COMMUNITY

Our work takes place throughout the community…in libraries, churches, arts centers, human service organizations, schools, universities and other sites. And ‘community’ defines the group writing circles that are central to Herstory. As each writer finds a way to recapture her memories so that others can walk in her shoes, she reaches the hearts of those who have helped her craft her story, and barriers that so often divide us begin to dissolve.

The needs and expectations of those who participate in Herstory are as personal and diverse as their own backgrounds and current situations. For instance, at our Hempstead site, almost all the women in the Unity Housecleaners' Cooperative come from Central and South America and earn a living cleaning houses, caring for children and the elderly, and working in factories, stables and supermarkets across Long Island. In our Patchogue bilingual workshop, mostly Ecuadorian women from the community come together with professors of Modern Languages, librarians and social justice workers.

One unusually gratifying example of Herstory community is found in the mutual support and affection that forms among HERSTORY INSIDE writers.  When they come together to bear witness to the deeper truths of their experiences through the writing, barriers of race, ethnicity and class begin to dissolve, and an entirely other depth of relationship is formed in the space of the Herstory circle.  We can find women who were members of rival gangs on the street, writing side by side.  Through their writing and sharing of their stories, we recognize that the women of HERSTORY INSIDE are a microcosm of the larger society of women, separated only by the green scrubs they must wear.