This is Inheritance of Peace and I’m Amy Shimshon-Santo. Today we meet with Adnan Jaber, a distinguished technology expert, polyglot, and peace builder who recently presented at the Global Nobel Peace Summit. Born and raised in Jerusalem, he credits his love for bringing people together to his mother, and his fascination with technology to his father. He explains his commitment to peacemaking as a natural “survival instinct” in response to the conditions he has experienced. For Jaber, peace is both “the safest path” and also “one of the most dangerous.” I’m excited to welcome you into our discussion about his life and inheritance of peace.

Adnan Jaber (AJ): Recording in progress.

Amy Shimshon-Santo (Dr. A): Recording in progress. Life in progress. Communication in progress.

AJ: I feel this is going to be poetic.

Dr. A: Knowing you, and knowing me, it probably will be. And then we’ll go dance. By the way, that video of you dancing at your wedding! Goodness gracious.

AJ: Thank you, I really enjoyed that time.

Dr. A: That was amazing.

AJ: I was very happy.

Dr. A: You deserve to be. Alright, my dear, the first question today is, Who are you?

AJ: Who am I, Adnan Jaber. I’m a human. Curious person, loving, a lover, proud husband of Michal Greenfield. An innovator, technologist, who loves to bring people together. Help them find what they have in common. An explorer. Born and raised in Jerusalem, now living in Los Angeles. What else would you like to know about me?

Dr. A: Lots. My next question is about, not just who you are and how you self-define, but what do you get to do with your life force?

AJ: What do I get to do with my life force? And when you shared with me life force, you meant, what am I living for? What am I using my life for? If I get it right…

Dr. A: I think that’s a great way to get it.

AJ: Okay. Where do I want to go with my life force? I’ll share it with a story, how about that?

Dr. A: Beautiful.

AJ: So, I come from a Muslim family. In Islam, my teacher in the school taught me… I should say, “My teacher’s Islam taught me” because every Muslim has a different way of looking at it as well. I don’t want to overgeneralize things. My teacher taught me that life started as Adam and Eve. They came from heaven. They came to Earth. This is how humanity started. And then heaven and hell is how it’s gonna end. If you pray five times a day, if you fast Ramadan, and if you behave like a good person, that’s how you’re gonna go to heaven. If you don’t, you’re gonna go to hell. That became kind of the meaning of my life as a young Muslim boy. Everything I did was to go to heaven.

Later I got into an exchange program to study in the U.S. in Washington D.C. I visited The Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Museum, and there I saw the bones of evolution. Evolution of plants first. And then I saw the evolution of animals. How the bones changed over time. Then I saw human evolution. How the skull changed from the ape to the human. That shocked me because it contradicted the story of Adam and Eve. Humanity started this way. I started having questions. I started doubting the religion and its perfection. I still appreciate its traditions and its goals to bring people together and do healing. But I was questioning the meaning of life, and what do we live for? I started doubting heaven and hell, the way it’s been described. I don’t know if there’s gonna be heaven and hell. That was a very scary moment for me. I was 19 years old. I started asking questions of sheikhs, priests, rabbis. I didn’t get the answers that were stronger than what I saw in the museum.

I became very curious, but also very afraid. What am I living for? What’s the meaning of my life? Some suicidal thoughts even came to my life. I didn’t get the answers from the religious leaders. So later, I went to Google and I searched, “what do we live for?”

Dr. A: You did not.

AJ: There wasn’t AI at the time. I opened the first article, and it started talking about suicide. And it said, “Don’t think about committing suicide. Think about all the people who love you, and how you’re gonna hurt them. This is a very selfish decision. Even if you think you’re gonna be freeing yourself, you’re gonna be hurting a lot of other people. And then it said, if you want to know the meaning of life, look at the babies. The moment they are born they start to touch everything to put in their mouth to taste. They are curious. They want to explore, and that’s our natural drive. To survive and to explore. That moved me, somehow. I really liked it. It explained a lot of things that were happening in my mind and in my body.

Then I started seeking that — to explore more. To do what I am made to do. And I wanted to know what’s bigger than a galaxy? What’s smaller than an atom? What makes us love more? What makes us live a happier life? And to know the answers for these questions, we need to bring people together because together they can explore further. Many minds are smarter than one mind. That has become kind of the mission of my life. It’s to bring people together to explore further and more. That’s why I said in my identity, a curious person.

Dr. A: Yes.

AJ: Yeah, it became my identity today. Yeah, so I was 19. Today I’m 31. I’ve been on that journey since then. So that’s my life force, I guess.

Dr. A: Beautiful. And it’s amazing how choosing a story went right to the heart of that question.

AJ: Yeah.

Dr. A: Fantastic.

AJ: It wasn’t easy to go through this journey. To be very doubtful of your beliefs.

Dr. A: Especially at 19. You are already legally an adult. You didn’t have science classes on evolution when you were young?

AJ: I had science classes.

Dr. A: You didn’t feel and see viscerally the evidence of all of that.

AJ: They didn’t even talk much about the evolution thing. They talked about other things. But they didn’t try to challenge the religious aspects very much.

Dr. A: Sounds like a breakthrough.

AJ: It is. Nothing happened in one day, or in one sitting. Asking priests and sheikhs. Trying to find meaning in my life. It took almost one or two years in the process.

Dr. A: It’s still very fast. And I love that you’re a tech guy, “and so, I asked Google.” And there was no AI yet.

AJ: There’s a lot of responsibility on the tech companies. And now AI is there. Actually, I asked ChatGPT two days ago, “what’s the question you get the most from people?” It told me, “We don’t have specific analysis about every conversation, but, generally, the question is, “What’s the meaning of life?” That’s the question ChatGPT has the most.

Dr. A: So you have an AI presence. Right?

AJ: I have an AI clone.

Dr. A: Don’t you have a regional problem solving AI?

AJ: I have one too. Yeah.

AS: Do you want to say what that is about?

AJ: It’s a custom GPT. It’s an AI that I uploaded some documents to and gave it some custom instructions. I created other custom GPTs, one for ALLMEP, and another for Aziz Abu-Sarah and Maoz Inon (Authors of The Future Is Peace).

Dr. A: Great book.

AJ: This book has a lot of great answers. Anyone can ask any question, get the immediate answer. Yeah. We need to meet people where they are as well. Not everyone is able to go to do academic research to find the answer for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to understand the different solutions out there and everything. Not everyone has the time. People need to be able to receive answers in their own language, in their own accent, at their own time.

Dr. A: Yeah. Well, that leads to our next question, which is “What lands are you connected to?”

AJ: I’m connected to the land of Palestine Israel, and to the United States of America.

Dr. A: Do you want to say anything about your relationship to those connections or the land?

AJ: I’m born and raised in Jerusalem to a Muslim, Palestinian, Arab family. But, you know, Jerusalem is under the authority of Israel, a Jewish country. So I lived both realities in the same place, as a Palestinian and as an Israeli because I had an Israeli ID. I don’t have an Israeli passport. Which is another problem to talk about.

Dr. A: You do not have, or you do have?

Adnan Jaber: I don’t have any passport. I’m a stateless person. I’m a 31 year old stateless person.

Dr. A: Hmm.

AJ: My parents don’t have the Israeli passport, but they were born and raised also in Jerusalem. Before 1967. Before Israel announced East Jerusalem as parts of its territory, back then people had Jordanian passports. So I got a Jordanian passport, but I didn’t have Jordanian nationality, or a Jordanian ID. Living in Jerusalem, in Israel. Working in Israel, I wanted an Israeli passport.

Dr. A: Right.

AJ: Also, I wanted the right to vote, to feel protected in that country. So I applied to get it. In the application, they asked me to revoke my Jordanian passport, and I did. But the process to get the Israeli passport is really hard. It takes years. So many interviews. Long periods to wait between each interview and the other, like six months to one year. So I was almost three years in this process. My last interview was supposed to be on October 11th, 2023. But October 7th happened right before that. The Ministry of Interior in Israel told me, “We’ll see you after the war.”

Dr. A: The war goes on and on.

AJ: The war goes on and on. I was visiting L.A. during that time, so Michal and I stayed in L.A. and continued to live in L.A. I have a green card. Married to Michal. Hopefully, inshallah, in one year, I’ll get the American passport.

Dr. A: Wonderful.

AJ: Yeah.

Dr. A: Stateless person, but not a landless person.

AJ: Yeah, many lands.

Dr. A: No passport.

AJ: No nationality. No passport.

Dr. A: Well, that’s interesting, environmentally.

AJ: I’m connected to the people too!

Dr. A: Yeah.

AJ: The land and the people. I have a lot of Palestinian friends and family. A lot of Israeli friends. I speak Arabic and Hebrew and English. Yeah, there’s a bug in the system.

Dr. A: There’s many. There’s more than a bug. There’s a break. There is a fracture.

AJ: Yeah.

Dr. A: There is a big break. I have so many more questions about that stuff. We could riff on that for a while because my mom is from Jerusalem and her family were stateless for 28 years.

AJ: Hmm.

Dr. A: When they got to the Middle East, at the turn of the century, they were stateless for 28 years. When my great-great-grandfather died, my great-great-grandmother had to complain about getting citizenship because you could only apply for citizenship through the husband. The man was the only one who could apply. A woman did not have that right. I’ve found these papers. They’re in Arabic, Hebrew, and English because of the British Mandate. Colonial rule. It’s just wild to me. Isn’t citizenship key to any democracy? Doesn’t it exist to protect everyone? It’s horrible that you are from there, and experience that same fucked up circumstance so many years later.

AJ: So you understand.

Dr. A: Yes, dear.

AJ: I’m not protected by anyone, so my freedom of speech has been limited all my life. Politics, joining or supporting any political party, is a really big question in my head. Doing anything publicly is a real danger for me. Administrative detention in Israel is a serious thing. I.C.E. here in the U.S. is a serious threat, and in the Palestine Territories freedom of speech is not safe.

Dr. A: Yet, I see you so courageously and peacefully and calmly and elegantly navigating through all these different spaces. I’ve watched you listen, and I’ve listened to you speak.

AJ: What can we say? I also come from Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a capital. I’m a city boy. We learned how to talk. My father is a salesman.

Dr. A: Well, that served you well.

AJ: I’m really looking forward to getting my American citizenship. Yes, I’ll get the protection that I need and all of that. But I love the United States of America despite all of its problems. Still, it’s the melting pot. The most diverse place. I love the values that the U.S. stands for, and it should stand for. So, yeah, I look forward to that.

Dr. A: How was it for you to come from the Middle East to the U.S.? Come from Jerusalem and see so many different kinds of people from all over? I know people visit Jerusalem that way, too.

AJ: I see a lot of internationals in Jerusalem. Coming to the U.S., I got to see more Arabs. Iraqis, Syrians, Lebanese. I never saw these people in Jerusalem. It was shocking because I have a lot in common with these people. They live near me, and I never got to see them. But in the U.S., I got to see them. Egyptians, too. Because its not easy to come to Jerusalem, as you know. It’s really hard. I got to see a lot of African people too, in the U.S. And Indians. That was eye-opening. Yeah, the U.S. is another place.

Dr. A: Yeah, and you’re a very important part of it here. I’ve been following your presence since we met initially through Standing Together. Then, in your tech and communications, your approach moved me. I always felt, Wow, that guy is amazing. Is there anything else you want to say about connection to land? To be from someplace, and yet be so far away from everyone around you, and then to be able to encounter people from your own region of birth here in the U.S.

AJ: Yeah. I think you got it. If I have more thoughts on it, I’ll share it with you.

Dr. A: Yes, sir. Alright. So, we’re going to turn now to the inheritance of peace. We’ve talked about this a little bit as aspirational peace. Back in the day, I saw you posting videos saying, “There’s a third way.” I thought, What is going on in the mind of this man? What is the aspirational insight of this human being? I’m very curious to hear what your inheritance of peace is. Why does it call to you? How does it call to you? And what do you do about it?

AJ: I’ll share with you how I got into this world, and why I’m still choosing that. This is my classic story that I keep telling. So enjoy it. Born and raised in Jerusalem to an Arab, Muslim, Palestinian family. I didn’t have one single Jewish friend for 22 years of my life, even though I lived in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jews. I see Jews every day on the train, on the bus, whenever I move around in Jerusalem. Why didn’t I have a single Jewish friend? Because I didn’t speak Hebrew, and those neighbors didn’t speak Arabic. There was a big lack of trust and misunderstanding. And all I hear about the Jews is not from them, but either from my community or Al Jazeera, and it was usually not the good things. Unfortunately, in the media, what bleeds leads. That’s how it works.

My father has an electronics shop. He sells electronics. I was the luckiest kid to play the newest PlayStation games as they came out. That later got me to study technology and software engineering. I studied in the West Bank at the Arab American University in Jenin. I finished my degree. I came back to Jerusalem. I wanted to work in tech, just like I’d studied. All the tech jobs are in Tel Aviv and in Haifa. Every time I get to an interview. I go there, and it’s usually a guy with a kippa sitting behind the table. I sit in front of him. He’s sweating and I’m sweating, usually. There’s some mistrust. Some fear. We don’t speak each other’s languages. We both were speaking broken English. Yeah, it was hard to land a job.

Later, one day on Facebook, I saw an advertisement called Tech2Peace that brings Palestinians and Israelis to come learn tech and dialogue with each other. I was interested in tech. I needed the experience. I needed the connections and the jobs, but I was afraid of the peace. Why afraid of peace? As someone who studied in the West Bank, and lived there, and East Jerusalem… For many Palestinians, “peace” can mean accepting the status quo, which is the military occupation of the Palestinian territories. That is unacceptable. A lot of people boycott these peace-building programs for that reason. But I need to understand my neighbors. I need a job. I need to go to this program. I hide the fact from my family and friends that I was going to a peace program. I take the Egged bus, the Israeli national bus. For the first time in my life, I use that bus. I take it to Be’er Sheva, and then to Yeruham. It’s a Jewish town in the desert where the program was happening. The program was for 10 days. Every day, for three hours, we were learning something in tech. And every day, for three hours, we were engaging in dialogue. In dialogue, we were doing activities like empathetic listening, where we listen to understand and not to respond. We get to share our narratives and hear the other people’s narratives, and really understand. After 10 days, I realize it’s not just black or white. There are good people on both sides. There are afraid and angry people on both sides. And I made my first Jewish friend. I go back to Jerusalem. Visiting West Jerusalem. Going to Tel Aviv and Haifa. I feel less fear. More confidence. More understanding of the people around me. And I know better how to talk to them.

Later, I joined the alumni group of Tech2Peace, and they started sharing about other peace building programs. Apparently, there are 200 peace building programs under the umbrella of The Alliance for Middle East Peace. There are programs that are doing peace through art, through religion, through dance, music, sports, environment. All kinds. So, I joined 25 of these programs. I did a lot of dialogue in my life.

Dr. A: Wow.

AJ: It was great! I really enjoyed these programs. It was a great opportunity to meet different people, and get to learn about them, and get to share with them. I know myself better through these kinds of trips. I realized that normalization…I know now how to talk about it better. We don’t want to normalize occupation, human rights abuses, violence towards the Palestinians and towards the Israelis.

What we want to normalize is dialogue, understanding, working with each other because this is the way to make a better future. I realized that there are seven million Palestinians and seven million Jews between the river and the sea, and nobody is going anywhere. Especially after October 7th, we learned this lesson the hard way. Nobody is going anywhere. So, we need to build that trust together. This is how it’s going to move on.

Blanket boycotts don’t work. If we boycott all of Israelis just because they are Israelis, it’s not helpful, it’s counterproductive. I still believe in boycott, divestment, and sanctions, Palestinians’ right for resistance in nonviolent ways. And there are things to boycott, like politicians and groups that want to nuclear attack Gaza, bomb Gaza, or want to kill Palestinians, or expel them out of their lands. That sounds horrible to me, those people need to be boycotted.

Initiatives that work to build trust between Palestinians and Israelis, those are the ones that need to be supported. And we also know about some groups that hide. They bring Palestinians only to tokenize them. To support their pro-Israel, anti-Palestine, points rather than actually caring about peace building. Those need to be supervised and dealt with care. Yeah, we need to be careful of these. So I learned those lessons.

Later, I became a board member at Tech2Peace. I landed a job in tech. I worked. I had a startup in tech, a journey. I found the love of my life, Michal Greenfield, who’s a Jewish-American person who traveled and lived in Israel. I met her in one of the Tech2Peace seminars. I fell in love. She’s the most beautiful thing that has happened in my life.

Dr. A: You guys are very cute.

AJ: Thank you. Of course, there were challenges, family drama, reactions. “How are you dating a Jewish person? What will people say about us? What are your children gonna be like? Leave Her. Even if you’re okay with that, think about your brother, your sister. They are in danger because of you.” There’s a lot of responsibility.

Dr. A: What kind of danger?

AJ: Some people might come and burn my father’s shop — whether it’s extremist Palestinians or extremist Israelis. The Kahanist groups used to kill mixed couples and attack their houses. There are extremists that really don’t like these stories. My father was saying, “Who’s gonna marry your sister?” There’s this social pressure. My sister got married to the most handsome man and beautiful man. She has two children coming up. The man she married lives in Sheikh Jarrah, and he’s one of the four houses that were under eviction during the Sheikh Jarrah protests.

Dr. A: Oh, wow.

AJ: Anyway. What else? So, there’s a lot of challenges regarding partnering with a Jewish person. But later my mom got to meet Michal. She saw how humble and sweet she is. How much she loves me and how much I love her. They bonded. It takes time for these things to happen. Michal’s father supported from day one. Michal’s mother, it took her a lot of time. My father took a lot of time, until the wedding happened. When they saw that there’s a whole community that loves us and supports us. Then they started to move on. But it’s not easy.

Now, why am I choosing peace as a strategy? Not only is it the only way. Like I said, there are seven million Palestinians and seven million Jews between the River Sea. Nobody’s going anywhere. We need to build trust. That’s the strongest argument, but also it’s the moral thing to do. The right thing to do. If you want peace and justice, we need to act with peace and justice.

It’s the environmental effect we create around us. Violence begets violence. That’s how the world works. We are social animals, and we are affected by the environment around us. Look at children. It doesn’t matter what the points you’re trying to make for them, they don’t understand points. They just imitate what you do. It’s our natural thing. So, for these reasons, I choose to do what I’m doing.

Dr. A: I love that. These things have come up, like what you’ve had to go through in your own relationship for example. Just for one. You know, in the United States, we have this history of legalization, of making it illegal to marry someone from a different culture. Racist laws preventing intermarriage were overturned around the time I was born with Loving v. Virginia (1967). In my case, I fell in love with someone who was not Jewish, and who was African-descended. The U.S. is a very racialized country. So, we went through our own series of hilarious in retrospect, but very painful at the time, dramas.

People somehow think that if you choose to love someone who’s not of your own culture, your whole world will somehow collapse. It’s fear. What I found is that quite the opposite happens. Now, you know your culture. You have your people, and you have to learn about someone else’s reality. So you’re actually able to learn twice as much. You’re on your way towards becoming a world citizen in a way that most people never challenge themselves to endeavor. Everything else just kind of falls away. You realize it’s all held up by things we don’t need.

AJ: I like what you shared. It brought many thoughts to my head. I have three comments. The first is that interfaith marriage is illegal in Israel. I wasn’t able to marry Michal there, so I married her in the U.S. The second is, what our children are going to be like. That’s the fear my parents had. I think they will be ambassadors.

Dr. A: Yes.

AJ: They will learn Arabic, Hebrew, and English. They will visit the synagogue, the mosque, and the church. They will understand everybody. They’ll be friends with everybody. Haifa, the mixed city, (has a lot of interfaith) is the safest place in Israel. And the most dangerous place, the biggest strikes and war, came from the place that has the highest walls, which is Gaza. So let that sit for a second. People who have equal rights and citizenship and meet with each other and understand each other the most. Palestinians and Israelis and Jews live together in Haifa, and it’s the safest place for the Jews and for the Palestinians. While in Gaza, it’s the opposite, and the areas around Gaza.

Dr. A: Yeah. I agree with you 100%. You are already an ambassador. Both of you are, really.

And I’m sure that your children will be, too. From what I’ve seen in my little life, it had the reverse effect. It opened my life up and it didn’t close it off. I would never want to go back to thinking I could only exist, or be in good relationship with my ancestors, if I only was able to approach the world as if everything had to be in one particular way.

AJ: Hmm.

Dr. A: I think it helped me fall in love with culture and faith, and be curious, and make friends. In your own time, I hope that’s what you experience too. This kind of openness where you get to speak from your deep knowledge, from your whole life, and also be heard everywhere, and make friends everywhere, and feel safe everywhere.

AJ: Thank you, I hope so. We’re working on it.

Dr. A: You’re doing a great job.

AJ: Yeah.

Dr. A: Alright. Well, are there any last things you would like to share before we sign off?

AJ: I want to thank you for sharing your stories also, and your parents and grandparents, and reflecting on what I’ve shared with you too. Thank you for your curiosity. You always try to support me and say good things about me. I really appreciate you. People like you are the ones who give me this confidence and give me this sense of safety to speak up more.

Dr. A: I’ve watched you, and you’re doing such a fantastic job. I really feel you as an aspirational soul. I’m so glad that our paths crossed. And I desire all the very best for you. I just have total trust in you, and I want everyone to get behind you, because I’ve watched the way you move in different kinds of settings. I think you come from real deep experience and knowledge. And yet, you’re not letting the way things are limit your imagination.

AJ: Thank you. I wanted to add to one of your questions about inheritance of peace. Why am I choosing to go that path, too? It’s also the safest path. It’s one of the most dangerous paths to take, because I’m attacked by everybody — the extremists on both sides, and all of that. And for me, it’s also the safest. Because if I choose any of the other paths I’ll be dead. I’ll be in jail. I’ll be somewhere else, because it’s not working, especially in Jerusalem. I think you understand my point.

Dr. A: I do. It’s interesting, because my mother was born in Jerusalem in 1932. She was born a Jewish person. She did not have a passport, but, at the time, it would have been issued by the British Mandate Palestine. She raised me, talking to me about her childhood playing with Jewish and Arab children when she was little. She loved that. She raised me in this whole other reality of storytelling. In her particular experience, it’s so different from what has happened.

AJ: Yeah. Every time you share, you bring the thoughts back to me. Yeah, I shared what I shared just earlier with you to say that building relationships with people like you, you are now my community, my extended family.

Dr. A: Àṣẹ.

AJ: This has become my survival instinct. It’s a natural outcome for me, as a Jerusalemite, to survive in the circumstances I lived in. I’m thankful that this has become my way. I think I’m lucky, because a lot of people, unfortunately, tend to go to other paths for their own sake. But I’m grateful that this has been the choice for me.

Dr. A: Yeah. I agree. I think it’s the only path. For me, I also think it’s the only path. Everyone who comes on this podcast has chosen that path. And, yeah, if we limit our imaginations to the point of thinking that something that doesn’t work is the only way, we’re basically passing that down to the next generation as an unlivable condition of life. So I think the only choice is to choose the better option even if it doesn’t feel within reach. I’m twice your age and I’ve seen some things change. Not everything changes, not everything sticks. But my hope is that we see more and more change, and it wouldn’t happen if we don’t lean into what might appear impossible, which could become possible.

AJ: Yeah, very well said. I would like to add that, Yes, if I’m choosing the path of peace, reconciliation, forgiveness. I do all of these things, but I don’t forget. We also need to learn from the lessons of the past. We need to acknowledge the reality. The power imbalance and to work to achieve a higher level of equality and safety for all.

Dr. A: Absolutely. Well, I just want to honor all that you’re holding and carrying, and the fact that even just to be able to say, I can communicate in different languages and I will let each conversation inform me. Most people haven’t done that. So, you are our ambassador, my dear. You already are. Ambassador of the Future.

