as a radio anchor for WUFT Noticias. In her free time, Ornella enjoys doing yoga, reading and going to the movies.
