Stories from Venezuelan Migrant Women
One woman, multiple stories.
Coming soon, I will represent Oklahoma State University at the Latin American Studies Association’s international conference in Paris. As part of the research I have conducted for this project, I will focus on a Venezuelan migrant writer named Krina Ber. She was indeed a migrant writer. My project can be summarized as follows: Within memory, there always exists a fragile rupture that transports imagined cities onto the streets of those who traverse them, weaving languages together. Krina Ber spent her childhood in Polish, her adolescence in Hebrew, her youth in French, and her adult life in Spanish—never forgetting English, which she considered a necessity. By drawing on words—both as a writer and as a passerby—Ber successfully re-establishes each of her routes within what she calls "ghost cities." In her work, Los Inmigrantes (The Immigrants), a journey to Biarritz takes us to France to explore a different history. Considering the context of urban palimpsests—whose origins are reconstructed beneath the footsteps of those forging new paths—and integrating this with the very meaning of "inhabiting" across diverse languages, religions, and cultures, this approach to Ber’s work highlights the existence of multiple worlds, serving as metaphors for the enlightened city of #Paris. Here, Ber’s oeuvre is interpreted as a map of fragments—since one inhabits a city—or cities—where exile or migration continually shape a mobile space, divided into zones, projecting certain bodies as metropolises that live on within literature.
$25
Our first step
When starting a new life in a different country, we always need to take it step by step. We begin with the essentials. Transitioning from one language to another involves vocabulary, music, and silence: it's like building a tall tower—a stronger new life. Our five senses stay active. We start this journey with a collection of those various things and feelings that support migration at OSU.
$50
Our second step
Our second step is never easy. Now we have friends and know how not to get lost, but we start to miss all the things and family we left behind. We feel that we need to recover our memories. Also, we start in different ways to express new words and silences. Art is our movement. Pictures are part of us in this project.
$100
Our third step
We are experiencing both our sadness and our happiness. We start reading more books and writing in a second language. We connect with certain authors, series, and movies. We have friends in our classes and more connections here, which are special experiences that reflect our desire to learn more. In this project, this step is meaningful for us. We don't need to be alone. We need to be connected, even if days are too short to complete all our dreams.
$150
Our fourth step
Now we have more roots, projects, photographs, and texts. We now need to cover the expenses that turn our ideas from text to video, with each story recorded. This is an investment that will last. The stories of women stored in a country's memory are worth a treasure.
$300
Our five step
This donation doubles the impact, just as our experiences as migrant women in the United States have doubled and multiplied. When we start a new life, our expenses and investments also increase. Mathematicians tell us that what we wish to share multiplies to the *n*th power. With this support, we will be able to share the full multiplicity of our voices to the *n*th power as Venezuelan migrant women.