Adnan Jaber: Inshallah. I hope it’ll be a good one.

Dr. A: Yeah.

Adnan Jaber: Thank you, Amy.

Dr. A: Thank you, Adnan.

AJ: I think the person who I am today has to do a lot with my mother and her kindness, and her love of socializing with people and getting to know them. And the other reason is the community that I’ve been surrounded by. People like you, like I mentioned. I wanted to share this point now. October 7th has deepened the trauma on both sides. A lot of people have lost trust on the other side. I just wanted to say that a moment of breakdown is a moment of breakthrough. In the midst of this devastation that we have seen in the aftermath of October 7th, the Its Time Coalition has emerged. The biggest Arab / Jewish, Palestinian / Israeli bilateral summit has emerged. 7,000 people gathered in Tel Aviv and 5,000 people gathered the year after in Jerusalem. That was the biggest gathering ever in the history of Israel and Palestine, and that happened after October 7th. So, there is momentum here today. We need to catch it, support it, and go with it. It’s Time Coalition, I encourage people to look at it.

Resources

The Skin Deep {The AND}

Peace Tech Forum

Adnan’s Journey with Tech2Peace

“Can Innovation Unify Across Divides?: Three Israeli-Palestinian Initiatives Show Peace Is Possible,” Forbes

“Life+ Meets: Muhammad, Rajai, and Adnan, founders of Yalla Reyada”

“The Voice Behind the Machine: A Palestinian’s AI Solution to a Long-Standing Dispute”

Arab American University

Alliance for Middle East Peace

Its Time Coalition

Biographies

Adnan Jaber is a curious, hopeful human from Jerusalem, now living in Los Angeles. On a mission to bring people together through tech, AI, dialogue, and entrepreneurship. As a lecturer at UCLA, Adnan teaches “Design Entrepreneurship for Peace and Impact,” empowering students to harness technology for social good. He has been part of the executive board at Tech2Peace for six years, contributing to the collaborative team efforts that transformed the organization from its early stages with very limited funding into a multimillion-dollar initiative that fosters tech and dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. Adnan founded the PeaceTech Affinity Group with ALLMEP, uniting 20 CEOs focused on peacebuilding by engaging Palestinians and Israelis through tech education, entrepreneurship, job placement, and dialogue within a shared high-tech ecosystem. Adnan is currently a Member at OpenAI Forum, and Member at Council on Tech and Social Cohesion. Ex-director and host at Beitna channel that makes stories about wonderful Palestinians and Israelis showing the humanity on each side. A fellow at the Beerman Foundation and an awardee of Billions Acts of Peace, Adnan recently presented the Youth AI Policy at the Global Nobel Peace Summit, emphasizing the urgent need for AI training and AI ethics, continuing his journey to unite communities through technology..

Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo is a writer, editor, and educator who believes that creativity is a powerful tool for personal and social transformation.

This interview has been slightly edited and condensed for clarity. Subscribe to Inheritance of Peace with Amy Shimshon-Santo on Apple Podcasts or on substack at Warm Blooded Mammal With Hair. Theme music for this program is by Avila Santo. This series highlights everyday people from across the generations and various walks of life —poets, researchers, shepherds, healers — who discuss our Inheritance of Peace as foundational for a just society.

Service as a Peace Practice

Amy Shimshon-Santo (AS²): This is Inheritance of Peace and I’m Amy Shimshon-Santo. In this episode, we enjoy a conversation with Pranidhi Varshney. She is a mother of three, and the founder of Yoga Shala West, an accessible Ashtanga Yoga space, where people seek balance through the daily practice of “skill in action.” Having immigrated to the midwestern U.S. as a child from India, she’s become an expert at swimming between the poles of here and there, motherhood and community life, personal awareness and being a part of positive change. Her Inheritance of Peace draws from yoga philosophy, Gandhian principles, and the example set by her parents. How can we cultivate joy in our relationships while being of service? How can even our strongest actions be guided by love?

AS²: We’ll just hop right in. The first question is, who are you?

Pranidhi Varshney (PV): Who am I? The ultimate question.

AS²: Exactly.

PV: My name is Pranidhi Varshney. I live here in Los Angeles and hail from India, originally. I was born there, and moved to the states when I was about six. I made my way to California, and I love it here.

AS²: Right on. You knew how to drop in.

PV: Who am I? Yeah. That’s who I am. It’s interesting. In our culture, in the Indian culture, we rarely define ourselves by who we are in a solo context. Even what we call each other is always relational. Except for my children, I call them by their names. I usually just call them by their pet names, or sweetheart or something. But when you’re a child in my culture, you’re always referring to everybody by their titles, not by their names.

AS²: What are examples of that?

PV: My sister’s name is Navya, but my children do not call her Navya, or even Auntie Navya. They call her Mausi which means mom’s sister.

AS²: Oh!

PV: We have names for our mom’s brother. I don’t have any brothers, but even my cousins would be referred to as my brothers, so they would call them a certain name. And then from my husband’s family, there’s a certain title for each person. So that’s how my culture, as Indian culture, is. It’s very, very relational.

AS²: Wow, I love to hear what the actual titles are. Sometimes the titles let us know. Not all family relationships in every culture are not always named. What are some of the other titles?

PV: Well, that’s interesting, because I’m thinking now in Indian culture, there’s never a title for any child. Along with the relational aspect, respect is a really big part of Indian culture. Respect for the elder. Everybody elder to you has a title, including siblings. I have three children. My older daughter, middle son, and then my youngest daughter, who’s just turned one. She doesn’t speak yet, but my middle son obviously speaks. He’s almost five, and he calls my older daughter, not by her name usually, but by the honorific, which is Didi, which means older sister. Anyone older to you generally has a title, and anyone younger to you generally does not.

AS²: You’re a student. You’re learning. Oh, I love that. One of the ways that language is so important is it weaves us together in social relations. You can’t just translate everything. I have friends who have said, if you lose a language you lose the social relations because you don’t have a name for it. It’s not just auntie or uncle. It’s very specific relationships that matter.

PV: In our culture, something else is cool too. You said auntie and uncle, so it’s reminding me that auntie and uncle, we use those words quite often, but they are used to refer to anyone outside your actual family who is older to you. My parents’ friends, I called them all aunties and uncles. In that way, the sense of community continues to broaden.

AS²: Yes.

PV: My children call my sister Mausi, I call my mom’s sisters Mausies.

AS²: Nice. Oh, I love it. Beautiful, beautiful.

PV: It is funny that when you asked me who I was, I was so American about it. This is my name. This is where I live. This is where I’m from.

AS²: That’s the way it is.

PV: But this is constantly how I feel. It’s sort of balancing between these two poles. Since being a child, and an immigrant child, that’s kind of just how we swim. Between these two poles.

AS²: That’s how we swim. That is exactly how we swim, and it’s a real benefit. It’s a tremendous benefit. Because in every language and every culture comes all this knowledge and a worldview. And if you can see things from more than one perspective. you have twice as much to pull from, or three times as much, or more. So I’m a real fan of that. But we learn in school, and we learn in society, to edit that part out and leave it at home. Even though it’s so valuable.

PV: Do you think it’s still that way?

AS²: Do you?

PV: Well, the reason I ask is I noticed that in my children’s education, they’re so encouraged to bring their cultures. There’s really a sense that we’re all part of something here and we’re all bringing our unique perspectives. There’s a real sense of belonging. I know that not all schools have that, but I feel blessed that we do. I see such a big change, even from when I was growing up. So I was curious.

AS²: I love that you defended that thought. For me and for my grown children, it was definitely not like that. It felt like an aspirational idea. Something you had to create. Oftentimes we would go do the cultural events at school so that the teachers or administration knew where to begin, and then welcome other people into that process. But it was kind of a homemade feeling of trying to bring the home culture into the school space. So I’m really glad that it doesn’t feel quite as divergent for your kids. Because you want to be whole.

PV: Yeah. Of course.

AS²: That’s good news. What do you get to do with your life force? Sometimes this changes over time.

PV: I get to do lots of things. I get to do the laundry, I’m sitting here in my laundry room, so that’s what I’m thinking about. I haven’t pulled those clothes yet. I get to do a lot of laundry folding. I get to do a lot of cooking. I have three children.

AS²: That sounds to me like a Buddhist response.

PV: But I also get to teach yoga and hold space. I get to be a wife. I get to go swimming sometimes, ride my bike sometimes, while I listen to music (riding) down the LA River. I feel like I have a pretty great life. When I remember that I do. I think that’s the challenge. It’s easy to drop into places of negativity. But when someone is posing me the gift of a question like “what do I get to do with my life?” I really think about it. Wow, I get to do pretty cool stuff.

AS²: Did you choose what you’re doing, what you get to do with your life? Parenting and running a yoga shala. Mentoring people. Creating your family. Being a partner.

PV: Part of me wants to say, yes, I consciously chose all these things. But I don’t know if I believe that we have as much agency as we think over the way in which we point our rudders. How we direct ourselves. I think our agency is more in how we are wherever we find ourselves. The way in which we carry ourselves. The way we respond to the stimuli that are given to us. I think real wisdom is knowing that. I’m not coming from a high and mighty place. It’s been energy trying to direct the course of my life. But I think the times that I’m most fulfilled, most at peace, happiest, when I can really love where I am. And whatever challenges I find myself in, change how I’m showing up in those challenges. It’s not like we don’t have to make choices in our lives. We have to choose. Am I gonna go this way or that way? But, when I was younger, I think there was a lot more will involved. Like through force of will, where am I gonna steer the ship?

As I’ve gotten older, I am trying to find the stream a bit more and follow that. Where am I needed? Where can I be of service? Where do the skills that I have align with what the world needs, and how can I follow that?

AS²: My momentum is associated with everything around me that I’m a part of.

PV: Yeah. It’s taken me some time to get there. I was a very rebellious teenager in some ways. I was like, I’m gonna break out of this container that I feel like I’ve been placed in. I broke out of it, but then one has to deal with the consequences of that. It took me a while to deal with the consequences of those decisions that I made. There were times when I felt unhappy with where I ended up. But, I look around and there’s so much beauty. There’s so much beauty, and there’s so much joy. I have these three beautiful children.

Now that I’m thinking about it, decision-making in my life is less about spreadsheets and charts and things like that, and more of an inner sense of knowing. That’s been a very constant thing, and not everybody makes decisions that way. My husband certainly doesn’t, but I feel like that’s how I make decisions, big decisions, in my life. It’s through this really strong feeling that just comes up. All of a sudden my life is moving in a certain way. When that feeling comes up, I do have a strong will that helps me get over the finish line.

AS²: I’m a fan of strong will when you feel clear. You opened up as a child of immigrants. Family has been important to me. This is how family is related to community. I’m a part of running a household and mothering and parenting.

You’re a yoga mentor, and you guide your own space, and you do it in a way that’s really different than probably some listeners might imagine a yoga space to be.

I’m curious if there’s anything you want to say about when you said you were a rebel. How did the rebel wind up in this extreme contemplative practice of Ashtanga yoga?

PV: The decade in which I grew up, which is the 90s, we grew up with a sense that we could do anything, especially as women. We were gonna be girl bosses, and we could do anything. We were very ambitious. And in Indian culture, also, there’s a lot of ambition. There’s a lot of ambition in striving and wanting to excel at whatever we’re doing. When I was growing up, that was mostly showing up in an academic setting. When I was growing up at home. I just decided I didn’t really want to do that, and so I went into the arts. I went in a different direction. But there was still a part of me that was ambitious, and that wanted to achieve.

As I was going through college, my career was sort of diffuse as an artist. You know. Yoga came along and I was really lucky to find Ashtanga yoga pretty quickly when I started practicing. There was such a clarity to it. There’s a clarity, and a direction, and not having to think too much about which way you’re going and what you’re gonna do, but you just show up on the mat, and you do that. And there’s just this forward momentum.

And as we practice longer, we realize it’s not all about going forward. But at the beginning, that was really helpful to me. The clarity. The discipline that I could channel on the mat. That’s how I found my way to the practice. But interestingly, in the course of that I became changed by it. If you’re doing it right, the practice will change you. Refine you.

I had to get clear about what I was doing with my life. Certain things started to feel out of alignment, and actually my whole career in the arts started to feel out of alignment. I turned to the thing where I felt aligned and that was the yoga mat. That was wanting to create a space for people where they could also feel that sense of alignment. What I mean is not physical alignment, but balance.

AS²: Yeah. So, in your artistic career, were you singing?

PV: I was singing. I was acting. I was going wherever the work was. That’s what you have to do as an artist. That career and lifestyle change brought me here to California. I grew up in Michigan, after moving from India, and spent some time in Chicago. Then I came here to California.

It was here that I really started delving deeper into the yoga practice, and where I started to feel that if I’m really going to give my all to something I need to give my all to that thing. Rather than feeling beholden to different directions.

AS²: I wanted to ask one little question about your vision of the space that you create as a yoga teacher and mentor. It feels really different than any other yoga space I’ve ever been in. And I wonder if that came from something you witnessed in your life somewhere else, or if you just made that up?

PV: Oh, no, no. I didn’t make it up. I feel like we don’t really make up much. Everything is an inheritance. I had a sense, having spent many years in this city, I felt like people were just getting priced out of the practice. To put it simply. I just felt like monthly fees were, for some people, completely out of reach. People who want to have a dedicated practice just couldn’t do it. Or they had to do with the shame of going to the teacher, and can I get a discount, or whatever it is, you know? That feels icky.

I thought, well, if I’m gonna start something, then let me see how I can make it accessible. We developed this sliding scale, or flexible contribution model. An organization called Service Space was pretty instrumental in helping me develop it. Nipun Mehta is the leader of this organization. My husband met him through meditation practice. I got to meet him, and learn about his work. He’s traveled the world. He basically espouses Gandhian principles.

It makes sense that we’re talking about this since this podcast is called Inheritance of Peace. That was Gandhi’s whole thing. Nonviolence and living a life of service. This organization inspires people to live lives of service. I did a little incubator with them, and they helped me. That was right around when I was designing the model of the shala (śālā, Skt: शाला). Outside of even helping me design the nuts and bolts, just having that framework of, okay, there are people designing organizations like this. There are people trying to do things outside of a transactional quality. That’s what you feel. At the Shala, we gotta pay our rent. I’m keeping track of students’ fees and all that. But, from a broader sense, it’s an understanding that this is not a transactional relationship. We’re gonna try to operate outside those parameters.

AS²: Beautiful.

PV: Being from India, I don’t have rose-colored glasses on when I talk about India. It’s a real place, just like any other real place. I imagine back in the day when yoga was being taught in caves, it was not transactional. But now? Even if you look at our specific lineage, it costs money. I think that this transactional quality is perhaps more of a Western thing, but I think it’s the commodification that’s more of a Western thing. It’s not that money wasn’t always a part of it. What I saw when I was practicing in LA is there’s a yoga space, but then there’s the boutique outside that’s selling $500 clothes. That just feels so unnecessary. I didn’t want to have anything to do with that particular aspect of it.

AS²: That’s amazing. So you mentioned Michigan, Los Angeles, California, India. My next question is, what lands are you connected to?

PV: I think those. Those are the lands that I feel connected to. Each one has its own quality. I think each one has shaped who I am in its own specific way. I also feel really connected to the ocean. I love the water.

AS²: I’m curious about weather and food in these places.

PV: Oh, yeah. Food is a big one. We love food in India and that’s the best part about going to India. The food is amazing. I’m really fortunate that my mom is such a wonderful cook. She brought all that when we were young. I’m doing my best to pass it on. I spend a lot of my time in the kitchen. I’m doing my best to pass it on to my kids. It’s also amazing living here in California. One of our weekly rituals is to go to our local farmer’s market every single Sunday. It’s such a gift to live in a place where there’s this abundance, fresh abundance that we can turn into sustenance. I love it. My kids also love it. It is kind of like going to church for us. We go every week, and we get to see the seasons change in that way. We had our first taste of cherries last week so now we’re like, okay, it’s the start of stone fruit season! These little things help cultivate joy in our kids’ lives. This understanding of the cycle of life. That things change, things come back around. Things change, things come back around.

AS²: Beautiful. Love that. Okay, so let’s turn to the big question of the day. And, this can be very personal, it could also be ancestral a bit, because all of us are coming from something. What would you say is your Inheritance of Peace?

PV: I love that question. Ever since you mentioned the name of this podcast I’ve been thinking, what a cool question. Cool inquiry. And the first place my mind went as I was just mulling things over was, of course, the Gandhian principles. The nonviolence that Gandhi changed the country with.

I’m thinking about yoga philosophy. In yoga philosophy there can be a sense, maybe from the outside looking in, that it’s a pacifist philosophy. It’s about doing nothing or doing less. That’s not it. My understanding is that it’s skill in action. How can we be skillful in every single action that we take? Oftentimes, we do have to take strong action. But how can we take strong action with love?

I think about that with my kids, too. Being a good parent is not just letting your kids walk off the edge of a cliff. You gotta hold the line sometimes, but you gotta do it with love.

Inheritance from my country, from this yoga philosophy. But on a more intimate level, my inheritance of peace comes from my parents. My mother, when we were growing up. My sister and I would go do these service projects here and volunteer there. We were teenagers. We would sometimes act, to be honest, real shitty at home. We’d be “doing good” out in the world, but then come home and just blah. She said to us, what’s up with that, basically? I don’t remember exact words, but basically, what’s up with that? There are plenty of opportunities to serve here in our home. That has always stuck with me. I think it’s so true.

We, especially now, in a day and age where we can be connected to everything that’s happening in any extremity of the world. I have to constantly remind myself. How can I serve at home? How can I serve in my household, in my community, in the relationships that I have access to?

The reason I think that that is my inheritance of peace is that that is how we spread peace. How we are. Who we are. How we behave. How we move through our daily lives. To me, that’s how we make a change. Those ripples.

I talked about my mom, but my dad is the perfect embodiment of that. While I was growing up, he spent almost all of his time taking care of us. My mom did, too. But, people don’t always expect that of fathers. He really did. They both worked full-time. They provided for our family financially. Outside of that time, they were just there for us. I think even on a subconscious level. That level of caretaking, I internalized it. That’s probably why I find myself in caretaking roles now. I feel that’s my inheritance.

AS²: It’s really powerful to hear this connection you’re expressing between caretaking and service. Because somehow in the home, we’re expected to have family values, but what happens in the home isn’t really supported socially with our institutions. It’s kind of luck, to a certain extent, what you fall into. All the things one might need for sustenance at home, a lot of those things are being cut right now. It’s beautiful for me to be reminded today of your mother’s lesson. That’s a form of service, everything you do. You’re raising the next generation. You’re affecting the energy and experience of your family members, your neighbors, and the people who are known to you. There’s no kind of change that will happen unless we also are being attentive there. That’s really powerful.

PV: Yeah. It can also inform the work we do out in the world. Not that there’s always a binary, but we do tend to think of our home lives and the work we do outside of home. I also experience that binary. I often think, how do I want my kids growing up? How do I want them to be in the world? That helps inform what I do, and what I engage with.

I’m very careful with my attention and where I put it. I find if I put my attention too far outside, I tend to feel frayed. Part of what the yoga practice has given me is an ability to tap into how things are affecting me. The quality of awareness. I need to be careful with where my attention is going. If I can find ways to serve that are really impactful, that are really affectual, then do those things. There’s a more balanced way in which to approach these things. It comes from a sense of inner balance.

AS: Inner balance. Which is the thing nobody has. And I don’t mean nobody. That’s definitely what I feel in your space, and the practice asks of us. It’s so fascinating to say, I will change myself. I will change how I’m showing up. That is part of the change of any other larger change or different kinds of changes I wish. And, without that, it probably won’t happen.

PV: I don’t think that peace can be achieved through hate. I just don’t believe that. In my husband’s culture, in Sikh culture, there’s this concept of the saint-soldier. Sometimes you have to cut something down, but you cannot do it from hate. You have to do it from love. Not cruelty. Cruelty cannot be the way.

We have to sometimes hold the line for what is right and good. But rarely does that happen when we ourselves are mired in misery. Sometimes, these days, I feel like we take on misery as a virtue.

Instead, we might allow our awareness of everything that’s going on in the world to actually do the opposite and fill us with gratitude. Fill us with gratitude for what we do have, and the wonderful blessings that we might have around us. Then use that sense of gratitude to make some kind of change.

War has been a part of our history since we began…

AS²: So, the Bhagavad Gita, does touch on this stuff. Somehow in facing difficult things, if I’m not mistaken, it’s supposed to help us become who we are.

PV: It’s forging the sword. The Gita does have this violent context. It’s a story about staying true to one’s purpose within this context of difficulty and challenge and questioning. Question: Am I doing the right thing? Am I on the right path? Having that unwavering resolve. I should say, not having it, finding it. Finding that unwavering resolve. Which some people might call faith.

AS²: I’m always saying to parents, replace your worry with faith. It’s more useful. It’s a more useful energy. Not naivete, but devotional faith. Not everyone has studied yoga philosophy or Gandhian principles. I just wondered if there’s anything in particular in yogic philosophy, when it comes to thinking in a deep way, in an empowering way about peace. In a strong way about peace as a powerful force.

PV: We were talking about the Gita. I think the Gita is the ultimate text. In the context of this battle one finds this sense of faith. But that’s just one yogic text. There are a lot.

We can talk about the Yoga Sutras also (Patañjali yogasūtram, पतञ्जलि योगसूत्रम्). They are more practice-oriented. For people who are wanting a sense of, how can I do this practice? Or what are the philosophical underpinnings of this practice? There’s a lot there in the Yoga Sutras. We’re talking about all these principles.

The yamas and niyamas. This is exactly what we’ve been talking about this whole time. How do you show up with yourself? How do you show up with your relationships? Simplicity. Humility. Putting the ego aside. Not grasping unnecessarily.

All these concepts are there in what we call Ashtanga Yoga, the 8-limbed path. It’s a contemplative path. It takes on many forms. But it’s also not unique to yoga philosophy. These are the teachings of any faith system that we’ve cultivated as humans. Each one has its own shimmer to it. But we’re all trying to do the same stuff. We’re all trying to figure out, how do we move through this life in a meaningful way?

AS²: And somehow leave it a little bit better, if possible.

PV: Exactly.

AS²: In your space, you have the big beautiful red image of the different limbs with the yamas and the yamas on the bottom. I always think, do do this and don’t do that. You can get yourself in a lot of trouble. It’s very hard to undo a lot of bad doing.

PV: That’s right.

AS²: In addition to doing the good things, you want to limit the things that are gonna make your life more of a mess.

PV: Yep.

AS²: A lot of them are very social. Don’t harm someone.

PV: Yeah, exactly.

AS²: Tell the truth, and don’t harm someone.

PV: Yeah.

AS²: Even the threads to principles of the MeToo Movement, even those kinds of guides are in these old principles. I guess human beings have been “being human” for a long time.

PV: Yeah. It’s helpful to have these guidelines. It’s helpful to have a sense of structure around our behavior. And as we get more steeped, and more wise, we understand that there’s a lot of nuance there also.

AS²: In the to-dos. Don’t lose your momentum. Keep that fire going. Stick with the divine. It’s just very fascinating. The way you have them laid out, they’re on either side so it’s almost like your left arm and your right arm.

PV: They have to work in conjunction.

AS²: I’m so glad that you’ve made time to step away and reflect a little bit about this. I’m always learning something new, and I love the whole conversation from how we call ourselves, how we name family relations and community relations.

This is an old heritage. What you’re building on in your choice to focus on yoga as part of your service didn’t start recently. This is a lot older than the United States.

PV: Yeah.

AS²: How old do you think this tie goes back in terms of a base?

PV: We can go really far back, because ultimately, this is a breath practice. As humans, how we know a baby is okay is they cry. They cry because it’s the first breath that they ever take. Breath is foundational to our human experience. On the yoga mat, we’re harnessing our breath. Sure, we’re putting our body into these different shapes and stuff. But really, we’re harnessing our breath. Harnessing the breath started, who knows when. These practices probably go back beyond our conceptual understanding.

