Decolonizing Storytelling

Embrace your lived experiences through the practice of sensory storytelling.

In today’s culture, storytelling has been co-opted to revolve around sales, branding, and unrealistic narratives about who we should be. Those who hold power can try to dictate our own stories to us.

But we are responsible for telling our own stories.

This is what Andre 3000 meant when he said, “The south got something to say,” and when Dr. Ligia Arguilez said, “The border has something to say.”

We all have something to say.

Storytelling is one the oldest forms for transmitting traditions, culture, and history from one generation to the next. It enables us to communicate our idiosyncratic experiences to others in ways that captivate their emotions, senses, and imagination. It’s also one of the most engaging ways to communicate experiential concepts like border identity, gender performance and the genderization of music.

Through collaborative storytelling, we not only become more confident in our own truth but become better able to hold space for others.

About the Storytelling Funshop

In this 2-hour interactive class, Amalia Tereso explores explore the basics of sensory storytelling as a creative practice. This workshop concludes with a collaborative storytelling challenge. Participants will:

  • Storytelling through music

  • Listening for authentic metaphors

  • Sense-bound writing

  • Team-building and collective narrative

The purpose of this collaborative and creative format is to: 

  • Find new ways of expressing our lived experiences

  • Practice writing authentically

  • Discover collective experiences

Who is this for?

  • Creative writers

  • Songwriters

  • Scholars, academics and educators

  • Storytellers of all kinds

  • Groups seeking team-building experiences

  • Participants age 10 and older

Amalia Mondragón / Tereso Perfecto Contreras

(She/He/They) is a queer two-spirit, Latin Grammy-nominated, vocalist/songwriter and producer from the Chihuahuan desert borderlands of El Paso, Ciudad Juárez, and La Union. Mondragón Contreras is in the final stages of completing an album funded by NALAC and The FORD FOUNDATION through the Border Narrative Change grant.