The Stories We Tell

by Monte McClain

There is a power unleashed in hearing and telling our stories to one another. It's a transformative power that we see shaping District 4 of Oakland through many diverse efforts. Susannah Eloyse Prinz wanted to explore this truth through an artistic project that was funded by a grant from the Oakland Cultural Arts Commission in 2002. She set out to collect the stories of diverse women of Oakland with the help of three Oakland High School students she met at Harbor House, a nonprofit in the San Antonio District, where they were participating in a graphic-design program.

Susannah worked with the students, training them to interview and photograph the 20 women whose stories were eventually woven into their portraits. In seeking to get a representative cross-section of the women of Oakland (from over 49 ethnicities), she wanted to empower the three teenage interview assistants she worked with to discover their own stories as well as those of the women of Oakland. She then translated the stories of these women into portraits. In the history of portrait art, most portraits created are of the rich and powerful. Through this project, Susannah aimed to tell the stories of underrepresented women, often overlooked because of their ages, ethnicities, socioeconomic status, or life experience. "I wanted women who don't see themselves in the media, to see their beauty," Susannah summarized.

At an opening event on May 13, Susannah told some of the stories of transformation that emerged from this collaborative effort. She also shared how the three young students, all of whom are first generation Americans, in the course of helping her interview and photograph the women of Oakland developed a new perspective on their parents' culture and the difficulties of immigration. The interviews that they collected and composed accompany the portraits, expressing the stories of the 20 women both visually and in words.

The portraits are on display at Fruitvale Presbyterian Church through July, where you can view them and read the stories of the women. For more information, visit the church Web site (www.fvpc.org), or you can e-mail Susannah Eloyse Prinz at susannaheloyse\@yahoo.com.