AS²: Of humankind.

PV: In a way, that ancestry belongs to all of us. It doesn’t just belong to me, because I grew up in India. No, I think it belongs to all of us.

AS²: All of us homo sapiens, doing the breathing thing. And all the other animals who are breathers.

PV: We do have this unique ability to direct our breath. We have a conscious agency over our breath. It feels like something uniquely powerful.

AS²: Yeah. Thank you so much for being a part of this big web of peacemaking that’s also claiming the ground of heritage. We have something to pull from to try to make our lives better, and to intentionally do the best that we can in a fulfilling way with our life force. Is there any last little thing you might like to share before we wrap up?

PV: Hmm. Maybe I should do a little chant?

AS²: Yes.

PV: Ohm. [Pranidhi chants a yoga mantra.] This mantra is about cultivating a sense of fullness and wholeness. And of course, we always end with Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti which is Peace, Peace, Peace.

Pranidhi Varshney: Pranidhi is the founder of this little shala that could. The teacher who has had the most impact on her is Manju Jois. She has also studied with Nancy Gilgoff, Sharath Jois, and several other teachers within the ashtanga yoga lineage. Her children, courageous and wise little beings, teach her most of all. The thread that runs through all her work is the desire to nurture community, authenticity, and balance.

• Pranidhi’s YouTube Channel

• Pranidhana Album on Spotify

• Pranidhi’s Writing

• Eight Limbs Graphic

Yoga Shala West is an autonomous and interdependent community of ashtanga yoga practitioners in the heart of West Los Angeles.

Additional Resources:

Service Space is a volunteer-run ecosystem incubating compassionate action. For 26 years, our small, collective acts are powered by a simple idea: when we change ourselves through service, we change the world.

Eknath Easwaran, Classics of Hindu Classics of Indian Spirituality: Includes: The Bhagavad Gita, The Dhammapada, and The Upanishad.

This interview has been edited and condensed. Subscribe to Inheritance of Peace with Amy Shimshon-Santo on Apple Podcasts or on substack at Warm Blooded Mammal With Hair. Theme music for this program is by Avila Santo. This series highlights everyday people from across the generations and various walks of life —poets, researchers, shepherds, healers — who discuss our Inheritance of Peace as foundational for a just society.

The L.A. Book Launch of PIECEWORK at Beyond Baroque’s Wanda Coleman Theater with , , and the fabulous Betty Avila was a feel-good-yum-yum-collective-breath-of-remembering-imagining. And on Mother’s Day weekend, nonetheless.

How can I describe the vibe to you? I wanted to dance. That’s always a good sign. I felt proud of my family, community, and ancestors. Proud of us all for persevering and doing good. Ancestral presence and fun poured through the words, sounds, cinema, and discussions.

Thankfully, the event video is available online: Piecework Event Video.

Genesis Perez set out four of my books on the counter in the bookstore and pulled goodies for the reception. (Thank you, Genesis.) Jimmy Vega welcomed everyone into the Wanda Coleman Theater. (Thank you, Jimmy).

Reva Santo started us off by presenting two of her powerful film shorts. (Obrigada, Reva.) My heart quaked. You can watch them here, or in the full event video.

NÃO AO MARCO TEMPORAL: Lyric Video by Reva Santo; Music + Lyrics by Esperanza Spaulding; Dance Performance by Ashley Blanchard; Translations by Samuel Kardos.

MATRIARCH PROJECT Trailer: Learn about Reva’s Matriarch Project.

Avila Santo performed a live improvisational set on percussion with spoken word excerpts from Piecework’s “Pep Talk for Culture Makers.” (Obrigada, Avila). My brain exploded. He turned everything into fresh rhythm, meaning, and music.

I introduced Piecework and read selections with imagery. The video reveals my choices.

Betty Avila facilitated an artist panel with all four of us. She asked us thoughtful, layered questions about being a part of the “boldness of documentation and writing,” being a part of “a family/community archive,” the relationship between “creative process and product,” and “the tensions between institutional survival and creative expression.” (Gracias, Betty.)

Also, illustrator Sammy Savos shared her creative process for the cover art. (Thank you, Sammy.) Sammy and I met through my great great grandfather Israel Dov Rosenbaum. We became friends, she tattooed his sacred animals onto her arm, and she created an original papercut for the cover.

My mother’s day gift was being with loved ones in an arts and culture filled space oozing with courageous stories of beauty, resistance, and being in good relationship with each other and the land. We closed with hugs, a book signing, and laughter in the The Poet’s Garden.

Friends, it was a long journey to bring this book into being. I can’t think of any better way to have marked its birth. Thanks to everyone who has helped me in concrete and magical ways. After so much effort and not-giving-up-ness, I will remember this moment with tremendous tenderness and gratitude.

You can order a copy of the book through Asterism, or hit me up directly for a signed copy. Invite me to present or teach a workshop next year on any of the themes in the book! Message me and we will dream together.

Gratefully,

Amy

APPRECIATION & MUTUAL RESPECT

Amy Shimshon-Santo (AS²): This is Inheritance of Peace. I’m Amy Shimshon-Santo. In this episode, we speak with Leonora Simonovis — poet, editor, professor, and mother. Simonovis traces her Inheritance of Peace to early life lessons of ingenuity and gratitude that she learned during her childhood in Venezuela. Her stories reveal deep empathy for human and more than human life. She highlights the importance of “relationality” between people (and our many cultures) along with plants, animals, and the land. Simonovis advocates for rejecting greed and cultivating mutual respect as the foundation for working toward peace. Thanks for tuning in.

Leonora Simonovis (LS): I am a human. A wild little animal. I am a mother of two. I am a poet, a writer, a teaching artist. A wanderer. A seeker. Someone who cares very much about the land. I’m just happy to be alive, in these crazy times. And to go through it with some awareness, and to learn as I move along the way.

AS²: Oh, yes. I want to make a t-shirt now that says, “I am a wild little animal.”

LS: Please do. I’ll buy it.

AS²: Thank you for that poetic entrance.

LS: I think my life purpose is to live my life in the best way that I can. That is a process, because it changes, and it shifts. Sometimes I think that I am where I need to be, and sometimes I think that I need to shake things a little bit so that I can move and transform whatever has become stale. Part of it is education. I find that being in the classroom and having difficult conversations does help me understand why things are the way they are. And what my role could be.

AS²: Do you want to give an example of a difficult question that you might pose?

LS: Yeah. So this semester, we are reading a novel by a Native American writer Darcie Little Badger. Elasoe is the name of the novel. It’s a beautiful YA (Young Adult Fiction) novel about a 17-year-old young woman who has powers. She’s aware of the responsibility that having those powers means. There are a lot of questions about: Okay, if we have the power to do something, how do we do it? If we had all of that power, would we attack? Would we create war? Or would we instead try to negotiate, have conversations and dialogue? We got to talk about all of these things. One of the students said, “I can’t believe how similar this is to our reality.” And that was the point of reading the novel.

How can I create connection and build community? But, also, a community that can think critically and compassionately about others and what is going on in the world. Would you stand up for someone else? Or would you just let it play out because it doesn’t “affect you.” The book helped us have some deep discussions about relationality in today’s world, and history, and how we fit into all of that.

AS²: I’m going to turn us toward the next question. What are the lands that you feel connected to and why?

LS: Such a good question, thank you, I appreciate that. I would say I still feel very connected to Kumeyaay land in San Diego, in Southern California. It’s the first place where I became aware of the fact that home is wherever I am. Of the land as a sentient being, as a mother, as a caring figure. But I also learned about the indigenous lands in my home country, which is something that I wasn’t as conscious about. I mean, I had read a little about it. My mother, when I was very small, bought me a lot of stories by indigenous people from Venezuela, from different parts of the country (books) that had been translated by missionaries. One of those is my very favorite story. I still have it. It’s all scuffed up. It’s called El Tigre y El Rayo translated by Cesáreo de Armellada.

AS²: El Tigre y El Rayo.

LS: I actually studied Warao, which is an indigenous language. Living in California, I became aware of my heritage. I didn’t know, until I was in my 30s, that my great-grandmother was Native. I was born in Caracas, Venezuela. I spent most of my childhood there, and then I came to the U.S. and did my middle school on the East Coast in New Haven, Connecticut. I didn’t want to go back to Venezuela. I had already adjusted. We went back to Caracas and I finished high school. I went to undergraduate school. I did a master’s degree, and then I applied for a Ph.D. in the United States because I always wanted to come back. Which is a very complicated thing. I had friends, I had community. My whole family was there, but I never felt like I fit. I had experienced discrimination. That caused a lot of inner conflict for me. I did my Ph.D. here in the United States, graduated, and got a job in San Diego to teach at the University of San Diego. I taught there for 17 years.

AS²: Bravo.

LS: California was the one place where I did not feel different. And it was not just the Spanish-speaking people, it’s just that there was a sense of belonging, of being accepted, of building community. Also, I learned a lot about the language that is used to oppress others.

I learned a lot about history, things that I was somewhat aware of but hadn’t explored before. For example, in Caracas the mountain that surrounds the city — because the city is a valley — is called El Avila. The indigenous name is Waraira Repano which I knew, not from school, but from my mother. And then I started digging deeper and found out about the Indigenous people who lived there before the Spanish came.

There’s a lot of confusion about who was what, and where they lived, because borders were created, and tribes were separated as well. But I’m still trying to learn, who were the people before me? And I know the Tainos were first, and that connects us to Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. Being in California, and bonding with the land and with the people there, allowed me to open up and to look at a part of myself that I had not looked at before.

AS²: Having been born in California, I’m happy California had a positive impact on you. My son’s name is Avila and my brother had a dear friend in Venezuela who brought back a big poster of the mountain that says El Avila and that was up in his room when he was a child.

LS: You are a mountain, my child.

AS²: That’s funny. A friend of mine, Mamle Wolo, is a Ghanian / German writer born and raised in Ghana. Her father’s language is Krobo, and the term for mountain and woman is the same word.

LS: Oh, wow. I love that. There’s something there.

AS²: I’m just curious. Was your MA in Caracas also in languages and letters?

LS: It was in Literary and Cultural Studies. But many of the theorists were European. That’s what we were encouraged to use when writing essays or articles. Which I think is why I decided to become a writer. Well, I was already a writer. I already wrote. I was being told “why aren’t you using so-and-so’s work? Why aren’t you looking at this?” And I was like, but these are my ideas! I wanted to discuss from an experiential point of view, and that was not acceptable.

AS²: I empathize with that. In the social sciences, we hear “one can’t write this” if it’s not citable, a non-legitimate citation. Unless you turn to qualitative research. At best, this is a way of people longing to have a global theoretical discussion, but at worst it is a new iteration of hegemonic criteria for cultural or literary theory that doesn’t allow one to bring out the language of the mountain. Poet Kamau Brathwaite said, my theory of language is the volcano! I come from an island of a volcano. When he was studying abroad, he defined his own cultural framework for literary theory and used a natural part of the environment to tie onto versus a theorist from a completely different climate.

LS: Yeah, I love that. His poems can be used as theory. They’re just beautiful. And they’re rebellious in the best of ways. I hadn’t thought about Brathwaite in so long. I need to go back and reread him.

AS²: I particularly like his interviews. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve been enjoying these Inheritance of Peace interviews. How do wonderful people, who are good at different things, come to theorize and understand their own lives?

LS: Yeah. They can be so revealing.

AS²: So, it sounds like your poetic inquietudes started way back. I guess it was not just political, or socio-cultural, there was some little thing in you. Maybe that’s “the wild little animal?”

LS: It is! I was thinking about that recently because one of my first connections to poetry was Lorca (Federico García Lorca). Lorca was not a conformist. We had a lot of U.S. influence [in Venezuela] because of the Cold War. There was so much influence in Latin America from the United States, cultural influence. All the Disney stuff for the kids especially.

AS²: Like Ariel Dorfman‘s analysis of How to Read Pato Donald?

LS: All that. My mother was never happy about that. So sometimes I would ask, Oh, can I have Mickey Mouse, whatever. Sheets? And she was like, No, we can’t afford it, but I think it was more than that. I think it was, No, I don’t want that influence on you yet. You can decide later if you want Mickey Mouse. But right now, I’m gonna show you what’s here. Both my parents always said, Before you get to know another country, get to know your own and what’s there.

I remember on road trips, we used to listen to a lot of folk music, and that’s how I learned history about my own country. Not the official history and the heroes and all that stuff, but I learned about place from those songs.

My grandmother had stories after stories after stories of the Orinoco River, and the history of that region which is close to the Amazon. She used to recite the songs, like the “eenie-meenie-minnie-moe,” but in patois. She didn’t say, “catch a tiger,” but it was something else. She partially grew up in Bolivar State. It’s in southern Venezuela.

There was a lot of mining, and a lot of oil workers who came from different countries, especially from Trinidad and the islands. They spoke English but they also spoke Creole. My grandmother didn’t speak Creole, but she remembered words. Even the food my grandfather used to make. He grew up on the coast. He used to make this dish called Queso relleno. That was always a New Year’s dish in my home. It’s Dutch. It comes from the islands, Aruba, Curaçao, Bonaire, and Dutch Guyana which are very close to us. And so, there’s no purity…

AS²: It’s the human migration story.

LS: Yeah, and it’s lovely. People added whatever was available to them. Nothing is really pure, right? There’s all this combination of lovely flavors and spices and ingredients that make up who we are.

AS²: Absolutely. And the songs and the sounds.

LS: Oh, yeah. Calypso. I love Calypso.

AS²: What are examples of the Venezuelan folk music that you listened to? Any particular artist that you remember their names?

LS: Serenata Guayanesa was a quartet from the Guayana region which is in the south where my grandmother lived, in Bolivar State. They harmonized. They played quattro and mandolin and other instruments. They talked about place. They talked about nostalgia for the past before everything became overly populated. They sang to the rivers. They sang to the flowers. It was just gorgeous. And then Simón Díaz, he’s actually well known around the world, because a lot of composers have taken his songs and reinterpreted them. He’s from the Llanos which is on the western side of the country. My grandmother was born there, even though she lived in other places, and my great-grandmother too. They knew the family. She always said Simón Díaz was this wonderful person who had taken their roots and what the Llanos are — the cow being milked, and the little ternero, the baby cow.

AS²: Se llama ternero?

LS: Ternero o Ternera.

AS²: Oh, so cute!

LS: And there’s one song that’s very famous, it’s La Vaca Mariposa. La Vaca Mariposa has a baby and everybody’s fascinated with the baby. All the kids and the animals come to see the baby, but they don’t realize that the baby will be slaughtered. And so the song is about that — all that tension between the romanticization of life in el campo and the reality. They make their living that way. It’s their life, right? It’s not the food industry. Yeah. It was a different time.

AS²: A different time, a different scale, a different relationship. An awareness of life.

LS: Yeah. Certainly.

AS²: When you first said “La Vaca Mariposa,” I thought, how is there a flying butterfly cow?

LS: I know. I think it was her name. She also must have had some kind of spot on her body.

AS²: You mentioned the impact of the Cold War on your family. The Cold War also had a big impact on my family. It affected my grandmother and my father in particular, and when my mother first moved to the United States, she said, “oh, everybody’s afraid. There’s a sense of abundance and a sense of fear.” Because she came here in ‘52. I just wondered if there’s any other things you wanted to mention about the Cold War, because it’s something that we don’t usually talk about, because it’s a little bit scary. There are a lot of reciprocal arguments that were used in the Cold War that are somehow bubbling up again, so I wonder if we should think about it together just for a moment.

LS: There’s a cultural aspect of it. For example, El Cine de Oro Mexicano. The black and white films, Mexican cinema, and all the songs that came from it. That was very idealistic in terms of la pobreza, it’s a virtue and all that. We watched a lot of those films, and that was Mexico’s counterattack on the United States imposing their Hollywood films and imagery on Latin America. And so, we had on the one hand all the Mexican films. Venezuela also had their own films. But at the same time, we had all the influence of U.S. films, because in Hollywood there’s money. Where there’s money, there’s a way.

AS²: And distribution. And a cultural perspective of what is beautiful and what is valuable behind the story.

LS: Exactly. But there was also the political side of it. We grew up under the shadow of the Cuban Revolution, the Nicaraguan Revolution, and there was a lot of hush-hush about it.

We moved when I was about nine. All these buildings were made for university professors and their families, and the idea was that they were gonna have one of the professors teaching us chess, and we had little competitions and things like that, and another one was teaching us how to play tennis. And it was all free. It was all accessible, so that was the point, that we could have access to all these things, music, and the arts and everything. Because all these professors were willing to give their time for the children that were growing in this community. We did have some of that growing up.

But as the neighborhood started to change and shift, we also got a lot of ex-guerrilla people. And they had a very different view of things, but I always thought it was so good to have all of those perspectives in the community. Because my mom, for example, didn’t agree with the guerrilla. I hung out with a lot of kids whose parents were in the Communist Party, or were part of the Communist Party, or had been and so I didn’t see it that way. I was like, these are people just like me. They just have other ideas. Even those who had participated in the guerrillas. I was curious. Why? What did you believe in? They rarely talked about it. But, I also saw the scars, you know, of fighting a fight that didn’t really pan out in the way they wanted it to.

So there were all those contradictions, plus all the immigrants coming from Spain after the Civil War, from Italy after Mussolini, from the Caribbean Islands too because the economy wasn’t great. I also grew up around people speaking so many different languages. I’m not surprised when I hear someone speaking another language, and I just immediately get curious: what are they saying? There was so much richness during this Cold War time, but that wasn’t what was being portrayed. It wasn’t just Russia and the U.S. No, there was so much more. Other countries have been affected by this. All those experiences taught me, there’s always more to the story. There’s not just the version that we’re being fed.

AS²: Absolutely. The human story, the family story. The story of children. Human history is not just the story of the big people in charge.

LS: Right.

AS²: I hope that you’ve had a chance to teach language through a rich Latin American Studies perspective because when you start to riff there’s so much in your mind. There also critiques of the simplification of Latinidad in the United States, and it’s so nice and refreshing to hear your take on it. It’s a very particular creation of the Chamo and Chama identity that we love and are curious about.

Okay, so you were raised in all of this richness. You’re such a globalist. You’ve moved around and learned in so many different places. Studied rigorously, taught devotedly, and also taken a stand for your own voice on the page and in your own self-definition.

What would you say if you were to look back in your family lineage, in your human lived experience, what you’ve inherited and what you’ve chosen for yourself. What is your inheritance of peace? Obviously, Venezuela has been in the news.

LS: Yeah, a lot. Something I always think about is how growing up there was always a crisis. If it wasn’t transportation, you couldn’t find a specific food product. Blackouts. They’ve always been there. Sometimes no water, this and that. However we learned to live with that. This is part of my inheritance of peace, I think. If this is what there is, you take it, because you never know when the next thing is gonna come. And you learn to live with what you have. And you learn to appreciate it.

We didn’t have a yard, but my mother had the most beautiful collection of plants. She would put trays on the window bars with fruit that was left over from whatever we had had, and then the birds would come. And so there was always this connection to the land and to reciprocating. The plants were beautiful because she talked to them, because she cared for them.

And the same was true for my grandmother. Sometimes I would get dropped off at my grandmother’s, and the first thing she would do when waking up and after having her cup of coffee was: we’re gonna go water the plants. We’re gonna go take care of the plants. And I would go with her. I just wanted to play with the hose, but she would just show this is how you do it. Sometimes she would point at something. “Oh, look at how the guava is doing!” and “Look at how the platanos are doing!” and “See how beautiful the leaves are?” There was all this connection. “Relationship” was not just with people. Because, of course, we had gatherings and get-togethers regardless of what was happening, and food was being made, and we found ways to enjoy with those around us. But, also, with the tree that was giving us shade and fruit that we enjoyed once a year.

My great-grandmother always brought different types of birds and she would give some of them to my mom. We had all kinds. We had parrots. We had parakeets. I can remember quails at some point. And then my mom ended up setting them free.

It was that relationality. No matter what’s happening you always will have that. You will have that relationship that keeps you grounded. And you don’t need to destroy something or to impose yourself on anything. A relationship, a reciprocal relationship, makes a huge difference. That is what I consider my inheritance of peace. Even though in my home, I did not grow up in a safe environment. I knew I had other things, other family members, and people I could count on. But I could also go outside and take a bike or skate, and just be in nature, and be happy to find a way to discover something.

AS²: I love that. It’s so beautiful. It’s such a worldview of what is valuable. How shall we spend our time? What is beautiful? What will bring us joy? What will give us a sense of connection? It’s absolutely what we belong to. The natural world. The plants. The animals, birds, and so forth. And this is being taught to you by the women in your life, too.

LS: Yeah.

AS²: There is a lot of privilege that goes on here [in the U.S.} that is just not known to people who have not lived in, or have family in, the exterior. I guess, a lot of people here are not necessarily, in a lived way, familiar with the world economy.

LS: Yeah. Sometimes in the news, they say, okay, this product is sort of running low, and we might not be able to produce it for X amount of time, and then people just go and buy all of it. You know, there is enough. There’s enough for everyone. Why? It’s not just about you having access. We all can have access.

AS²: Sometimes there’s themes in the different Inheritance of Peace interviews that weave in and out. One of the things that Beah Bataku was talking about in her interview is that pressure on access to oil in West Africa translates as what we get to eat for dinner. It’s not just the price of gas. It’s what our meals are made of. This has an immediate impact on hunger. That was at the beginning of the recent U.S.-Israel-Iran War.

LS: And I haven’t lived there for a long time, so I realize I’m looking at it with outsider’s eyes in a way. People talk about the Chavismo and the opposition. No one talks about those who are stuck in the middle. The people who are hungry, who have made a decision to support the government because that is the only way they can survive, or the one way they know how to survive. And I’m not saying the government is right. They have tortured and killed. It’s a dictatorship. At the same time, it’s not as simple as let’s grab this opposition leader and put them in place and that’s going to change everything. Getting rid of one person doesn’t mean you get rid of the whole system. It’s been in place for years, decades. And people’s mentality has changed, too. Morality has changed. Ethics have changed. So you have to also think about, how are you going to work to change the deepest collective fears? Ways of acting, taking advantage, so many things. It’s not a superficial change, that’s not gonna do anything. I understand that people want to have hope, and they should have hope. And that I am in a privileged position to be able to say that because I’m not living there. I also cannot help but look at it with critical eyes.

It is complicated because access is a problem, resources are a problem. Not because there’s a lack of resources, but because they have been mismanaged. Venezuela has everything. They have everything. The oil, for me, it’s the least important part of it. From any kind of food, vegetable, meats, fruits, resources for construction, minerals, water, so many things. And it has been mismanaged, not just by this government. All of the other governments have done the same. The people are always the ones who pay for the consequences of those actions. The word that has been coming up for me is greed. Just greed, greed, greed, greed, take, take, take, take. Not just there. Everywhere. Why? When we have so much, why do we need to take more?

AS²: Right.

LS: In this country too.

AS²: Absolutely.

LS: Yeah.

AS²: It sounds like, when you can say, “I have a critical take. You don’t give a peace prize to a person who’s waged war.” That something in you says, peace is something different. Peace is not a flimsy thing. It’s not a prize. It’s not gained in one act.

LS: Exactly.

AS²: Maybe inside you, you have a deeper definition of that. You already mentioned your inheritance of peace as being, an awareness that we live within a biome. The economy is a part of a larger system called the ecosphere. We are not the only living things. Be good. Be aware of all the other life around us. If you know what peace is not, then you probably have some glittering, emergent definition of what peace is for you. And we might as well dream.

LS: Yeah, yeah.

AS²: So, do you have any words you’d like to say about what makes you know when it is peace?

LS: The word that’s coming up is respect. Compassion and kindness. Because if we can respect other people’s point of views, even if we don’t agree with them, then we don’t need to fight over it. Right? We agree to disagree. Letting others choose, and they live in the way they want to. Letting them make their decisions. Not assuming that you should do this or that to save them from themselves. Playing a god is not peace. That’s what’s coming up for me right now.

AS²: That’s beautiful. And I know you get to do that in your own way, through how you are with your family. How you are with your friends. The kind of learning spaces you create in your classroom, what you do on the page and in your performances and in your literary life. So, I’m grateful to you, your perspectives, and your creative courage. You help me live.

LS: Aw, thank you. Thank you for creating this beautiful space. I love the questions, and I love that we can talk about them in such a wholesome way that it’s not just about the concepts, right? But about how we experience, how we live them. And that’s so important. Because I think peace is a word that gets thrown around a lot. But what does it really mean to each of us, and how do we come to a common understanding where we can all work towards it? And I think that is something that you are doing in this spot by creating these conversations with all those different people. So, thank you for the opportunity.

Biography

Leonora Simonovis is the author of Study of the Raft, selected by final judge Sherwin Bitsui as the winner of the 2021 Colorado Prize for Poetry and recipient of an Honorable Mention at the 2022 International Latino Book Awards. Her chapbook, Waiting for a Ripe Mango, was a finalist for the Tupelo Press Snowbound Chapbook Contest in 2019 and her work has appeared in DMQ Review, The Hopper. About Place Journal, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, Arkansas International, and Diode Poetry Journal, among others. Born in Caracas, Venezuela, Leonora holds a Ph.D in Hispanic literatures from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles. She has been the recipient of fellowships and residencies from VONA, the Poetry Foundation, The California Arts Council, The Poetry Lab, the Vermont Studio Center, and Esperimento Sul Respiro. She is the Currents Editor at terrain.org, and a 2024 Harriet Books Reviewer.

This interview has been edited and condensed. Subscribe to Inheritance of Peace with Amy Shimshon-Santo on Apple Podcasts or on Substack at Warm Blooded Mammal With Hair. Theme music for this program is by Avila Santo. This series highlights survivors, everyday people from across the generations and various walks of life —poets, researchers, shepherds, healers — who discuss our Inheritance of Peace as foundational for a just society.

Amy Shimshon-Santo (AS²): This is Inheritance of Peace. I’m Amy Shimshon-Santo. We’re back with a fresh series that aims to create a culture of peace as a personal and global endeavor. In this episode, just in time for Earth Day, we connect with Deike Peters, a German-American educator, urban planner, and environmentalist. Her parents were children of World War II, and the Berlin Wall fell when she was a teenager. A witness to the reunification of East and West Germany, her inheritance of peace is that “peaceful regime change is possible.” Let’s listen in. . .

[Deike Peters and students Aayusha Prasain, Taiho Higaki, Aakash Baral, Colby Baker, Jenny (Thao-Linh) Vo, Yakubu Mohammed Abass, Khostsetseg (Chloé) Tumurbat, Miyuki Sase, Nala Thomas, Dimpi Lama, Anh Khue Nguyen, Sarah Truong, study the global significance of the Berlin Wall, 2026]

Deike Peters (DP): “Who are you?” always depends on the context where the question is asked. I might say, “Oh, my name is Deike.” Or if I come into a classroom I might say, “Oh, my name is Professor Peters.” I recently introduced myself as a “German-American environmental urbanist.” Which is so funny, because I start with a hyphen, so it’s already a dual identity. And then I’m not even content with describing myself within a single discipline (as an urbanist), but I throw in the environment as well. I guess it’s an indication that we are all multitudes. I’m Deike – and it’s a very unusual name. At least in this country, I often have to just restate my name multiple times for people to get me right. I was named by my mother. It’s a version of a diminutive, a Frisian name. A name that comes from a borderland between the Netherlands and Germany. In a way, it’s an appropriation that my mom just thought was beautiful.

My home region in Germany is an old industrial coal mining region (The Ruhr Valley). I grew up in Post-war Germany. It was a region in decline. Dortmund is my hometown and a place where we’re sort of at the tail end of the extraction that happened through the majority of the 20th century: the coal mining, the steel production. Part of my family were people who came to be part of that era of mining and extracting from the late 1800s on, helping and producing the steel that ‘re-steeled’ the country. Industrialization is at the very core of that part of the family history.

At the forefront of a lot of environmental conflicts these days is, of course, resource extraction. The fact is that a lot of these struggles are global and united. You trace back some of your own biographies, but hopefully at some point there’s a way to connect dots at a more global level. I am thinking about my own history and connectedness of land extraction. Hopefully you have a path in your life where you move from learning and recognition to at some level being part of a solution. It might have been coal extraction. These days lithium mines are at the forefront of what we might have to resist against. Hopefully you get to do something with your life that is still connected to where you come from. Be a lifelong student. Keep learning. Tap into other people’s wisdom. At some point, you’re on the spot for having to help the next generation of young people point the way a little bit.

When I graduated from high school in Germany they asked: “Who do you think you’re gonna be? What’s your plan?” I wrote in the yearbook: “I want to do something with languages.” Which is hilarious, right? Being a planner was not on the horizon. But I think it makes sense because we need multiple languages. I grew up [around] too much silence. A lot of what we need to be able to do as young people is to translate, broaden our ability to express ourselves. So multiple languages were really important to me. Once I felt oh, now I have a second or a third language as part of my arsenal of expression, what do I do with it? This is where my idea to become an urban planner came from. Become somebody who has “real” skills. Looking at a settlement or actual map-making, planning. I didn’t know it was going to be more counter-mapping, ultimately. Languages first, as a means of translating and communicating ideas, and then the planning and plan-making as a more interventionist solution-making, skill-building arsenal. Planning is about who’s making decisions in this world. Who’s empowered? Who’s put in a position of laying out futures for us? I know now it was very naive, but I think this idea of plan making was a way to help inscribe rules into the world. Some of us might have to do this, with hopefully different ideas.

AS²: I feel so much empathy with what you’re saying, so I’m leaning towards the microphone. When you do go through an advanced education in urban planning, seeing the way decision-making is coming down right now is such a shock. Especially if you learn the scientific method. It’s a slower pace of improvisation based on a feedback system, where you make a little move, and then you assess the impact through data, and then you lean towards the things that are working and getting you where you want to go. So, there’s of course innovation and improvisation in it, but there’s also deep reflection and a circulation of ideas and reflection and ideas and reflection that I think are more likely to guide us towards the kind of outcomes we want.

DP: As far as urban planning as a profession in Germany at the time, the discipline was explicitly connected to the ecological awakening that was happening. Growing up in West Germany in the 70s and 80s was a post-war environment very different from the U.S.

First of all, this crazy idea that my parents’ generation was the “Stunde Null” the “zero-hour” generation. The idea that a country, as a whole, can start over. So you have May 8th, 1945, as the end of the war. But then, all of a sudden, you had a new Germany where supposedly “we’re not Nazis anymore, because the Nazi regime is over.” My parents were 5 and 8 at that point.

I grew up in a Germany that was at the center of the Cold War with cruise missiles pointing to East Germany. So the threat of nuclear obliteration is part of your childhood. The Green Party, which was the most progressive political force at the time, is intertwining social progressive ideals with the idea that “we need to think differently about our relationship with the environment.” Environmental thinking as something that was going to be our pathway.

Talk about peace, right? It’s a cold war, we’re not hot. The missiles are not exploding. But if there’s a pathway towards a better future, a better world, a better re-entangled way of being on this planet: ecological thinking and systems thinking were what these planning faculties wanted to think about. My planning education didn’t come out of the modernist, dominating tradition of let’s all build neighborhoods looking from above. The kinds of teachers, and the pathway for an education in urban planning faculties at the time, was very inherently progressive. People who had good community organizing roots, and naive hopes for an alternative future.

AS²: I really appreciate the hopefulness. My mother, who is in her 90s, said “You have to have a romantic idea.” It’s very hard to get anything done, to mobilize things, without a romantic idea. It gives me a sense that we have a very small flash of time on Earth, and we don’t get to see the bigger picture, and things can change. I guess that’s my romantic idea. We’re not stuck, we’re not powerless, even though it might feel that way right now. One of the classic stories that a lot of Jewish people have said is anything is possible if German people and Jewish people can hang out. You’ve been impacted by growing up with parents who were children of war. That reality may have also demanded the romantic, hopeful environmentalist response. We really know how bad it can be so let’s really try for something very good. In terms of an environmental focus as something that can bring people together across regions and nationalities and cultures.

[Remnants of the Berlin Wall at the Topography of Terror. Photo: Deike Peters]

DP: When we talk about any kind of reconciliation, it has to be peaceful so there can’t be war. But it also has to relate to the way that we relate to the more-than-human world. My parents, of course, did not have the luxury of reflecting on the past, or where they come from. My parents’ generation is the generation that had to endure the silence that came after the rebuilding. So my mom would always share with us these very, very strong childhood memories. She was born in 1940, so her first 5 years of her life were bomb shelters and enduring hunger. She grew up with a mother who struggled for them to survive, and with a father who, when he came back from fighting in the war, she didn’t recognize. Her earliest childhood memories were of a war that she didn’t understand at the time. I think more dramatically: a war that was also never explained to her afterwards. Her father never was able to speak about his experiences. The German educational system did not really “talk.” There was not a good way in the 50s and 60s to grapple with the enormity of the Holocaust. My mom was sort of a seeker. She didn’t have a college education. She was always interested in history, but I think she felt — I would say on her behalf — a little bit betrayed. She was not the perpetrator generation. She was the recipient.

Whereas for me, growing up, I had the incredible benefit of teachers that had to be very aware of the “never again” part of history, of the grappling of how could this happen? The 1980s in Germany are that moment where we, as a nation, were talking about, “is there such a thing as collective guilt?” Intergenerational.

For me, it’s really hard to fathom how that’s something that you might lose with the next generation. It’s almost like the shaking off of that weight and the historical responsibility of we as a people must uphold certain values. I realized being a young German in the 80s, you can never be proud of where you come from. You can’t ever wave a flag. You semi-understand. So you create new identities. I mean, growing up European. Being multilingual. Speaking a different language to the point where people can’t pinpoint directly where you’re coming from. So, its very interesting to realize at some point, that that’s not a universal thing that every German generation goes through. But, again, that is something that you have to somehow uphold. Then raising my own children, mostly outside of the country, changes things because it changes them. I eventually created a more hyphenated multiple identity for myself, but they were born into it. Yeah, it’s interesting.

AS²: First of all, now we see that your love of languages is also your precursor of being a multinational, transnational person. The precursor for understanding another way of being is to be able to listen and hear much less speak and converse.

The idea of silence is so fascinating to me because there’s been a lot of silence here. Obviously, the United States was built on all of the genocidal activities that were underscoring the foundation of this country. And when I was studying or living in Latin America, people said, “we understand the United States has a certain relationship to imperialism, and yet we see you as you and not as the government.” And now, with family in the Middle East, I see the negative impact on everyone. I want everyone in the region to have a good life. It is heart-crushing to see so much suffering. Even suffering in the name of the Holocaust, which is absurd to me. My ancestors would never have wanted that to be the outcome of what we went through in Europe. This calls for constant reflection, storytelling, and also staying open. Rather than just saying, all Germans are the same, or all Americans are the same, or all Israelis are the same, or all Lebanese are the same. That’s just foolishness. Don’t we have any authority over what we think, what we do, what we wish for? It’s just very rational and obvious to me not to equate people with their governments. Because we’re seeing how difficult it is to get a democratic process going here in the U.S.

Is there anything else you want to share about the idea of silence? It sounds like you were witnessing the silent generation, and also receiving a different kind of education.

DP: Yeah. How is genocide a repeated occurrence throughout humanity? It is essential to have had human encounters with Others. People who are unlike yourself and who you learn to love, appreciate, and encounter. At its core, and it sounds super corny, the importance of intergenerational, intercultural, and multi-lingual human encounter. Seeing the other. You would hope that empathy is possible across multitudes and otherness. We’re grappling with the idea that there are certain structural conditions that make genocide possible. Genocide is mass murder usually within the context of an oppressive state. There are belief systems that powerful people and structures are able to institute that make mass murder possible. And then there’s an instrumentalization. There’s something that happens. It’s weapons. It’s violence.

But what can break through? What is the other side? What brings a German family to either hide or denounce a Jewish person in the 1930s? What brings you to reaching out or pointing a finger? It’s something in the humanity. In order to be able to understand, you need to be able to listen. So I think at its core it’s communication. That’s what it is. Non-understanding. How do you give someone the means to hear you and to understand? It’s a two-way process, so you have to do the work of making yourself understood. That’s definitely one of these through lines in my life. You need to find some way of clearly articulating ideas. It could be that you need images or tools. Sometimes you just also need to learn who the other person is and not reject that. I’ve also put myself into positions where I needed to challenge, or overcome, that.

AS: I’m seeing that there are so many silences. Recently, Ghana argued in the United Nations for recognition of the holocaust of African people during the transatlantic slave trade. The United States and Israel both didn’t want to recognize that. So, there’s a silencing of what are the facts of history. It’s hard to look at. Part of the value of education is to try and cut through.

The opposite of silence isn’t just speaking out. Maybe it’s also what you were talking about — communication. Because communication isn’t just, I’m going to tell you what I think, and what I think is more important than what you think. It’s actually making myself vulnerable and receptive to learn from a different period of time, a different perspective, and somehow gain a larger analysis and understanding of truth and what good ethical behavior might be at this moment in time.

DP: There is a place for silence too. Listening is silence. It’s when you shut up and you hear the other. Right? Because silencing, of course, is something else. Silencing is a violent act. Silencing is suppression of ideas. And it is absolutely frightening to see how quickly that could happen, and the patterns.

One of the most memorable and important ways was how my high school history teacher encouraged us to understand German history, and of course Nazism and the Holocaust. He started in the 1920s and talked about the structures and the culture of a post-war environment (because there was “The Great War” in 1914). So, a people that wanted to have strong leadership. People very often think the Weimar Republic was this beautiful cultural moment where we celebrate Berlin as the center of the world. What happened in Germany in the 1920s is exactly what happened in this country. The rise of authoritarianism. You want to believe in leadership, but people are being convinced by authoritarian propaganda to fall back on simplistic ideals. The parallels are stunning.

Are we on this pathway of an increased willingness to become violent? Violent suppression — the way that we have just seen in the past year unfolding? Strategic violence. The raids. It is frightening. But silencing is at the core of these things. Silencing whom? It’s the other. It’s diversity. It’s the claiming of dominance. That’s something that doesn’t ever end well.

AS²: What is your inheritance of peace?

DP: I just did this intensive project with students where I took them to Berlin to study the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was 19 years old when the Berlin Wall fell. The idea is that peaceful regime change is possible. The formal marker of the end of the Cold War is the fall. The fall of the so-called Iron Curtain, the fall of the Berlin Wall, a reunification of a country that had been at the very center of the division, of not just the country but the world. Here is the supposedly democratic, capitalistic west, and the communist east. The two systems we have divided the world between. Here is a concrete physical marker that we — the people— are tearing down within a very short period of time. Then we are left with the task of stitching something back together that probably should have never been pulled apart.

The irony is that I wasn’t even living in Germany at the time. I was doing another study abroad, living in France, crafting a more European identity for me. I’ve since reflected a lot on the fact. This influenced how I think about the possibility of a peaceful transition. It’s a given that it is possible to reunite. And you think, that is just right and obvious. I have assembled that, like most Germans of my generation, into an identity as something that’s almost a given. It’s a given that it is possible to reunite.

Once again, we are now at a moment where we realize: no, we’re in danger of losing unity on all fronts. I think this is an inheritance of my adolescence. I came of age, and was choosing my future path of where I wanted to be in the world, at a moment where my own country was in one of its better moments.

It was interesting to take a group of 12 international students, some of them from communist countries to Berlin. Vietnamese students, Nepalese students, students from Ghana, from Japan, encountering the place for the first time. How do people of an entirely different generation, from entirely different corners of the world, encounter that memory as a teaching moment? When, for me, it was a reality that sort of happened to me. I didn’t make it happen.

Yeah. So, inheritance is also an intergenerational project. An inheritance of something that’s given. My inheritance is reunification.

AS²: We’ve had so much harm on top of harm on top of harm, and normalization of that. You see people saying we just need to win by being stronger, by being the bigger bully, by showing more force. I love that your counterpoint to that, from actually having been born into a place that was so deeply impacted by war, is not domination. It is unification. It is the fall of a wall. It is, what are our common points? Which does sound very romantic.

DP: The reality of course is complicated. It wasn’t really unification. In so many ways it was a taking over. Yeah, I don’t want to be misunderstood. I’m not romanticizing what actually happened in the process, or what happened in the years since, and how the country has turned out to be, and how fragmented it is now, and all the problems that came with it. But we recognize the symbolic power of the moment. One of the things we need to hear is that regime change is always possible. Because we think of things as entrenched. So one way of flipping it and reframing things is always to say: no, we can point to the moments where change was possible.

AS²: Just for clarification in our current context, we’re not talking about taking over another country as regime change. We’re talking about taking responsibility for our own spaces, with certain values, and certain actions as regime change. We’re all a part of this since we are wrapped up in a global economy. We are wrapped up in a global war economy. “Regime change” is not, you must change so that I have more comfort, but we must change so that we get peace and sustainability.

DP: To clarify, the Berlin Wall was erected by the East German socialist regime as a so-called “anti-fascist border protection wall”, so it’s the walling in of East Germans.

How was that change possible? It wasn’t because Ronald Reagan just screamed “Let’s tear down this wall.” We needed the Gorbachevian Glasnost and Perestroika. We needed someone to not escalate. We needed someone to not militarily, violently oppress. A quest for freedom and openness. That’s what I mean.

AS²: “A quest for freedom and openness.” I love this. I appreciate you so much. You are such a wonderful presence in my life. I am grateful to you for coming on and sharing your time with listeners, but also for your friendship and neighborliness. Thank you for deciding to be a transnational human being, to speak different languages, connect with different places, and to invest in the next generation. Thanks for sharing about your own legacy, your own origins, and how these lessons have affected who you have become.

DP: I love this project so much. It is kind of amazing where you end up in life ultimately, and how there’s more of a pathway, a red thread, that you realize looking back. I ended up becoming a teacher and a professor at a liberal arts college that is ostensibly built upon Buddhist traditions of peace and reconciliation and disarmament. And I’m neither Buddhist nor Christian anymore. It’s this idea of interfaith communication also. When you really start talking human to human, your faith is not the first thing that matters. You see the greater values shine through in many ways. And then you build community out from that. I have taught so many students. For some of them their faith is a big part of their identity, or it might not be. It’s not the first thing that we have to flag. But in these big violent conflicts that we’ve alluded to, that is something that people foreground.

AS²: In a way, we get to experience something that our ancestors may have thought was never possible, and it’s completely possible. I find myself involved with interfaith work. I love working with the Muslim-Jewish Alliance. It’s so healing for me. It brings me closer to any future of accountability and common care and something beyond Jewish supremacy, or Muslim supremacy, or Christian supremacy. It is just a world of difference. I’m rereading the work of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel now. He was very involved with the Civil Rights Movement, and he had many thoughts about the importance of interfaith communication. That’s why it struck me when you said communication.

I am leaving our conversation with how important communication is. It’s receptivity. It’s mutuality and valuing of a different opinion and a different experience without fear that one will be demeaned or overpowered in some way. I feel like there is a protective quality to friendship, probably because it’s the door to communication.

DP: The really important word that you just used was fear. Fear and faith. True faith doesn’t fear the difference of ideas. I think that’s such a hard thing to understand, because dogmatism is the opposite of that. It doesn’t allow for the difference, or the variety, or for the openness of ideas. So much of war and violence is based on fear of the other. Are you fearing it because it’s challenging your own identity? It’s challenging the way that you live? It’s challenging what you want to believe about the world? I think communication is about overcoming that fear.

AS²: My grandparents on my father’s side divorced, and my grandfather married another Jewish person who said, “I cannot stand the sound of German.” She was so traumatized by the Third Reich that she couldn’t imagine a new relationship to German people post-Third Reich. One of the things that’s so beautiful about a conversation like this is to understand — as these Artemis II astronauts keep on trying to say as they come back to Earth — that our well-being is wrapped up in each other as earthlings.

DP: The blue planet! That’s the other watershed moment, right? I was born in 1970, so the picture was already there. We already had the incredible benefit of looking at the blue planet from space. That’s about framing and perspective. The zooming in and the zooming out. And a part of what we’ve talked about is, when you get to see something up close you encounter it. But stepping back, or zooming out and gaining perspective, is just as important. Hopefully the astronauts bring back the message that from far away these things look a lot more together.

AS²: For sure. But also, we don’t even have to be astronauts. I feel that just with you. I’m sure you do this in your life, in your research, in your classroom, and in your friendships, so thank you so much.

DP: Yeah. Embodying things rather than just spelling it out. Maybe that’s the last thing about silence. Quieting the mind, or silencing. Silencing is an act. But silence can be meditative and convey a lot of understanding without the words.

Additional Resources:

The Berlin Wall: Encountering a Memorial Site of Global Significance

Deike Peter’s Academic Website

“Urban Nature in Need of Ecological Restor(y)ation”

“Igniting Passion for Urban Nature”

This interview has been edited and condensed. Subscribe to Inheritance of Peace with Amy Shimshon-Santo on Apple Podcasts or on Substack at Warm Blooded Mammal With Hair. Theme music for this program is by Avila Santo. This series highlights survivors, everyday people from across the generations and various walks of life —poets, researchers, shephards, healers — who discuss our Inheritance of Peace as foundational for a just society.

Dear Ones,

Please save the date for the LA BOOK LAUNCH FOR PIECEWORK at Beyond Baroque on Saturday, May 9.

At its core, the book is about family and community. So, we’re welcoming the book to its hometown in exactly that way. I’ll read and offer insights about the book. Reva Santo will share highlights from her evolving Matriarch Project, and Avila Santo will share a percussion and spoken word performance that recently debuted at the Botanical Gardens in New York. The wonderful Betty Avila will facilitate a panel discussion that is sure to be wild, revealing, and fun.

In the spirit of service, I’ll also offer a community workshop on Writing With Family and Community Archives on Saturday May 9. Come break open the book together and let’s feel rejuvenated in excellent company. These Spring 2026 events will be held at Beyond Baroque (681 N. Venice Blvd, 90291). Thank you for your presence and support!

• WORKSHOP: Sat. May 2, 11 AM / Writing With Family & Community Archives

• LA BOOK LAUNCH: Sat. May 9, 1:30 PM / Piecework by Amy Shimshon-Santo

Register Here

LA Book Launch: Piecework

Piecework is a collection of intergenerational essays on how people create possibility and place through the arts, culture, and heritage. Women and children play central roles in these ethnographies and autoethnographies. Their stories and struggles, ideas and breakthroughs, affirm the exponential power of families, schools, and communities to shape their own destinies through creative action. We learn that change is a collective endeavor, shaped on the ground, with the people we know and the communities we cherish.

With Amy Shimshon-Santo, Avila Santo, Reva Santo, and Betty Avila

Publisher: Unsolicited Press; Distributor: Asterism

BIOS

Amy Shimshon-Santo is a writer and interdisciplinary artist born on Tovaangar land (present-day Los Angeles). Her work—woven through poetry, essays, and community-centered art—moves at the intersections of memory, place, and change — tending to the fragile, luminous threads between personal history and collective healing. She is the author of three poetry collections, a limited edition chapbook, and an essay collection. Her most recent works are Piecework: Ethnographies of Place (Unsolicited Press) and Random Experiments in Bioluminescence (Flowersong Press). Amy’s poetry appears in Prairie Schooner, Tikkun, ArtPlace America, ASAP/J, Zocalo Public Square, and more. Her essays live in academic and public spaces alike: GeoHumanities, UC Press, Urban Education, SUNY Press, Public!, Journal of Writers’ Project Ghana and more. Amy edited anthologies and special issues for UC Press, Los Angeles Public Library, Braille Institute of America, Illinois Open Publishing Network, Libretto Magazine in Nigeria, and Revista de Crítica Cultural in Brazil. A dedicated mentor and cultural weaver, she has been a guest artist with UNESCO (Mexico), Pa Gya Lit Fest (Ghana), Lagos Int’l Poetry Festival (Nigeria); university communities including York University (Canada), University of California Santa Cruz, University of Maryland, University of Boulder Colorado, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Mexico), Universidade do Estado da Bahia (Brazil), and Universidad de las Regiones Autónomas de la Costa Caribe Nicaragüense (Nicaragua), and art spaces including the Autry Museum, Metro LA Arts, Self Help Graphics and Art. She catalyzes global conversations on the Inheritance of Peace podcast. Nominated for an Emmy Award, a Rainbow Reads Award, Pushcart Prizes, and Best of the Net, she was a finalist for NightBoat Poetry Prize. She has been a Writing Fellow at the Idyllwild Writer’s Week (2025), and received scholarships from the Community of Writers (2020, 2024). Throughout her life in art making and teaching, she’s returned to the belief that arts and culture can cultivate awareness and sustenance across generations.

Avila Santo is a multi-disciplinary artist specializing in music and sound. He uses rhythm as the foundation and guiding philosophy for his music compositions, writing, image making and performance work. He is interested in the ways that drumming deepens our relationship to the natural world, diasporic movement and to non-linear time. Avila has had his music commissioned for projects with A24, LACMA, HBO, Sony Music, Ghetto Film School and Creative Capital amongst others. He has collaborated with other artists such as Khalil Joseph, Terence Nance and Allison Saar. He has also been a recipient of multiple grants, fellowships and awards including the Pioneer Works Artist Residency, the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs Artist Residency, Sony Music Emerging Composers Fellowship and was a semifinalist for the Sundance Composer’s Lab. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Fine Art at USC, and graduated with honors from Berklee College of Music with a B.A in Professional Music and Latin Percussion.

Reva Santo is an LA-born filmmaker, writer, and artist of Afro-Brazilian and Jewish descent. Reva’s storytelling is defined by her ability to uncover the emotional pulse of her inquiries, translating them into transformative, nuanced stories. Reva’s work is grounded in earth wisdom, eco-feminism, and explores the complexities of diaspora. Her visionary work has been recognized by the NALIP Diverse Women in Media Scholarship, the Vibrant Cities Arts Grant, and Panavision’s New Filmmaker Program Grant. Most recently, she directed and edited a Lyric Video for esperanza spalding’s song, Não Ao Marco Temporal, in support of Brazilian Indigenous land rights. Reva’s films have been showcased at film festivals and art fairs across the country—including PRIZM Art fair, LA Municipal Art Gallery, PAFF, SQFF, and more. She graduated in Film Studies from Columbia University, where she was awarded the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts for her script Ash(é), and the Henry Evans Travel Fellowship. Reva is also the co-creator of Honey & Smoke, a community arts practice creating intentional dialogue and community spaces around the most pressing themes of our time.

Betty Avila (Panel Moderator) is an arts and social justice leader with a career spanning community building, youth empowerment, and cultural activation. She has held positions at cultural organizations ranging from grassroots to institutional spaces, including the Getty Research Institute and The Music Center. Betty previously led Self Help Graphics & Art, an organization with a 50-year legacy of empowering Chicana/o and Latinx communities through art. Currently, she serves as Program Officer at the Perenchio Foundation, continuing to support Los Angeles County’s cultural sector through grantmaking. Betty serves on the boards of Little Tokyo Service Center and LA Más, and has been a guest speaker for prominent organizations including the Ford Foundation, Getty Foundation, and the Smithsonian. She holds a B.A. in Literature from Pitzer College, an M.A. in Arts Management from Claremont Graduate University, and was a 2008 Fulbright Fellow to South Korea.

Workshop: Writing With Family & Community Archives

Here’s your chance to experience a generative writing workshop that delves into family and community legacies! Please come with any images, artifacts, or oral stories you wish to play with on the page. This workshop will be hosted in person at Beyond Baroque and facilitated by Amy Shimshon-Santo. Register here.

“No One Should be Afraid of the Sky,” Collage: Amy Shimshon-Santo.

CREATING A CULTURE OF PEACE

Dear Ones,

Please receive my good wishes for your thriving, especially in these tumultuous times! My guiding aim right now it to create a culture of peace. I started the year with two creative assignments that are collective in nature because culture is a co-creation process. I want to let you know about two projects I’ve been working on, and a special local project for Firebirds.

1. In Every Generation, An Anthology

2. New podcast Inheritance of Peace

3. I continue to collaborate with artist Alma Cielo offering storytelling and ceramics community classes for Firebirds (people impacts by the 2025 fires) through her 1000 Voices Project. Reach out, or register and come through if this would be good for you.

1. IN EVERY GENERATION, AN ANTHOLOGY

We invited writers, poets, artists, and healers to share work in a global anthology called In Every Generation, An Anthology to be published in 2027. I am co-editing this work with the wonderful Leonora Simonovis.

Call for Submissions: In Every Generation

Peace is a quality of relations we need to work towards in every generation. Unsolicited Press is seeking bold, original work for an upcoming anthology exploring works that speak to the ways we inherit and carry forward peace, both as a daily practice and a way of living in good relationship with the world around us. We are looking for essays, poems, and/or ritual practices that offer pathways for collective dialogue and that continue to build on inherited legacies of peace. Some questions the editors are interested in are: How is peace passed down in your culture/family/community?, How do you honor your legacy of peace?, How have you created communities of feeling that sustain peace and caring for each other? We welcome submissions in multiple languages. For works in indigenous and creole languages, please provide an accompanying version for reviewers in English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French.

Convocatoria: En cada generación, una antología

La paz es una cualidad de las relaciones que debemos promover en cada generación. Unsolicited Press busca obras originales y audaces para una próxima antología que explore obras que hablen sobre cómo heredamos y transmitimos la paz, tanto como práctica diaria como forma de vivir en buena relación con el mundo que nos rodea. Buscamos ensayos, poemas y/o prácticas rituales que ofrecen vías para el diálogo colectivo y que continúen construyendo sobre los legados de paz heredados. Algunas preguntas que interesan a los editores son: ¿Cómo se transmite la paz en tu cultura/familia/comunidad?,” ¿Cómo honras tu legado de paz?, ¿Cómo has creado comunidades de sentimientos que sustentan la paz y el cuidado mutuo? Aceptamos trabajos en varios idiomas. Para obras en lenguas indígenas y criollas, por favor, proporcione una versión adjunta para los revisores en inglés, español, portugués o francés. Nuestro objetivo es crear una versión en audiolibro y solicitaremos grabaciones a los autores participantes.

2. INHERITANCE OF PEACE PODCAST

If you subscribe to Warm Blooded Mammal With Hair you may have noticed a string of posts featuring different people’s perspectives on their Inheritance of Peace. It is common for history to be taught as a string of perpetual wars. I was born into a family that is committed to peace. My worldview was forged from this core value. I learned this from my father and grandmother who stood for peace even during times of war.

Launching Inheritance of Peace is about shifting the focus toward a culture of peace and creating opportunities for deep listening with people from various generations, professions, and geographies. I hope the podcast inspires empathy and awareness in the human family.

Below you will find links to the episodes currently available. The versions on Warm Blooded Mammal With Hair include condensed and edited transcripts, resources, and links, prepared with love for you along with the audio show. If you prefer a fully audible experience, subscribe to the program on Apple Podcasts and share it with your circles.

Trailer for Inheritance of Peace

Episode 1: Margarita Leon

Margarita Leon is a poet, educator, and mother. She says, “I have dedicated my time and conscious effort to praising my mother’s heritage through my artistic voice. My mother’s inheritance was our Otomí roots, the language that she taught me. She raised me from the most humble corner, the economically poorest, in the semi-desert region of Mexico in the state of Hidalgo historically marginalized by the power structures that govern our country. A very large migration story runs through me, one that has been very sad, but at the same time has been the engine of my interest in these themes.” (Audio en español. Transcripts in English y español.)

Episode 2: Beah Batakou

How does one go about creating a culture of peace when we grow up inside social systems we did not author that are often violent or unfair? In this episode, we hear from Beah Batakou — a poet and attorney based in Accra, Ghana. Peace making requires qualities that she learned from her mother and grandmother like “steadiness” and “strategic calm.” For Batakou, creating an inheritance of peace means transforming survival into structures for flourishing, and having the disciplined endurance to bring them into life.

Episode 3: Mahnaz Motayar

How can ancient Persian history reveal enduring legacies of peace — even during a time of war? In this episode, we listen to Dr. Mahnaz Motayar, an Iranian-American writer and neuropsychologist with nearly 50 years of experience innovating creative therapeutic processes and guiding mental health education.

Episode 4: Paul and Michaela Shirley

Creating a culture of peace can begin with the first people we know — our family. This episode with Paul and Michaela Paulette Shirley focuses on familial support. Michaela’s significant work in Indigenous Planning is shaping what is possible in community development, educational policy, and ethical research. Paul comes from a long line of Diné sheepherders. Tune in to listen to a father and daughter speak about lessons learned from family, our relations to the land and livestock; and the value of discipline, work, and protecting peace at home.

Episode 5: Deike Peters

In this episode, just in time for Earth Day, we connect with Deike Peters, a German-American educator, urban planner, and environmentalist. Her parents were children of World War II, and the Berlin Wall fell when she was a teenager. A witness to the reunification of East and West Germany, her inheritance of peace is that “peaceful regime change is possible.”

Episode 6: Leonora Simonovis

In this episode, we speak with Leonora Simonovis — poet, editor, professor, and mother. Simonovis traces her Inheritance of Peace to early life lessons of ingenuity and gratitude that she learned during her childhood in Venezuela. Her stories reveal deep empathy for human and more than human life. She highlights the importance of “relationality” between people (and our many cultures) along with plants, animals, and the land. Simonovis advocates for rejecting greed and cultivating mutual respect as the foundation for working toward peace.

Episode 7: Pranidhi Varshney

In this episode, we enjoy a conversation with Pranidhi Varshney. She is a mother of three, and the founder of Yoga Shala West, an accessible Ashtanga Yoga space, where people seek balance through the daily practice of “skill in action.” Having immigrated to the midwestern U.S. as a child from India, she’s become an expert at swimming between the poles of here and there, motherhood and community life, personal awareness and being a part of positive change. Her Inheritance of Peace draws from yoga philosophy, Gandhian principles, and the example set by her parents. How can we cultivate joy in our relationships while being of service? How can even our strongest actions be guided by love?

Gratitude

Thank you for reading and listening! Feel free to reach out with any questions you may have. If you are inspired, support our endeavours as a paid or free subscriber, or through a charitable donation.

Meanwhile, please take excellent care of yourself and your loved ones.

Gratefully,

Amy

Creating a culture of peace can begin with the first people we know — our family. Today’s episode with Paul and Michaela Paulette Shirley focuses on familial love and support as an Inheritance of Peace. Michaela’s significant work in Indigenous Planning is shaping what is possible in community development, educational policy, and ethical research. She’s the daughter of two phenomenal people: Paul and Dolly Mae Shirley. Paul comes from a long line of Diné sheepherders and Michaela is an urban planner and doctoral candidate in American Studies. In this interview, Paul and Michaela, reflect on life lessons from Isabelle Shirley — Paul’s mother who lived for 99 years. They speak about lessons learned from family, our relations to the land and livestock; and the value of discipline, work, and protecting peace at home.

[Paul Shirley standing with his mother Isabelle Shirley. Photo courtesy Michaela Shirley.]

Michaela Shirley (MS): I am Michaela Paulette Shirley. My clans are Water Edge, born for Bitter Water. My grandparents are of the Salt and Coyote Pass clans. I am originally from Kin Dah Lichii, which means Red House in northeastern Arizona, located on the Navajo reservation. I am so happy to be here. Thank you! I’m joined by a very special guest who is very important. I’ll let him introduce himself.

Amy Shimshon-Santo (AS²): Yay! Great.

Paul Shirley (PS): I was born and raised as a sheep herder. I’ll be turning 73 next month. This little bordertown we have is along the I-40 New Mexico borderline. That’s where we’ve mostly been going to get our stuff, which is 45 miles back towards Arizona, towards Window Rock, where we come into. We’ve been at a bordertown all our lives. With my five daughters, and so many grandkids, we had to travel to Phoenix, Tulsa, Seattle and places like that once or twice a year. That’s how we come to be. Still having my grandma’s herd of sheep, which my mom took over. So, recently now, I have it, with 30 heads (of livestock).

AS²: I’m so glad to be here together. Mr. Shirley and Michaela are some of my favorite people in the world. Thank you so much for making time to be together. The next question is about what you get to do. That might be a bit different for both of you. For Paul, you mentioned sheep camp and sheep herding, and Michaela is into research and studies. What do you get to do with your life force?

MS: Okay, well, I’ll let my dad go first.

[Paul Shirley seated beside his wife Dolly, their children standing in a row behind them, on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Photo courtesy of Michaela Shirley.]

PS: All our grandkids are pretty well taken care of. So we hardly have any time with them just once in a while. Like, summertime, there’s maybe a few days. So that’s one good thing. We raised our girls to know how to take care of their own kids instead of the grandma or the grandpas doing the job for them. We’re less stressed that way. That’s what the kids like to come back to. The grandkids.

AS²: Do you want to say a bit about your grandma’s herd of sheep for people who haven’t felt what it’s like to herd sheep?

PS: Well, my mom was the only one that didn’t get her education. Her siblings, younger brothers and sisters, all went to boarding schools or wherever but she never went to school. That’s why my grandmother gave the Sheep Livestock Permit to her to take care of alongside us — being me, my two brothers, and two sisters. Five of us. We maintained my mom’s business of sheep herding. That’s primarily what our girls did, was participate with my mom during the summer at the sheep camp farther into the mountains. My mother, all she did was walk, walk, walk after the sheep all her life. That’s what put her to the age of 99. So she finally passed last year. All she stood for was disciplining. She never gave up on discipline. That’s why now, that’s what I stand with. Being able to discipline people that don’t have the right track of mind.

AS²: Mhm. And know the difference.

PS: We were totally able to get rid of people, like, what you help us get rid of that time you visited. I admire how you traveled by yourself to Albuquerque that time. All by yourself. Yeah. All our girls were like that. They know how and manage to travel by themselves. Especially our first one, the head of the girls, now had to go back to Seattle by herself. She’s a hustler like you on the highway, on the open road.

[Michaela and Atlas Shirley.]

AS²: When you gotta get someplace, you just gotta get there.

PS: Yeah. They all like doing that because they don’t want to be pampered by anybody else. They like to do it themselves.

AS²: That’s a lot of strength and will.

PS: Yeah, that’s what I’m proud of. Me and the mom (Ms. Dolly Mae Shirley) we’re proud of our kids and grandkids, and three great grandsons.

AS²: I know they’re proud of you too.

PS: Yeah.

MS: Dad, did you want to tell how you start your day, everyday?

PS: I start my day with hot coffee in the morning.

MS: He makes the best hot coffee.

PS: Talking about sheep, we butchered yesterday and we had roast mutton on the grill. There were 20 people. Mostly the relatives. That’s what we experienced. And Michaela enjoyed her mutton.

AS²: I bet.

[Paul Shirley seated beside a photo of his grandson Atlas. Photo courtesy of Michaela Shirley.]

MS: Yeah. I’m the family member that has always taken the higher education route. So my daily life is very different, but every step along my journey, my family has always been very supportive of me. Whether they were offering their prayers for me, for success, or even monetarily. And now these days helping to take care of my 3-year-old when I need to do some stuff for school. But all along the way, my family has been very, very encouraging and supportive. My mom and dad have always been the ones to pay for my application fees: my undergraduate, my graduate, and now my second graduate degree for my Ph.D. program. They have always made their mark in that very special way for me. My parents and my family have always been very supportive and loving in that way. And even now, they’re always asking me questions about what the whole process is like. And that was the beauty of the morning that my dad and I got up early, after they brought home my son from him being two weeks away from me because I had to finish my comprehensive exams. My dad was the one that made coffee and was curious about what the process entailed. I showed him what I was working on at the end of this exam. I have this framework I’m trying to build, and it’s tied back to schools and how we are trying to build better communities in our reservation. Because our reservation is homelands that are very, very important to us. Thankfully, we’re an Indigenous tribe that still retains its original territories. That’s not the case for some other Indigenous peoples who’ve been removed.

PS: Relocated.

MS: Yeah. But, for us, thankfully, we are where we are from originally. So, all of my work goes back to trying to figure out strategies and ideas for how to go about our future planning. And it all does start with the teachings from my late Nali, Isabel Shirley, who is my dad’s mother that he spoke very admirably about. She comes up a lot in our stories, even in our daily lives. She was always so strong mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and there was nothing that could keep her down. So the essence of who she is as a person, I really want to keep honoring and respecting that in my work. At the same time honoring and respecting my parents, and the lands that we definitely still have. My dad plays a really big part of staying connected to the land by having a grazing permit which is how Navajos have to go about their sheep herding these days. Having to inherit a sheep permit.

AS²: Do you want to say any other words about the land that you belong to or are connected to?

MS: Well, for us, and a lot of other Diné families that practice this tradition of burying your umbilical cords and your placenta in the land. That’s something my mom and dad still do to this day for all of their grandkids and great-grandkids. No matter where you go in the world, you will always remain connected. That’s home. And that is important, because for a lot of Diné families, we end up having to out migrate to places far beyond our reservation territory boundaries. Like my dad saying “Seattle, Tulsa, Phoenix.” Those are distant places that we’ve had to go to in order to secure the best opportunities for ourselves.That’s also why the planning work I’m trying to do is ensure that we don’t have to leave our reservation in order to pursue those great opportunities. I don’t think I would have that sort of connection, or passion to our homeland, had it not been for my parents dropping us off during the summer for sheep camp.

PS: For my part, pertaining to land, we were taught not to be claiming lands. Primarily, on my mom’s side, through her culture, how she really disciplined us was never to say “this is my land.” That’s not proper for her. Not a human being. But livestock that graze on the land. That is primarily what I stand with.

AS²: You don’t own the land.

PS: Yes. All she would say is: “What’s 6 feet under and so many square measurements, that’s where your land is.”

[Dolly and Paul Shirley, Michaela Shirley’s parents.]

One thing my mom stood with was: Be a man. Be a woman. Be respectful. She did not like domestic violence among families. She pretty well maintained discipline when her in-laws came about (In-laws will come in peace or us [kids would] never be there). Try to deal with positivity, and not be too negative about anything. Just be happy and have a good time with your family. That’s about it, and that’s how our grandkids are raised. They’re taught respect.

AS²: Our last question is do you feel you have an inheritance of peace?

PS: I would have to have an interpreter with education like Michaela to understand in my culture what that question is. A prime example of understanding the words . . . Most people, the majority of people, do not know the meaning of words that they talk and deal with every day. Especially the work, W-O-R-K.

AS²: You had mentioned that your Mom was walking for most of her life. I thought, is it work or walk? She was walking with the sheep for most of her life, right?

PS: Yeah. And able to understand, talk with the sheep and the dogs here. I was left alone at 10 years old with the sheep in the mountains because my mom had to participate in ceremony. And she never [had to] worry about me. I was able to talk to the sheep and the dogs and the cats. Day and night, especially at night. And I know how to deal with being scared.

AS²: How do you deal with being scared?

PS: Just tough it out. I know crying ain’t gonna solve that problem. You just have to talk to your dogs and the sheep. Get to know even the birds, or whatever animal is living out there. Ants or squirrels. Chipmunks. You just live with them, that’s it.

AS²: Live with them.

PS: One thing I forgot to tell you was that in the early morning hours at dawn, people would get thrown out. Get their sheepskin taken out from under them and get chased out. And the reason why was because of the corralling of Navajos, to participate in the long 300-mile walk to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. They used to call them “police.” The teaching was to outrun the police. “Run hard.” That was stamped deep into us, our generation. I think that’s where it ended. But before, my mom and my grandma were deeply more into that — outrunning the cavalry. And that’s why people learned how to just be quiet and to outrun any danger that comes forth. That’s primarily what the teaching was, to just to run hard in the morning and run hard every day — which was exercise, I guess.

AS²: Absolutely.

PS: All that leisure that people have to this day. Looking at television. That’s what my main teaching from my mom was: Don’t listen to any gossip. Don’t be greedy. Don’t be jealous. The Ten Commandments of the Bible, those were her teachings the majority of the time. Not to giggle or laugh in any public places. Act like a woman, not some wild girls. That’s how she disciplined the girls. And us men, the main thing she taught was not to run away from your kids. That was her primary teaching. Don’t ever gossip. Don’t ever do stupid things. You’ve got your five senses. Your ears, tongue, eyes. Mainly the ears. You have to listen to what you’re being taught. That was one goal that she lived with. Stay in shape. Get up early. Don’t gossip too much.

AS²: Love it.

PS: That’s about it. Hopefully I’ve covered everything.

[Dolly and Paul Shirley with their grandson Atlas, Michaela Shirley’s son.]

MS: I would say to help bring our conversation to a close. I really didn’t know what to think about in terms of your question “what has been my inheritance of peace?” For me, it’s very important that we amplify peace that comes in the form of love and support in your family, and with your family, and you have to protect that as much as you possibly can.

So, in terms of, the intergenerational peace. Peacekeeping, or peacemaking that my dad was talking about, started with my Nali [Isabelle Shirley] because she was in a domestic violence situation with her children. So it’s also the reason why she didn’t want to remarry, like my dad says, with another man after her husband passed away. And then there’s the second peacemaking with my dad and his upbringing and the importance of just trying to maintain that for his family.

I always take a lot of great pride in knowing that I had a childhood where I never saw my dad hit my mom, or them yell, or get angry at each other. Our home was always peaceful, and it was always clean. There was always food at home. There was always a lot of great childhood memories in terms of that peace that was there. So, now I’m the third generation of that peace, and my son is the fourth. I too want to provide him the most peace I possibly can in our home because it’s what he’s going to remember when he’s older. It’s what he’s going to carry on with him and his children later on. There is so much violence, hate, and negativity, that my dad is saying, is out there in the world.

If you can have a life that’s peaceful, it’s your home. That can come within four walls. It can come within the territories that make up our territory. But yeah, peace. Where I find it is at home. And, like my mom says, “It doesn’t matter where your home is. What matters is where your family is.” We have family in a lot of places, so should I ever feel like I need to get out of any kind of danger, I know I have a strong family network that I can rely on to do that. And I think that’s pretty much how I would want to round out our conversation, as well as focusing on the peace of the home.

[Amy and Michaela in Albuquerque shortly before Atlas’s birth.]

Resources

Dine’é Bikéyah, N. D., Charley (Navajo Nation), E. V., Lopez-Huertas (Maya K’iche’), M. J., & Shirley (Navajo Nation), M. P. (2025). Restoring our tomorrow: planning for who we are. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 21(3), 540-549.

M. P. Shirley and K. Jackson, “Shí Yázhí ‘there is money underneath your fingers,’” Et Al: New Voices in Arts Management, 2022.

Biographies

Paul Shirley is a loving father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and a husband. He was born in Ganado, Arizona and resides in Kin Dah Lichii, Arizona on the Navajo Nation. Paul is Bitter Water clan born for the Coyote Pass clan. His maternal grandfather is of the Long House Hopi clan and his paternal grandfather is the Big Water clan. He is an intergenerational sheepherder and a retired heavy equipment operator. He enjoys ranching, herding sheep, movies at home and in the theater with his beloved wife, Dolly Mae Shirley.

Michaela Paulette Shirley is a doctoral candidate in American Studies at the University of New Mexico. She identifies with the Water Edge and Bitter Water clans, with her maternal grandfather from the Salt clan and her paternal grandfather from the Coyote Pass clan. She was raised in Kin Dah Lichii in northeastern Arizona on the Navajo reservation. With over ten years of experience in Indigenous planning, community development, community engagement, qualitative research, conference planning, and technical assistance training and workshops. She is currently serving as the KSU Tribal TAB Program Manager.

This interview has been edited and condensed. Subscribe to Inheritance of Peace with Amy Shimshon-Santo on Apple Podcasts or on Substack at Warm Blooded Mammal With Hair. Theme music for this program is by Avila Santo. This series highlights survivors, everyday people from across the generations and various walks of life —poets, researchers, shepherds, healers — who discuss our Inheritance of Peace as foundational for a just society.

WALKING IN PEACE DURING WAR

How can ancient Persian history reveal enduring legacies of peace — even during a time of war? In this episode, we listen to Dr. Mahnaz Motayar, an Iranian-American writer and neuropsychologist with nearly 50 years of experience innovating creative therapeutic processes and guiding mental health education. Memories of her homeland provide a sense-memory of peace through the beauty of ancient architecture, mouth watering sweets, and the enduring poetry of legendary Persian poet Saʿdī (1210–1291) who inspired humanist ideals underlying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) centuries later. Listen to Motayar and learn from her fresh perspectives on the importance of valuing peoples, cultures, and land.

[Tomb of poet Sa’adi Shirazi (سعدیه) located in the city of Shiraz, in the province of Fars, Iran.]

Mahnaz Motayar (MM): My full name is Mahnaz Motayar. However, my nickname that I have grown up with is Naz Motayar. I’m a human being. I’m an immigrant. I have been in the United States for almost 50 years. And, my passion, and my vocation and my avocation has always been working with people to make life a little bit easier for them in whatever way possible with the circumstances that they are in. And I’ve been fortunate to be doing that, also, for 45 years.

Amy Shimshon-Santo (AS²): What do you get to actually do with your life force?

MM: My life force is truly about people, and community. My life force is about bringing peace, comfort, and ease wherever I am and with whomever I am. My career started as a public health educator, and then I taught at various universities for a number of years and then I started my practice as a clinical neuropsychologist. I loved all those pieces of my life, and I see that I’m a person who works better without borders. And, institutions right now, both academic and medical establishments, there’s a lot of borders. Not honoring the diversity of human beings, not just ethnic diversity, but every person has different desires, different strengths, different weaknesses. Unfortunately, in these establishments these days, you cannot acknowledge those. The focus of my life right now, is, promoting health and wellness through music and community.

AS²: May I ask you if you were in charge of how public health education was unfolding, if you were the author of that space, what it would look like?

MM: It would be very creative. It would create space for people to realize their own potential rather than just learning some information and applying it to the entire population. It would be very respectful, creating a space for people to transform themselves rather than just be lectured at, and saying you gotta take this protocol and apply it to everyone who has this illness. Or, if you’re teaching this course, you have to teach this and this. More of an experiential, interactive, engaging process, rather than just information and lectures.

AS²: How did you figure that out?

MM: Creativity was always a part of me. I always believed that creativity will allow us to reach each other in a more intimate way. If I could use an analogy, Amy, it would be like if you take a frozen food and just defrost it, then everybody can do that. But to cook?

AS²: Ha! Right. “But to cook.” I’m so glad to be here with the real chef.

MM: It’s an honor to be interviewed by a real chef.

AS: Do you have a favorite food ?

MM: I like sweets. There’s some Persian sweets that are really…

AS²: Which one?

MM: I love cream puffs.

AS²: Yes.

MM: I like Napoleon’s.

AS²: Yes.

MM: I can do without food…

AS²: …but not your sweets.

MM: In response to your question, I was just thinking, you and I can pick up the same recipe and it can come out totally different because of our own unique energies, because of the resources available to us. Because of so many other elements. We are to cook. We are to make food that is not tasty at all, and then play with it, and make it better and better, until we reach that place where we say, “Oh, this is it.”

AS²: I see. So health —mental health, physical health, education, public health education — should have that kind of openness and creativity.

MM: Absolutely.

[Image depicting Saʿdī (seated left) and Abu Bakr ibn Sa’d (seated right). Made in Mughal India, dated 1602.]

AS²: The next question is about your connections to place. What lands do you feel a sense of connection to?

MM: I was born in Tehran, Iran. And, to this day, my connection is to that land. I live in San Jose, California. I’m also connected to this land. But the place where I feel whole, and where I feel healed, and, strangely enough, where I feel at peace is still my homeland.

AS²: Absolutely.

MM: It’s very strange to feel at peace with a place that is totally out of peace.

AS²: I can understand that though because the un-peace isn’t natural. What I mean to say is, to say: “I feel at peace with my place where I was named, I was made” makes sense to me— even if it’s a place that right now, is not at peace. Because that’s not its authentic state. What is the peace of Tehran? What is that to you?

MM: The piece of Tehran is the hospitality of the people. The peace of Tehran is people are willing to help and reach out to each other. The peace in Tehran is amazing beauty in buildings that are thousands of years old. The peace in Tehran is generosity of its people. The diversity and a strong culture that is based in community.

AS²: I’m so glad to hear that that’s your definition of beginning. That you were born into a place of welcoming and community care and ancient architecture. And that that place is Tehran.

MM: One of my favorite quotes that actually brings me peace is “when we replace an I with a we, even illness becomes wellness.”

AS²: Yeah.

MM: And whenever we are held, and cared for, and we were made to feel safe, there is much more potential to feel at peace. If god forbid, I consider you my enemy. How can I feel safe or at peace if I have an enemy?

AS²: Right. We’ve been in a writing group together, and it’s been so wonderful for me just to hear your work, and you’ve heard my stuff, too. And I thrive so much on just knowing that you have a foot in a region where my mother’s family is. That a lot of people wouldn’t even be able to imagine. And that we share this understanding of, like, how do you create a space of wellness? How do you create a space of peace? And I believe that people have always been doing that somewhere, and we don’t hear enough about it.

MM: People are doing it here. And we don’t hear about it. They’re definitely doing it in the Middle East right now.

AS²: Yes.

MM: And we don’t hear about it, because there is a segment of society that does not want people to be together. They make profit by separations, by divisions, by disentanglements. And I think it has always been that way. The intensity of it has changed. And, my prayer is that this intensity will wake us up.

AS²: What would you like to have awoken?

MM: That we are all human before we are anything else.

AS²: Absolutely.

MM: I mean, if I don’t know where you’re from, Amy, and you don’t know where I’m from. How would we treat each other?

AS²: Well, we might treat each other from the face value of how we behave, what we say, how we show up, what we feel. And, you know, we know, specifically. You were born in Tehran, my mother was born in Jerusalem as a Jewish person. And I delight in you. And I always love when it’s your turn to read. I love to listen. And I can’t see why people couldn’t come to that kind of a place with people from different nationalities, if they knew each other, if they actually got to know each other at their best.

MM: I was working at the VA hospital and this young man came to my office and looked at me straight in the eye, and said, “I cannot work with you.” Right. It was our first session together. And I said, “I respect that. It would just help me greatly if you tell me why. Because you don’t know me, and I don’t know you.” And he said — it was during the Iraq Desert Storm War — he said, “You remind me of the people I had to kill.” I said, “I would be happy to go and arrange for another therapist to see you. And I would appreciate a chance if you just sit and have a dialogue together. But if that’s really hard we don’t have to. And he agreed. And we sat down. And we had the most amazing conversation. I’m sure it must have been very difficult for him. But he gave it a chance. And the only reason, probably, that he did give it a chance is because I gave him freedom to choose. We are to give each other freedom. In everything. In conversations, in interactions. Freedom. Respect. Empathy.

AS²: The benefit of the doubt? A clean slate, just a fresh beginning. Right? I’m going to meet you in this moment. And not with this legacy that my family, or myself, may be carrying. We sometimes turn to ancient stories as an excuse for bad behavior now. Instead of taking responsibility for good or bad behavior now. And we are ancient people. But we’re also people who I would hope that one thing we have in common is that we want futures for our children and our grandchildren, and for the land.

MM: The land is never gonna forget.

AS²: The land is never gonna forget.

MM: History may forget. People may forget, but the land is never gonna forget.

AS²: Forget what we’re doing to it now, what people are doing to it now.

MM: Or what happened to its people.

AS²: Tell me more. My first reaction was, Oh, it’s the oily rain, it’s the bombing of the oil fields, it’s dropping toxic ships to the bottom of the sea. What are all the aquatic life saying? It’s all the other living things in the region. But maybe you have something else in your mind.

MM: I consider land a living thing. A living being. And land, like our body, does not forget. Our body remembers what we forgot. I see the land as that kind of a space.

AS²: I agree.

MM: In these busy, chaotic, complex, rushed lives that many of us are living right now. We don’t even pay attention to what we are stepping on. And now, with what’s going on and different ideologies, and different experiences, we’re stepping on each other with our words. By the way, I think we have an acronym. And I’m gonna use it. We were just, we were just talking about it, and we said, respect and freedom.

AS²: Respect, empathy, and freedom are the true referees of a fair game. Oh, I’m so with you on that. I’m so with you on that. I understand that when I ask, “what is your inheritance of peace?” it almost might seem innocent, perhaps. But, I personally have chosen to not reach for hatred, not reach for war. I must have become this way somehow, and I assume I’m not the only one. So, I’ve been asking people. You’ve already said it’s Tehran, which is really beautiful to hear right now, that your memory of that place for you still feels so rich and so full.

MM: In order to accept that inheritance of peace. I am to be at peace. If I’m not at peace, that inheritance has gone wasted. You know, it’s kind of like we all inherit a lot of things in our lives, but we don’t use it all. We don’t want it all.

AS²: Right.

MM: For me, my inheritance of peace. Have come from my family, my community in Iran, even to this day. You can’t imagine when we can connect. Which is very difficult right now. A friend of mine, who is our age, and her parents are in Iran. Right now, they are in their 80s. And she was in tears two days ago. Both parents are involved in social work and NGOs and he said, “My 86-year-old father was putting me at peace.” This is someone who has been imprisoned five times. This is someone who is being bombed right now. And he calls his daughter and puts her at peace. Don’t worry about us.

AS²: Having family in the middle of a war zone though, they do do that. My family does that for me, too. I know they’re not sleeping. I know they’re hiding out, they’re underground, they’re in bomb shelters, and they always want to make sure no one else is worrying about them.

MM: Because taking care of each other is at the foundation of both our cultures. That part of me is the culture of sanctuary.

AS²: I relate with that word a lot, too. And I have said, I want to be a sanctuary.

MM: I’ve traveled back home many times since the regime was changed. And this is my personal experience, I’m not saying it’s that way for everybody.

AS²: Sure.

MM: This is just my own personal story. At times when I went back home, I literally was a foreigner. I didn’t know how to do things. And everywhere I went I was treated with such integrity.

AS²: I have to ask how your people are there right now because we haven’t really talked about it. You talked about your friend. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.

MM: I don’t know how most of my people are right now. Because there is no connection.

AS²: Right.

MM: There’s no internet connections, and phones are… If you can purchase cards, which are expensive, then you can call out from your home. But not everybody can afford that. I have relatives who are not affluent. And even meeting their basic needs right now, I can’t imagine how they are doing that. I am a student of many teachers back home where I have no idea where they are because we were meeting online. Everybody there is our people. Everybody in Israel is my people. Everybody in Lebanon is my people. Everybody in the U.S. is my people.

AS²: Absolutely.

MM: When we say, “my people” the meaning of it is not an ownership.

AS²: It’s not a wall. It’s not like my people that are not yours, or your people that are not mine. In the language of recognition of international human rights, it speaks directly to the human family. And it’s sad to me that the human family had to put themselves through such torturous conditions to get to that awareness which is who we really are, in my opinion. But I’m sad for so much suffering. I wish we could have that understanding without the suffering.

MM: I feel like there will always be suffering because without it, we human beings won’t learn anything. It’s sad to say that. My wish is: let this suffering bring us together. Are you familiar with that poem, from Persian poet Saadi? That’s on top of the United Nations building.

[“Bani Adam” written by Saʿdī (1210–1291) woven into a Persian carpet that hangs in the United Nations-New York]

MM: I know it in Farsi.

AS²: Let’s hear it in Farsi.

MM: “We are part of each other.” [Naz reads poem “Bani Adam” by poet Saʿdī]

MM: Isn’t it fascinating that a poem from Iran, is on top of The United Nations Building?

AS²: Well, the poetry from the region. is ancient. And the whole world turns to that. The whole world will quote Rumi, or will quote Hafez. But then, do we really study each other? Do we really study each other’s poetry, each other’s culture, each other’s roots? No.

MM: And we don’t necessarily have to “study,” but listen and ask for the stories like you do. You know, I may not have time to go study your culture.

AS²: There’s so many aspects of every culture. Both you and I are educated women, and we’ll probably go to our grave not knowing all the things we wish we could learn. At least I feel that way. Maybe it isn’t just knowing, it’s listening and enjoying and valuing.

MM: It’s valuing! How come you and I? I didn’t know you, you didn’t know me, and now you’re on my list of gratitude.

AS²: And you’re on mine.

MM: When this war started…

AS²: Yeah.

MM: I am blessed to have many wonderful Jewish friends. And as soon as the war started, all these messages: “We’re still friends, right? We’re still friends, right?” And I’m going like why wouldn’t we be?

AS²: Oh, Naz. When I was in Ramat Hasharon in October 2023 one of the first people who texted the cousin I was with was her friend from Iran. They had met when they were both on vacation where they had started talking and learned that he really loved this one particular Israeli artist, but he didn’t have access to listen to them because of blocks. It just so happens that my cousin knew the artist he liked and called the artist on the phone so they could talk. They became fast friends. On October 7th, this Iranian friend texted my cousin right away. She said, of all the people who could reach out to me now, this one matters most. Is there anything else you would like to share? Anything that you pull from for strength? You once said to me something to the effect of “you can’t live with the war inside you.”

MM: It’s not my war. And the war…wars. They enter those of us who have deep compassion and empathy for others. And, but these wars are to stay outside of our bodies because when they’re in our bodies, we’re not well. The wars around the world. Yes, I may sit here, I may smile with you, We can chuckle, we can do all of that. But inside of me, I know that my wonderful cousin may not have food to eat tonight. That’s how war enters me. I don’t know who’s alive right now? My mother-in-law passed away, and we didn’t know because there was no connection. We found out, four days later that she had passed away. I have friends here who have mothers back home that are alone and they’re elderly. They’re all my people.

AS: Of course. I’m not sure if everyone understands who doesn’t have family somewhere else, or a family somewhere else in a place that’s effected by war. You can’t just find them, you can’t just go. You can’t just bring them here. You can’t just go in. You can’t just go out. There should be, I believe, more respect for immigrant families that have to negotiate this kind of thing because the distancing is dehumanizing. The boundaries and borders are dehumanizing, and it’s a lot to carry. How do you process an experience that is inherently toxic or negative and harming and somehow not come out the worse, come out the better? You’re a healer. You’ve studied mental health. You’ve taught mental health. You’ve treated people who have had to live and experience war. Do you have anything you would like to share about choosing to bring your peace with you instead of other choices that we have?

MM: It goes back to that life force that you were talking about a little while ago. If that life force is diminished, we first are to heal that life force. Connect with it. Allow people to feel it again. Just the fact that we are alive. For those who still have the will to live in light of what is going on. That life force is still there. The light is on, even though dimmed. And to get to that life force. I cannot tell you how many patients over the years I have seen where my ethnicity becomes the entire focus of the session.

AS: What?

MM: Yeah. But I’m not interested in war.

AS: This is a really troubling thing. There’s too much storytelling about war that keeps it in place. That are fictions to bring people into nodding of the head that it’s okay. I think if we dehumanize whoever this is happening to, or we also say the land has no value. What you just said is really sad to me. It’s not okay to not know a place and to believe the worst of it.

MM: We both have been in education. Education often is about right and wrong, correct and incorrect. You answer correctly, you get a good grade. You answer incorrectly. You’re left behind. When people tell me the things that they do, that you’re talking about that’s “not okay?” Oh. I don’t tell them it’s not okay.

AS: Because you’re a better… You’re a therapist!

MM: Outside of a therapeutic session, even if you and I had a disagreement. I can say it’s not okay for me. But I cannot say it’s not okay for you. Because as soon as I say that, we have entered a different field.

AS: When you spoke about the person who said, “You cannot be my therapist because you look like the people I had to kill when I was a soldier.” My first reaction was different than yours.

MM: And that’s the thing, my friend. We are all different. We all have had different experiences. We all are living different stories. It’s like the universe is a big library and we are each a book in that library. Some of us fit into a section. And some of us are having a hard time finding a section. What I am leaving with from our conversation — which I’m very grateful for — goes back to that REF (Respect, Empathy, Freedom). I pray for enough empathy to understand the person who hates me, who disagrees with me, who wants to kill me. That has happened, too. Because something, somewhere they picked up that made them who they are.

AS: I think you must have been and continue to be a great healer and therapist, because you have so much more compassion than I know how yet to generate. I don’t want to live with hate and I don’t want to normalize hate. And you are saying, “but I want to learn from it.” Because it has been your job, in a way, to understand the human mind. That’s an elevated state.

MM: I have relatives who have been educated in the United States. And they are physicians and engineers and lawyers, and all I’ve heard from them for years is, “Oh, these Jews, these Jews.” And one night, I was sitting with them. And I go, “I’m really curious, what have “these Jews” have done to you. You are such a smart, talented, caring person. What is this? I wanna know.” He said, “When we were growing up, when I was a kid. I was told, ‘watch out for the Jewish people. They will suck out the blood out of you.’”

AS: Right. Yeah, that’s an old anti-Semitic trope.

MM: And I looked at him and I said, “and you’ve carried that?”

AS: I know, if I could only show him the jars of blood I have hiding in my closet!

MM: And also I said, “You know I can’t change you. But I can choose not to listen to you.”

AS: Well, I’m with you on this. With my privilege of being not under missile fire, what kind of ethical communication do I want to have? When we were together last time, I wrote about an experience with this wonderful Jewish-Muslim Alliance, and how it felt to hear the call to prayer in Arabic inside of L.A.’s oldest synagogue. At first I was cynical that this was never gonna work. Then a young woman, who is Saudi, came over and sat next to me, and we had Iftar together. She had never been inside a synagogue before and was thrilled. I felt a kind of relief. Peace is the most important thing I could possibly imagine. Peace as a prelude to actual coming to know the human family, and having a deep love and respect for who we are in all of our broad array. I don’t see how the path society is on now will take us anywhere better.

MM: Maybe we are all to have the conversation: “How do I walk in peace in a war zone?”

Biography:

Dr. Naz Motayar is a healing advocate, and a medical psychologist supporting individuals with challenging medical conditions to return to the healing path. Born with a physical difference she knows and promotes the healing path as a process of integration and illumination, personally and professionally. She has developed and taught numerous courses on healing through community and creative interventions. She has served as medical staff at several hospitals. Her work emphasizes the necessity of honoring relationships with all beings to promote individual, communal and planetary healing. She is best known for bringing joy, vitality, inspiration and enthusiasm to the healing process through creative approaches. Healing is her passion and life’s purpose.

Resources:

Follow Naz on Substack at Naz’s Substack

Naz and Amy met in a writing circle taught by Deena Metzger. Follow Deena’s substack Desperate Love Letters to a Wounded Earth.

Read more about the 13th century Persian poet Saʿdī

Read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

This interview has been edited and condensed. Subscribe to Inheritance of Peace with Amy Shimshon-Santo on Apple Podcasts or on Substack at Warm Blooded Mammal With Hair. Theme music for this program is by Avila Santo. This series highlights survivors, everyday people from across the generations and various walks of life —poets, researchers, shepherds, healers — who discuss our Inheritance of Peace as foundational for a just society.

PEACE AS ENDURANCE

How does one go about creating a culture of peace when we grow up inside social systems we did not author that are often violent or unfair? In this episode, we hear from Beah Batakou — a poet and attorney based in Accra, Ghana. Peace making requires qualities that she learned from her mother and grandmother like “steadiness” and “strategic calm.” For Batakou, creating an inheritance of peace means transforming survival into structures for flourishing, and having the disciplined endurance to bring them into life. Let’s jump right to learn more.

Beah Batakou (BB): I consider myself to be a woman of many faces — something of a jack-of-all-trades.

Amy Shimshon-Santo (AS²): And a master of many.

BB: I consider myself a dual cultivator, particularly in relation to my professional life. I am a lawyer by profession and I am also a poet. I cultivate both practices simultaneously, always trying to understand how poetry weaves into the law, and how the law in turn, intersects with poetry.

Beyond my professions, I am also both Beninese and Ghanaian. I rarely identify myself as simply Ghanaian, even though that is the orthodox expectation where I come from. In my community, lineage is patrilineal, so people often say that you belong to your father’s family. But I was not raised by my father’s people. I was raised by my mother and her family. And the world I grew up in carries many influences that are not strictly Ghanaian. Because of that, I cannot confidently say I am only Ghanaian. I am also Beninese, and that heritage has shaped me in important ways. Before colonial borders were drawn we were part of a continuous cultural space anyway. Despite differences in ethnicity and tribe, people lived within overlapping worlds and shared practices, so the distinction has never felt absolute to me.

Much of my work, both as a lawyer and as a poet, is concerned with inheritance. I often write about spiritual inheritance, cultural inheritance, political inheritance, and bodily inheritance.

I come from countries that have been shaped by trade, by missionary presence, and by colonial administration. At the same time, they have also been shaped by resilience and by the quiet labor of ordinary domestic life. My writing, and even my practice of the law, sits at that convergence.

I have always been interested in what it means to grow up within systems that existed long before you arrived. Many of my poems engage with Catholicism, gender, and economic constraint. I often speak about gendered expectations, religious systems, and poverty—about the structures that shape everyday life. I try to understand what it means to grow up within these pillars of society, and to develop a language capable of interrogating them without flattening their complexity.

I also have a deep affection for what I call chaos, though I do not mean it negatively. I think of chaos the way one might look at a child’s scribbles. There is a kind of beauty in that disorder. It is a convolution of things that do not neatly fit together, and I find that compelling. For me, that kind of chaos represents tension. I often feel a surge of joy when I can inhabit that tension and create something from it.

Growing up, I was very much a church girl. My childhood was shaped by catechism, rosaries, and prayer camps. At the same time, I grew up aware that these structures often carry violence alongside the comfort and solace they provide.

Despite that, I was raised by very strong women—my mother and my maternal grandmother. Their endurance was not always described as strength, and the things they survived are not experiences we would ordinarily romanticize. But I see their lives as a form of profound endurance, and that is the strength I recognize in them.

My life has also been shaped by place—by the sea, by heat, by dust, by classrooms and offices. All of those textures find their way into my poems. In some ways, they also find their way into my legal writing.

Since last year, I have become increasingly attentive to the idea of the body as an archive. The manuscript I worked on at the Watermill Center in New York explored this. I was trying to understand what it means to think of the body as something that stores history, how trauma and devotion leave inscriptions on flesh, and how memory and experience travel across generations through the body itself.

In many ways, I see myself as someone trying to reconcile reverence and rebellion within the same breath.

AS²: There’s so much happening in what you’re describing. I was also raised at a kind of crossroads — between legal ideas of justice, the frameworks societies create to keep people safe, to establish precedents, and to organize collective life — and the artistic space which is deeply concerned with culture-making. Even though I come from a different part of the world, your language of reverence and rebellion feels very legible to me. So does your affection for chaos. Sometimes things do need to be shaken up. Not in a destructive way, but in a way that reveals where power sits and how it operates. Your work seems to do that—pointing toward power from different angles. And you’re clearly not owned by anyone but yourself.

My second question is this: how do you spend your life force? What kinds of things occupy your time and energy?

BB: Yes, definitely. When you mentioned “life force,” the first word that came to mind was ambition. But I don’t really think of life force as ambition. This year especially, I’ve found myself in spaces where people say, “You come across as a very ambitious person. How do you do that?” And the truth is, I’ve never really thought of myself that way. I tend to think more in terms of energy, or force.

When I reflect on what I get to do with my life, I think about the accumulated charge of my experiences. Those experiences didn’t break me, but they marked me. That charge includes grief, anger, discipline, faith, and a great deal of doubt. It includes desire, fatigue, and hope. When I write, those charges become legible. A lot of what flows out of me is rooted in those emotional and spiritual registers, and sometimes it might appear heavy. But I don’t consider myself a pessimistic person. If anything, my professional training—especially as a lawyer—has taught me to see what could exist but does not yet exist. That orientation naturally brings grief, anger, doubt, desire, and fatigue into my work. I tend to gather all of those forces under a larger structure that I call survival.

The ability to transform expressions of survival into structure is really what my purpose is about. Many of us—especially women, and particularly women of color—inherit systems that we did not design. We inherit patriarchal authority, religious hierarchies, and economic precarity. These systems exert pressure. They shape us and, in many ways, attempt to contain us. What my work allows me to do is metabolize that pressure rather than simply carry it. I don’t want to carry that pressure unchanged. I want to transform it. What I do feels like a kind of conversion. I convert silence into speech. I convert confusion into image. I convert memory into form. And through that process, I also refuse simplification.

There’s always a temptation, especially when writing about faith or violence, to reduce things to a single narrative. To choose between condemnation and devotion. Between one side or the other. Between black and white. But the force that drives my work—the transformation of survival into structure—allows me to hold nuance. It allows me to hold reverence and critique at the same time. So I can love the ritual that raised me while still interrogating the harm embedded within it. I can love being Catholic and still say, “This is wrong. This is painful. This is what is happening.” In doing that, I’m able to honor my ancestors without romanticizing their suffering.

In many ways, this practice keeps me balanced. It’s a discipline that helps me live my life with a certain steadiness. Staying on that path requires constant revision—of my work, but also of myself. Every day I learn something new. And what I write, at any given moment, is simply the best expression of my life force that I can produce at that time.

AS²: Well, that was definitely a poetic response. There are lines throughout it that reflect a poetic mindset. At the same time, your work clearly extends beyond the page. You also run an educational organization focused on menstruation education for women and girls (@HappyMonthlies). And you stepped forward to write and contribute to a national report for the United Nations on the state of women and children. So alongside your creative writing, you are also active in the public sphere—working on women’s rights and menstrual health advocacy. In other words, your writing takes many forms. Some of it is poetry. Some of it appears as formal reports. Some of it is written as policy briefs or legal documents.

BB: Yes. I did contribute to what we call a mid-term sub-periodic review, which has since been published. The report is available on the website of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights under the NGO mid-term submissions to the Universal Periodic Review. You can access it here: UPR NGOs Mid-term reports | OHCHR. If you navigate to the Ghana section on that page, you will see the reports there in full. It was a collaborative effort, and I remain grateful to everyone who contributed to the work. Beyond that, I write poetry. Much of my life and work begin from a simple set of questions: What systems have we inherited? What are those systems doing to our bodies? And where do we go from here? That orientation is why my work often circles back to human rights. Ultimately, these questions return to the human being and to dignity — human dignity, but also the dignity of the environment, and our place within the wider universe. They raise questions about our responsibilities to ourselves, to one another, and to the world around us. That is the space I write from.

AS²: Yeah.

BB: I think of myself as a woman with many outlets. There are many ways to carry a message, and the outlet itself doesn’t define the message. If you’re familiar with the Bible, the Apostle Paul once said, “To the Gentiles, I became as a Gentile; to the Jews, I became as a Jew.” I often think about my work in a similar way. To a European, I can be European. To a Ghanaian, I can be Ghanaian. What matters to me is that the message travels — that people are able to understand it, live with it, feel it, and nurture it in their own contexts.

AS²: Beautiful. When you describe yourself as a church girl, it reminds me of the time I had the opportunity to visit the Elmina Castle with you and walk through the dungeons. The architecture of that place stays with you. Beneath the castle are the dungeons where people were held during the transatlantic slave trade. Nearby are burial grounds connected to that same history. Then, within the structure itself, there is the church. And above that, the residence of the official who oversaw the entire economic system of trading human beings. What struck me most was the vertical layering of it all. The roof of the dungeon is the floor of the church. The roof of the church is the floor of the governor’s quarters — the space where the person responsible for this system lived. Standing there, you can’t ignore how those layers physically embody a certain history: faith, power, commerce, and violence literally built on top of one another. And yet, when you speak about being formed within the church, you also carry a critical awareness of those contradictions.

[Beah Batakou, Amy Shimshon-Santo, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, Pelu Awofeso.]

BB: There are aspects of my faith that have been genuinely helpful — parts of it that I continue to carry with me and integrate into my life. At the same time, embracing those parts does not mean that I suspend my critical eye. I can hold gratitude for what has nourished me while still questioning and examining the structures that produced it

AS²: That sensibility feels particularly important at a moment when the world often seems intent on turning people into enemies of one another — reducing everything to a simple “me versus you.” There is a constant pressure to oversimplify human beings, to flatten our identities into opposing sides. What you’re saying pushes against that. You’re insisting on complexity. You’re saying: I am many things. I contain multiple histories, influences, and ways of speaking. I can move across spaces and communicate with different people without abandoning myself. That becomes a powerful stance against oversimplification and stereotyping. It asserts that human identity is not fixed or singular, but expansive and capable of holding many truths at once.

BB: Yeah, I remember that day at the castle. I had been there several times before, but that visit affected me differently. It struck me in a way it hadn’t before. I suddenly felt the contradiction very sharply — that the same people who came preaching salvation were also participating in the very violence their message condemned.

That memory helped clarify something about my own practice. My work is about transforming survival into structure. Those are two very different states. There is a difference between simply enduring something and actively shaping it. Many of us grow up inside frameworks we did not author. Patriarchal authority may define what a girl’s body means before she has the chance to understand it herself. Religious hierarchies may prescribe obedience before inquiry. Economic precarity can compress choice long before aspiration or ambition has the space to form. That is the kind of pressure I am referring to. It is social, moral, financial, and emotional all at once. If it remains unexamined, that pressure accumulates. It settles into the body as tension, silence, and repetition. That is what I mean by carrying pressure. When we carry it, we internalize it without altering it. It becomes posture. It becomes self-censorship. It becomes inherited scripts we perform unconsciously.

What we must do instead is metabolize that pressure. Metabolism implies transformation. The body takes something heavy or raw and converts it into usable energy. I remember you saying something like that when we left the castle—that we had to do something with what we were feeling. We asked ourselves what could be done with those emotions.

In many ways, that question shaped our conversations afterward. We began talking about how to transform those feelings into something usable, and poetry became one of the tools that allowed us to do that. Through language, lived constraints and difficult experiences could be placed into form. That is what I mean by metabolizing pressure. Once language enters the picture, the experience is no longer simply endured. It can be examined, ordered, and reframed.

When I talk about chaos or tension, I am really describing survival. Survival rarely arrives in a neat narrative. It appears in fragments: a rule you were taught, a silence you kept, a fear you never quite named. Structure, however, is deliberate. In a poem, I choose the line breaks. I decide what repeats and what is withheld. In a legal opinion, a report, or even a witness statement, I decide what belongs and what does not. I decide whether the voice is kneeling or standing—whether it speaks with authority or from a place of vulnerability. Those are formal decisions. They represent a reclaiming of agency. The experience no longer dictates the terms entirely. I do. That is what it means to convert silence into speech. Many systems—particularly hierarchical ones, including religious structures—depend on quiet compliance. Transforming silence into language disrupts that expectation.

AS²: Yes, political ones rely on that as well.

BB: Yes, exactly. In many ways, all of these systems depend on quiet compliance. What my practice — both in law and in poetry — tries to do is interrupt that quiet. But it doesn’t interrupt it by shouting indiscriminately.

I often think back to a period when I was an active protester with the Economic Fighters League. The movement has some parallels with the Economic Freedom Fighters associated with Julius Malema. In Ghana, the group organizes demonstrations and forms of resistance against what we perceive as undemocratic government decisions. At times, the strategy involved using shock value—creating disruption in order to force attention. But I also noticed that those actions were consistently labeled as illegal or indiscriminate. That labeling began to stay with me, and eventually it became one of the reasons I stepped away from that form of activism. I started to feel that language, in that context, was no longer doing the work it was meant to do. The conversation would collapse into simple accusations: this is illegal, this is reckless, this is indiscriminate. And once those labels are applied, the substance of what is being said often disappears.

That experience pushed me toward a different kind of practice—one that does not shout but articulates. One that names. Because naming shifts power. When you are able to name something precisely, you begin to move the balance of power. The terms of the conversation are no longer entirely dictated by someone else. So part of my work involves transforming confusion into image. Many of the pressures we experience are diffuse and difficult to describe. When you give them an image, you give them contour. You stabilize an experience long enough to examine it. That is what I mean by transforming survival into structure. I am not writing, or practicing law, simply to vent emotion. I am trying to organize experience into something shareable, something intelligible, something deliberate.

When people encounter my work, whether it appears as poetry, a report, or legal writing, they will often see inherited systems being held up, tested, and reconfigured. The goal is not to erase what happened, or to deny the pressures that shaped us. It is to change our relationship to those pressures. Instead of remaining subjects of those systems, we begin to interpret them. And interpretation, in itself, is a form of power.

AS²: To speak in this way reflects a kind of deep knowing. What you’re expressing comes from time, attention, and presence. It requires a sustained relationship with language, with history, with memory, and with the present moment. It also grows out of engagement with activism and lived experience.

I recognize some of that path in my own background. At one point, I believed the most direct way to improve life was through physical structures—through architecture and urbanism, through designing spaces that would simply make life more livable. But over time it became clear that power does not step aside simply because a good idea appears. There was too much abuse of power embedded in the systems themselves. Partly out of frustration, and partly from a personal need to metabolize pain, I had to confront what it actually takes to build a good life. I realized I cannot even imagine a good life, let alone live one, unless I feel some measure of power within myself.

In many ways, that is what this project is trying to address. We are acknowledging that we have been shaped by structures that are violent, oppressive, and unfair. These systems often make life harder rather than easier, especially for women, for children, for families, and for people who are outside the financial elite.

As a woman, as a mother, as a thinker, and as a creative person, I am constantly asking: How can our actions begin to generate a different reality? What can we build now that might move us toward the future we actually want? This is why it feels like the right moment to turn toward the idea of the Inheritance of Peace. The question is whether we can have the audacity to ask for a form of peace that is not passive or lethargic. Not powerless. Not complacent. But a peace that carries strength, intention, and the capacity to reshape the conditions we have inherited.

BB: Amen.

AS²: I’m really trying to co-create some kind of form that is life-giving rather than life-denying. In the United States, we’ve seen a series of high-profile killings carried out by the government. What I struggle to see is the process of what replaces a bad system once it is removed. Many people agree with the idea of getting rid of what is harmful. But there seems to be much less attention on the question of how we create the good.

I am very curious about that question of the good. I believe we wouldn’t even be here if there weren’t some inheritance of goodness, of peace, that we could build upon and give form to. And I’m wondering if you might share your sensibility about what an inheritance of peace looks like. You engage with the domestic sphere, but also with public policy, international policy, and even energy policy. So at whatever scale you wish to approach it, I’m very interested to hear how you think about this idea of an inheritance of peace.

BB: I often speak about an inheritance of survival. If I were to articulate an inheritance of peace, it would not be very different from the inheritances I usually write about. For me, peace is not simply the absence of conflict. My inheritance of peace is the discipline of endurance. I come from women who carried immense responsibility without drama or spectacle. They endured scarcity. They endured silence, social pressure, and spiritual contradiction. Yet what I inherited from them was steadiness.

At the same time, I also inherited unrest. By unrest, I mean the awareness that certain structures are unjust. So peace, in that sense, is active. It is not passivity. It is a kind of strategic calm that allows critique to be precise rather than explosive. It is the choice to create rather than merely inherit.

I also connect this idea to the environment. When I speak about the world — about trees, landscapes, and even non-living things — I am thinking about how peace is rooted in our relationship to place. In the language of citizenship, I might say I am connected to Benin and Ghana.

But beneath that layer, I am connected to coastal landscapes and mountainous terrains shaped by trade, migration, and resource extraction. The sea is central to my thinking because it holds memory. It holds both departure and return. My maternal grandfather was a seaman, so whenever I think about the sea, I think about him. I think about how my mother’s family migrated to Ghana.

The sea carries the residue of histories that were not always consensual. The coastline is not abstract for me. It is formative. That awareness also reminds me that land is never isolated. Even when I am physically in West Africa, I am not outside global currents. Conflicts far away reshape realities here. When I look at events such as the war between Israel and Gaza, or the geopolitical entanglements involving the United States, I see how those forces move through supply chains and energy markets.

In Ghana, those currents are very tangible. They affect oil prices, supply chains, and the broader energy sector. They determine whether electricity is stable, whether supply disruptions push us toward shortages, whether people worry about spending nights in darkness because something has shifted somewhere far away.

These global entanglements also shape diplomacy and politics. A statement by a president, a shift in alliances, a diplomatic posture — any of these can alter relationships between countries and create uncertainty. They ripple outward into economic conditions and into the emotional climate of daily life.

In Ghana, fuel prices shape everyday survival. They affect transport, food prices, and what ends up on people’s tables. They influence whether a family can afford a full meal or whether they rely on something as simple as gari and water.

Beyond those material realities, global rhetoric also shapes the emotional atmosphere of the world. It determines the news we hear, the conversations we have in churches and offices, and the ways power is discussed, justified, or mourned. Coming from a region marked deeply by colonial borders and external interventions, I cannot watch conflicts elsewhere without recognizing certain patterns. The language of defense and retaliation, the narratives of security and entitlement. These frameworks are familiar even from a distance. Conflict changes the psychic atmosphere. It sharpens questions about belonging, dispossession, nationalism, faith, and survival. Questions that might once have felt distant suddenly become personal. A simple question like, “Where are you from?” can take on a new weight. It reminds me how easily land can become sacred and weaponized at the same time.

AS²: You know, sometimes I wonder whether it is really about the land itself, or about what can be extracted from it. Because if our concern were truly for the land, it would be difficult to justify an entire industry built on missiles, explosions, and destruction. The toxicity left behind — in the water, in the soil, in the air — suggests something else is driving it. Those forms of damage seem inseparable from the war economy. The exploitation of land and the machinery of conflict often move together.

BB: They do, they do. And of course, when I speak about land in this context, I’m using the term broadly. I mean everything connected to it — its extraction, its use, the economies built around it. It’s a wide frame. As both a poet and a lawyer, I can’t ignore that reality. I can’t ignore the violence carried out in the name of land, the violence done to the land itself, and the violence justified as necessary for it.

AS²: Yes. You know.

BB: That tension concerns me deeply. When we have these conversations, you could feel how emotional it is for me, you know?

AS²: Deeply, deeply. Last time I was there with you in your land, there was also the toxic waters movement happening.

BB: Yeah—illegal mining, what we call galamsey, exactly. The term comes from “gather them and sell.” That’s why I say land is really a continuum. Even though I’m in West Africa, whatever is happening elsewhere still affects us here, because in many ways the same dynamics are unfolding, just on a different scale or plane. The crisis of Galamsey shows that clearly. People fight over land and water bodies in the name of extracting gold. Rivers are poisoned, forests are cleared, and communities are destabilized. When I look at that, I can’t help but think about conflicts elsewhere where land is fought over through missiles and war. The forms look different, but the underlying logic is not so different. At the end of the day, the conflict keeps circling back to the environment — who controls it, who extracts from it, and who bears the cost.

AS²: Just to bring us toward a sense of conclusion today, and I know our relationship and these conversations will continue. First, I want to thank you for who you are, for joining this conversation, and for the work you are doing across so many fronts: as a culture maker, as an attorney, and as an advocate for land, sustainability, and for the rights and well-being of women and children in your region. In moments when things feel overwhelming, it’s important to remember that refusing to obey can also mean refusing to follow a broken analysis — refusing to repeat actions that we already know will produce harmful and non-generative outcomes.

Before we close, I’d like to ask if you have a final thought—perhaps a nourishing idea—that you would like to leave with us. Earlier, you spoke about the inheritance of peace as something that holds conflict, analysis, and survival all at once. If there is a single seed of an idea you’d like to leave us with, perhaps we can end there so that people have space to really hear it.

BB: Yeah, definitely. I’ll end on this note: my inheritance of peace is the capacity to continue. Peace is often imagined as the absence of conflict. No argument. No visible disruption. But the lineage I come from understands peace differently. In our lives, peace has rarely meant ease. We did not inherit stable systems. We inherited colonial afterlives and gendered expectations. There was always something pressing in on my ancestors, and on me. And yet, despite all those pressures, they continued. They woke up. They went to work. They prayed. They cooked. They raised children. They carried grief quietly, without any theatrics. They adapted without surrendering themselves completely. That continuity — day after day, without spectacle — is what I think of as peace. And I don’t see it as passive. It is a form of strength that persists, even when the conditions around it are uncertain.

AS²: There you go.

BB: It is discipline. It is endurance. That is what peace looks like where I come from. So when I say that my inheritance of peace is to wake — to wake up, to go to work, to write, to love, to question — I am naming ordinary actions as forms of resistance. Resistance to despair. Resistance to war. Because waking up is an act of consent to another day, even when the structures around you are flawed. Working is participation in survival. Writing is articulation rather than suppression. Loving deeply is a refusal to let hardness and pressure define who you are. And questioning is a form of intellectual integrity within systems that often discourage inquiry. That is what I would call peace.

In my lineage, peace is not a gift handed down as comfort or luxury. It is something developed over time — like a muscle. It is the capacity to remain present to your life without surrendering to bitterness, without yielding to the violence of war, and without collapsing under the pressure of the times. It is forward movement without denying history. So my inheritance of peace is not calm waters. As my maternal grandmother used to say, it is the skill of navigating rough waters without capsizing. That, for me, is what my peace is.

AS²: Wow. Beautiful. Thank you so much for your presence in my life, and for taking the time to come on the podcast so that people who haven’t met you yet can hear you. I think these small alliances that cross obvious borders — of generation, of geography — are part of restructuring cultural life to something more planetary. Something grounded in understanding and care for one another.

BB: Yes, that’s true. I should thank you too, Amy. There’s a saying where I come from. It’s a playful variation on “birds of a feather flock together.” We say, birds of a feather confuse their owners. But really, what it means is that we recognize each other — we are of the same mind, working toward similar ideals and values.

Resources:

Human Rights Council Mid Term Report

“A Proclamation” , poem in Libretto Magazine.

Support Happy Monthlies Menstrual Education Organization

“Galamsey in Ghana: Mitigating its Negative Effects” by Felicia Dede Addy and Shikshya Adhikari

This interview has been edited and condensed. Subscribe to Inheritance of Peace with Amy Shimshon-Santo on Apple Podcasts or on Substack at Warm Blooded Mammal With Hair. Theme music for this program is by Avila Santo. This series highlights survivors, everyday people from across the generations and various walks of life —poets, researchers, shepherds, healers — who discuss our Inheritance of Peace as foundational for a just society.

[PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ENGLISH TRANSCRIPT]

LA ÉTICA BIOCÉNTRICA DE MARGARITA LEÓN

“La ternura es la forma más modesta de amor. No tiene emblemas o símbolos especiales. Aparece cuando miramos de cerca y con cuidado a otro ser, a algo que no es nuestro ‘yo’ pero donde nos descubrimos a nosotros mismos.” - Olga Tokarczuk

Amy Shimshon-Santo (A): Hola. Estoy aquí hoy con la fabulosa Margarita León, poeta fenomenal. Vamos a aprender con ella y escucharla y conversar sobre la herencia de la paz.

Margarita León (M): Soy una mujer relativamente joven que he dedicado mis esfuerzos, mi tiempo, los años que tengo de conciencia, a enaltecer con un nombre artístico la herencia de mi madre. Mi mamá me heredó una raíz, que es la raíz otomí. El idioma que me enseñó, me crió desde el rincón más humilde que es un rincón semidesértico de México, es el estado de Hidalgo, históricamente marginado por las estructuras de poder que gobiernan nuestro país.

He trabajado mucho personalmente tratando de criar a mis hermanas pequeñas que se quedaron a mi cargo porque mi hermana mayor migró a los Estados Unidos. Después migró mi hermano, después otro hermano, y mi hermana pequeña. Me atraviesa una historia de migración muy grande, que ha sido muy triste, pero que al mismo tiempo ha sido un motor para interesarme en estos temas. Por eso estoy aquí. Por eso soy amiga de Amy. Compartimos además las inquietudes de la poesía.

Más que una poeta en lengua hñahñu, que es el idioma otomí, un idioma mexicano indigena. Uno de los más importantes de México. Soy una mujer comprometida con enaltecer esa raíz que he añorado desde mi infancia, esa herencia que me dejó mi madre. Ella era una mujer muy sabia que extendía tres pesos para alimentar a diez bocas en su casa. Una mujer que supo cómo sobrevivir a las violencias que una mujer indígena y pobre puede sufrir en México.

A: Pues es un honor y un gran placer estar juntas y tener chance de convivir y escucharte, y crecer nuestra relación que ya vamos un tiempo cultivando. Cuéntanos, ¿qué te toca hacer hoy con tu fuerza de vida? Sé que enseñas. Sé que escribes, que has hecho en investigaciones regionales. Pero en tus propias palabras, ¿qué te toca hacer?

M: Pienso que una de las responsabilidades más grandes que tengo es la de criar — la crianza de mi hijo. Por eso este tema de las herencias de paz me provoca mucho. Me provoca tantos sentimientos eso de andar peleando unos con otros. Porque me provoca justamente estar pendiente de lo que ocurre en mi entorno. Recientemente falleció un amigo muy querido, un maestro para mí. Alguien a quien he leído, que he estudiado, y he querido mucho. Se llama Eduardo Hurtado Montalvo. Él decía que ser poeta es tener las antenas bien puestas para recibir toda la información que hay a nuestro alrededor. Pienso que debo estar mirando todo lo que acontece a mi alrededor porque estoy criando más allá de crear mi obra poética, debo estar criando a mi hijo, que tiene siete años. Siento una obligación casi heredada de que él sea un buen ser humano.

A: Sí.

M: Y eso es algo que pesa mucho, pero que a la vez se disfruta. Y es un sentimiento. Creo que tú me comprendes.

A: Sí como madre, claro.

M: Exacto. Como un sentimiento de responsabilidad y pero que al mismo tiempo te genera felicidad. Pero al mismo tiempo, esa felicidad suele pesar por el amor que sientes a esos humanitos que estás criando y que quieres que tengan una piel sensible a lo que acontece en el mundo.

A: Sí. Si Si. Entonces, ya has mencionado un poco la conexión de las tierras. Ya hemos conversado bastante sobre el ser planetario. Ser humano significa pertenecer a la Tierra. Entonces, ¿con qué tierras sientes una conexión?

M: Bueno, he tenido la oportunidad de estar en Sudamérica, en el sur. He tenido la suerte de conocer con mayor profundidad Argentina, por ejemplo, que estuve ahí ya un tiempo haciendo unos estudios, en Perú, en Lima, con amistades que conocí en Cuba. He sido muy curiosa de conocer el mundo porque justamente cuanto más lejos estoy más ganas tengo de regresar aquí. Lo quiero, más como que más siento esa conexión que me jala, que me atrae.

A: Mhm.

M: Porque aquí es donde más feliz he sido y donde más he sufrido. Es una dicotomía rara y perversa. Quieres estar donde más sufres, donde más te duele, pero también donde más he sido feliz, porque es donde crecí, donde tuve a mi madre por nueve años. Donde enterraron a mi padre y donde están mi abuela, mi abuelo, que mis hermanos mayores no tuvieron la suerte de venir a enterrarlos porque no pueden venir después de haberse ido, porque no podrían volver y tienen a sus hijos allá.

Entonces mi conexión más grande, más profunda es acá donde se le llama el Valle del Mezquital, que es un valle semidesértico donde amanecemos a menos 5 grados, pero durante el mediodía estamos a 20 - 25 grados de temperatura. Es un clima extremo que te duele en las mejillas el viento cuando te pega porque es muy frío, pero también el clima cálido del verano es hermoso, hermoso. Y es acá donde yo quiero que descansen mis cenizas también junto a la gente que más amo.

A: Qué bonito. El círculo de la vida. Las generaciones. Todo el mundo sabe que hay herencias de violencia, de colonización, de desposesión, de esclavitud, del fascismo, de tantas cosas que nos han hecho a nuestras familias sufrir. Pero pienso que no estaríamos aquí vivos si alguien en nuestras familias no tuviera un concepto de cómo encontrar una estabilidad interna y también social. Como no nada más sobrevivir sino criar personas fenomenales como tú. Ahora sí, entramos en la pregunta central: ¿cuál es tu herencia de paz?

M: Creo que hay una herencia que me dejó mi madre. Y también mi padre, pese a sus grandes defectos, que es la herencia del amor a la naturaleza. En las clases que doy en la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, yo les digo a mis alumnas y a mis alumnos que el pueblo Otomí, o sea mi pueblo, es un pueblo que se que se rige por una ética biocéntrica, una ética centrada en el amor a la naturaleza, a la conexión con el todo cósmico.

Porque acá hay una de las prácticas muy antiguas y milenarias de mis abuelos. Mis padres todavía me enseñaron. Mi padre me enseñó a hacerlo, y yo le voy a enseñar a mi hijo. Pero cuando sea un poco más grande, porque es una cosa de espiritualidad y de creencia filosófica, pero también es un tema delicado que estamos tratando con los guardianes de la naturaleza. Acá los conocemos como Sanjua, que son guardianes que son pequeños, son piedras que caminan y que castigan al humano que no cuida las plantas, que no cuida los animales, que destruye. Y entonces, por milenios, ese pensamiento espiritual es el que permitió el respeto y la supervivencia de la naturaleza, de los animales.

De ahorita con los megaproyectos que se han implementado, como acá hay una cementera de un hombre muy rico de México. Se ha destruido parte de esa fauna y de flora que había aquí cerca, se han desplazado. Se han ido los pájaros. Se han ido muchos animales porque el cambio del entorno del aire es otro. Ahora está contaminado por otros. Factores, ya que vienen de esta cementera que está operando acá en medio de la serranía.

Entonces esa herencia para mí es fundamental. Yo no soy católica. No soy cristiana. No soy evangélica. No tengo otra creencia más que esa, que es la del amor a la naturaleza, la conexión que tenemos con las plantas, los animales, todos los bichitos. Le digo a mi hijo. Todos, incluso los pequeños insectos, son seres sintientes. No los puedes aplastar porque tú no eres superior a ellos. Y ese pensamiento para mí es el que yo quiero heredarle a mi hijo.

Pero que al mismo tiempo me da miedo porque este mundo no está listo para una persona que piense así, porque aquí la supervivencia del más fuerte es la que impera el que tiene más poder, más armamento nuclear más. Y a lo largo de la historia. Lo hemos visto.

Y me da miedo esa herencia que esa misma herencia mía me da miedo que mi hijo la tenga, pero a su vez, es lo único que yo tengo para darle. Entonces, no sé, Amy, tú ves que yo estoy en un en una como en una paradoja. ¿qué voy a hacer? Porque es lo que tengo para él y al mismo tiempo, se que eso lo puede volver frágil e indefenso ante los otros. No?

A: Ah! Es una complejidad que he pensado bastante también en eso, pero lo veo como fuerza. Lo veo como poder. Lo veo como orientación de vida y no como fragilidad. Porque en mi propia perspectiva, en la violencia no hay futuro. No hay futuro en la violencia. Nos enseñaron que en las historias dominantes hay siempre armamentos. Hay siempre lo más poderoso y las víctimas. Yo sé que eso es una herencia humana que puede existir en el rumbo de la casa con violencia doméstica o en el barrio. Y no es nada más las personas que ocupan posiciones de poder más altas que podrían ser violentos uno con el otro.

Pero desde mi perspectiva, esa herencia que recibiste de tus padres y abuelos, y que quisieras dar a tu hijo, es la única forma de la familia humana de sobrevivir. No hay futuro sin esa filosofía y perspectiva y forma de vivir que te han dado a ti, y que estás pasando a la próxima generación.

​​No debe ser siempre lo más violento, más dominante. Bueno, esa es nuestra pregunta. Si. Hay fuerza y poder en otra filosofía de vivir. Yo no veo otra solución. Uno no puede ganar a través del abuso de poder o la violencia. Y de repente es porque yo vengo de una cultura en la que las guerras han impactado bastante no lo veo como solución.

M: Sí, exacto. Es como la perdición, yo creo, del alma humana, el hecho de justamente pensar en que como si es fuerte, si es poderoso, se puede aplastar al otro. Y esa es la historia. Por desgracia, la historia no le hacemos caso, pero nos ha mostrado que eso es un grave error.

A: Gran error, gran error. Me acuerdo cuando era chiquita en la escuela cuando estudiamos historia, era estudiar guerras. Y (de niña) me pregunté, ¿la guerra es la historia? Quiero informarme más con esta experiencia del podcast. En este proyecto pregunta, ¿Cuál es nuestra herencia de no guerra, de no violencia, y cómo eso puede ser poderoso?

M: Nos atrapan y nos llevan a mirar lo que ellos quieren. Hay que mirar otros ángulos. Desde otra perspectiva mirar lo que está aconteciendo y sobre todo con otra sensibilidad. Decía otra autora que me ayuda mucho. Y ella dice, lo que nos va a salvar como humanidad es la ternura.

A: Sí! Cien por ciento. ¿Cómo se llama ella?

M: Ella se llama Rita Segato. Es una Argentina que trabaja muy duro por todo estos temas. Ella estuvo en Brasil haciendo estudios. Me parece impresionante. Justo ¿cuándo hemos mirado al otro con ternura? Que la empatía nos provoque las ganas de ayudar lejos que querer aplastar como alguien inferior a mi. Justo que de repente esa situación de ahora toca a mi ser lo más fuerte. Ahora me toca a mi ser el poderoso. Lleva esto. Tengo al poder entonces aplasto a los otros. Y no hay la posibilidad que ese otro reciba nada de mi, al contrario. Te quiero despojar de todo, incluso de tu humanidad.

Nos enreda la violencia. Nos atrapa. Y todo lo miramos normal. Mirar a un niño que está muriendo de hambre. Mirar a una persona que está mendigando. Muriéndose de frío. Lo miramos normal.

Me llama la atención. Hace poco fuimos a comprar comida a la tienda. Había una señora pidiendo comida, pidiendo dinero. Mi marido y yo, ya estamos acostumbrados, y él no. (Mi hijo) estaba comiendo unas papas y dice, “Toma. Come.” Algo muy natural. De humano. Ya es normal para nosotros, para él que es pequeño, le daba sus papas. Ya normalizamos todo lo que supone nos hace humanos. Pero mi hijo una vez le dio comida a una mujer que pedía en la calle, con total naturalidad. Nosotros como adultos, ya estamos anestesiados. Eso es lo que no debería pasar: perder nuestra humanidad.

A: En primer lugar, tu hijo ya está siguiendo tus lecciones de empatía. No son enseñados como un curso. Lo está percibiendo. Si alguien tiene hambre, lo voy a compartir. Es lógico. Me acuerdo que el segundo marido de mi abuela paterna me dijo que “nunca le das nada a nadie pidiendo porque debe estar manifestando en frente del edificio federal.” Él estaba muy a favor de la protesta y acción política. Pensaba que la caridad nunca sería suficiente.

M: Fíjate que yo últimamente he pensado eso es la cosa. Él nunca me había visto hacerlo, Amy. Él. Su humanidad. De pequeño. Pues, ¿por qué no le voy a dar las papas si estoy comiendo y tiene hambre? Su misma esencia humana dijo, “Tiene hambre? Le doy las papas.” Ella debe buscarse, no estar mendigando porque esto no va a acabar nunca. Y era una mujer joven. Para mi, yo dije, bueno. Ella puede hacer otras cosas para ganarse el alimento. Dentro de mí. Pero no dije nada. Cuando mi hijo le dio las papas nada más le felicité. Dije, “muy lindo lo que hiciste.”

A: Sí. Muy lindo. Y en la ciudad donde vivimos, donde vivo yo, hay mucha gente sin vivienda. Y están viviendo en la calle. Hay suficiente para todos. Entonces en la estructura de cómo vivimos se está fallando mucho. Me alegra mucho la conciencia de tu hijo y la generosidad. Que se siente naturalmente dentro de él. ¡Claro que vamos a compartir las papas! Si hay el amor por la naturaleza y una ética biocéntrica. El moverse de un lado para otro no es salir del mundo, cruzar una frontera, por ejemplo, de estado o de país es moverse en la Tierra. Un proceso de repente natural. Yo sé que para mí, mis padres eran inmigrantes. Mi madre emigrante, mi padre e hijo de emigrantes me casé y tuve hijos con alguien migrante de otro continente. Después nos divorciamos pero seguimos como familia. Para mí, la inmigración es algo muy natural. Hay que respetar porque uno no sabe de qué condiciones viene otro. Me molesta mucho como representan al inmigrante como alguien cuestionable. Hay muchas razones de por qué moverse de un lugar a otro. Tu perspectiva social de paz tiene que ver con la naturaleza, el todo cósmico. ¿Cómo ha afectado tus estudios y experiencia y poesía el tema de la migración?

M: Estoy de acuerdo contigo que la migración es, y debe ser vista como algo natural. En efecto, no hay razón para cerrar fronteras para limitar el hecho que las personas queramos buscar, otros mundos, otras oportunidades, y moverse. Simplemente, desplazarse para su propio desarrollo. Hay muchas razones que llevan a la imigración.

Yo miro este tema de la imigración. La perspectiva que tienen muchos Mexicanos tienen que tienen origen indígena, es de apego con su territorio. Cuando este tema comenzó, de llevarse a los braceros para que les ayudaron a ustedes allá (a Estados Unidos — ya hace muchos años. Cuando comenzó esta situación. La gente iba y regresaba, naturalmente. Ganaban su dinero. Regresaban a México. Porque hay una arraigo muy fuerte por la tierra. El humano es así. Somos así. Como que tu territorio te llama. Tu paisaje. Tu tierra. Donde naciste. Creciste. Dónde nació tu abuela. Dónde nacieron tus abuelos. Te llama. Naturalmente si no se cerrarán las fronteras irían y vendrían. No se quedarán allí encerrados. Alla atrapados.

Entonces es realmente un absurdo. Una vez que llegan a su país, no se pueden salir porque están cerradas las fronteras, cuando naturalmente las personas podrían ir y venir cuando quieran.

A. Si. 100%

M: Entonces en el caso del pueblo Otomí, tienen una arraigo muy grande por su tierra porque el pensamiento espiritual, su pensamiento, su religiosidad, su filosofía de vida, está totalmente vinculado con el territorio. Porque allí es donde están los guardianes. Allí es donde están sus ombligos. Hay una costumbre del pueblo indigena de enterrar el ombligo en un árbol, en una ceremonia que hacen los padres. Entonces, “el ombligo te jala”, dicen. Te jala para que vuelvas. Por eso mucha gente cruza la frontera de la manera más horrible. Pasando por el río, la experiencia más horrible. Regresan a su pueblo. Y después vuelven a ir. ¿Por qué? Porque hay un arraigo importante por el territorio. Entonces, respeto al territorio y al libre tránsito de las personas.

A: Si. Si. Adoro eso. Entonces, para cerrar nuestra plática de hoy - y la plática va a continuar porque eso es la amistad. Le doy tantas gracias de ser tu amiga. De estar conectadas. De colaborar y hacer cosas juntas da mucha motivación en mi vida. Porque son tiempos difíciles y hay que tener con quien soñar.

Escuché a Angela Davis decir que es muy importante cultivar la imaginación. No podemos dejar de caer en la falta de imaginación. Porque sin imaginación no hay posibilidad.

Ella no dijo esto, pero sin posibilidad es difícil criar a nuestros hijos, es difícil escribir, es difícil confrontar los poderes que están congelados en una perspectiva de dominación, de abuso del poder, de estragar las tierras, y de tratar a la gente sin dignidad.

Es difícil ahora soñar, pero te voy a pedir tus sueños. Idealmente, ¿qué te gustaría para divulgar tu propia herencia de paz? ¿Cómo te gustaría ampliar la herencia de paz de tus antepasados?

M: Primero, eres una mujer muy inquieta, que te gusta provocar reflexiones que son muy urgentes y necesarias. Te acuerdas que fuimos a la playa. Caminamos y caminamos. Hablamos y hablamos. Muchas cosas que nos surgieron. Compartimos. Acababan de pasar los incendios allá donde vives. Te agradezco mucho la confianza que me consideras para que tengas estas conversaciones. Como dices, permitir que la imaginación nos despierte. Que no nos quedamos ahí anestesiados diciendo así es la vida, así es el mundo. Y no nos quedamos nada más así mirando las injusticias. Y eso yo te admiro mucho, porque luchas. Porque estás ahí alzando la voz ahí por las personas que tienen derecho a transitar en este planeta, en esta tierra.

No jaulas, no muros no nos van a detener. La naturaleza humana es libre. Libre de estar donde quiera. De habitar donde se nos da la gana. Porque es nuestro planeta tierra, como hemos hablado muchas veces tú y yo.

Es un tema que me genera muchos sentimientos por mi familia, pero me conmueven todas las historias que tiene que ver con este tema y las violencias que tiene a ver con esto. Realmente yo quisiera ver cuidar juntos este planeta, que es nuestra madre. La madre tierra es nuestra madre. Todo lo que nos provea es para compartir. Es para todos.

A: Exacto.

M: Entonces yo pienso que el tema de este pensamiento está en el caso del pueblo Otomí, de mis hermanos, de mucha gente de acá de la zona, y de varias partes del país que se han ido. Tienen un arraigo muy grande por su tierra porque el pensamiento espiritual, lo que es como su religiosidad, o su filosofía de vida está totalmente vinculada con el territorio. Porque ahí es donde están los guardianes. Ahí es donde están sus ombligos. Hay una costumbre muy fuerte del pueblo indígena.

Entonces “el ombligo te jala,” dicen. Te jala para que vuelvas. Por eso mucha gente, aunque cruce la frontera de la manera más horrible. Y haber pasado por el río, la experiencia más horrible. Regresan a su pueblo y después vuelven a ir. Es algo. ¿por qué? Porque hay un arraigo grande al territorio. Entonces el respeto al territorio y al libre tránsito de las personas.

A: Sí, Sí, adoro eso entonces. Ya para encerrar nuestra plática de hoy, y yo sé que la plática va a continuar, porque eso es la amistad. Le doy tantas gracias a ser amiga de estar conectada de colaborar y hacer cosas juntas. Me da mucha motivación en mi vida. Porque son tiempos difíciles y hay que tener con quién soñar. Escuché a Angela Davis decir que es muy importante cultivar la imaginación y que no nos podemos dejar caer en la falta de imaginación porque sin imaginación no hay posibilidad. Y sin posibilidad, ella no dijo eso, pero digo yo que es difícil criar a nuestros hijos. Es difícil escribir. Es difícil confrontar los poderes que son congelados en una perspectiva de dominación, de abuso de poder, de entregar las tierras y tratar a la gente sin dignidad.

Entonces diría que es difícil ahora soñar, pero te voy a pedir tus sueños. Idealmente, ¿qué te gustaría ver para divulgar tu propia herencia de paz? ¿Qué te gustaría trabajar para ampliar la herencia de paz de tus antepasados?

M: Sí. Primero. Bueno, igual yo me siento muy feliz porque eres una mujer muy inquieta que le gusta y justo provocar estas reflexiones, que son muy urgentes, muy necesarias. Y desde que te conocí me acuerdo que fuimos a caminar, ¿te acuerdas de la playa?

A: Mhm.

M: Hablamos y hablamos y caminamos. Y muchas cosas nos surgieron donde tú vives. Te agradezco mucho también la confianza. Que me consideres para permitir que la imaginación nos despierte. Que no miremos las injusticias y nos quedemos nada más así mirando. Yo te admiro mucho porque luchas por estar ahí alzando la voz. Y, en este caso, por las personas que tienen derecho a transitar en este planeta, esta Tierra. Yo no sé qué jaulas, que muros, se va a poder detener. La naturaleza humana es libre. Libre de estar donde quiera de de habitar donde se nos dé la gana. Es nuestro planeta Tierra, como hemos hablado muchas veces, tú y yo. Es un tema que me atraviesa totalmente. Me conmueve. Me genera muchos sentimientos por mi familia, pero me conmueven los que tienen que ver con las violencias que se generan a partir de esto. Y realmente lo justo es que podamos ser libres de cuidar juntos a todos, entre toda la raza humana. Cuidar este planeta, que es nuestro, es nuestra madre, la madre Tierra es nuestra madre. Todo lo que nos provee es para compartir. Es para todos. Hay un poema muy hermoso de Federico García Lorca, que tuve el honor de traducir al Otomí. Y dice que esta tierra da frutos para todos.

A: Sí.

M: Y es para todos. No es para unos cuantos. No es para los más poderosos. No es para el que grite más, para el que más armas tenga. Es para todos. La tierra debe a todos, y nosotros debemos cuidarla y no explotarla y querer las tierras raras y querer el petróleo. Y todo eso que tanta lucha y guerra ocasionan.

A: 100%. Así.

M: Quisieras compartir un poema para nosotras. Publiqué un poema en una revista de la Universidad de Guadalajara en una revista que se llama Luvina. Es un poema que escribí. Creo que alguna vez yo te había compartido un poco de este poema. A lo mejor te platiqué o leímos. Es un poema que se llama “Norte”. Norte, los caminantes nocturnos. Y es un poema de migración que estuve como ideando y escribiendo un poco cuando estuve en Texas con mi hermano mayor, el semestre pasado. Entonces lo leo en Otomí y en español.

M. León presenta su poema plurilingüe “Norte” en el audio podcast.

M: Ay, sí. Ternura. Hay que darnos ternura.

A: Y es un gran placer y honor estar junto contigo. En esos tiempos te deseo todo lo bonito para ti y para la familia, tus comunidades, tierras y futuros.

M: No gracias a Ti Amy, siempre por compartir y por provocarme hermosas reflexiones, y siempre vas a contar conmigo.

A: Igual. Estoy aquí para ti también.

M: Gracias. A ver cuándo nos vamos a caminar otra vez a la playa.

THE BIOCENTRIC ETHICS OF MARGARITA LEÓN

“Tenderness is the most modest form of love. It has no emblems or special symbols. It appears when we look closely and carefully at another being, at something that is not our ‘self’ but where we discover ourselves.”
— Olga Tokarczuk

Amy Shimshon-Santo (A): Hello. I’m here today with the fabulous Margarita León, a phenomenal poet. We’re going to learn from her and listen to her perspective on the inheritance of peace.

Margarita León (M): I am a relatively young woman who has dedicated my time and conscious effort to praising my mother’s heritage through my artistic voice. My mother’s inheritance was our Otomí roots. The language that she taught me. She raised me from the most humble corner, the economically poorest, in the semi-desert region of Mexico in the state of Hidalgo historically marginalized by the power structures that govern our country.

Personally, I have worked a lot trying to raise my younger sisters who were left in my care because my eldest sister immigrated to the United States. After that my brother migrated, then another brother, and my youngest sister. A very large migration story runs through me, one that has been very sad, but at the same time has been the engine of my interest in these themes. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m Amy’s friend. We also share restless feeling about poetry.

More than a poet of the hñahñu language, that is the Otomí language, an Indigenous Mexican language. One of the most important indigenous languages in Mexico. I’m a woman committed to praising this heritage that I have longed for since childhood, this inheritance that my mother left me.

She was a very wise woman who could stretch three pesos to feed ten mouths in her home. A woman who knew how to survive the violences that Indigenous and economically poor women can suffer in Mexico.

A: It’s an honor and a great pleasure to be together and listen to you, and to grow our friendship that we’ve been cultivating for some time now. Tell us about what you do with your life force. I know you teach. I know you write, and have done regional research. But in your own words, what is it that you are called to do?

M: One of the greatest responsibilities I have is to create — the childhood of my son. That’s why the theme of inheritance of peace provokes me so deeply. It provokes many feelings inside me, and some of these feelings clash against each other. This makes me become aware of what is happening within me. Recently a very dear friend of mine died. For me, he was a teacher. Someone who I have read, studied, and cared about. His name is Eduardo Hurtado Montalvo. He used to say that being a poet was like having antennas well positioned to receive all the information around us. I must be watching everything that is happening around me because beyond the creation of my poetic work, I must also be raising my son who is seven years old. I feel an obligation, almost inherited, to make sure he becomes a good human being.

A: Yes.

M: And that is something that weighs heavily on me, but, at the same time, I enjoy. Its a feeling. I believe that you understand.

A: Yes, as a mother, of course.

M: Exactly. It is a feeling of responsibility, but, at the same time, it generates happiness in you. This happiness is weighed down by love for those little humans you are raising and that you want to have a sensitive skin to what happens in the world.

A: Yes. Yes, yes. You have mentioned a connection to the land. We talked a lot about what it means to be an earthling. Being human signifies belonging to the Earth. So, what lands do you feel a connection to?

M: I’ve had the opportunity to be in South America. I’ve been fortunate to get to know Argentina very well, for example. I was there for some time doing research in Peru, in Lima, with friends I met in Cuba. I’ve been very curious to know the world because the farther away I am the greater my desire to return here. I love it here. I feel a connection to place that pulls me, that attracts me.

A: Mhm.

M: I’ve been the happiest here, and it is also where I’ve suffered the most. It’s a strange and perverse dichotomy. You want to be where you suffer the most, where it hurts you the most, but also where I’ve been the happiest. Because it’s where I grew up, where I had my mother for nine years. Where they buried my father, and where my grandmother and grandfather are. My older siblings didn’t have the chance to come and bury them after they departed because they could not return and leave their children.

So, my most profound connection is here in a place called the Valle del Mezquital, that is a semi-desert valley where we awake to minus five degrees but by midday we’re at a temperature of 20–25 degrees celsius. It’s an extreme climate that makes your cheeks hurt when the wind hits because it’s so cold. But the warm summer climate is beautiful. Here is where I want my ashes to rest alongside the people I love the most.

A: How beautiful. The circle of life. The generations.

Everyone knows that there are legacies of violence, colonization, dispossession, slavery, fascism … so many things that have made our families suffer. But I believe that we wouldn’t be here alive if someone in our families didn’t have a concept of how to find internal and social stability. Not to just survive, but to raise phenomenal people like you. So now let’s get to the central question: What is your inheritance of peace?

M: I believe that my mother left me an inheritance. And also my father despite his great flaws. It is the inheritance of love for nature. In the classes I teach at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, I tell my students that the Otomí people (my people) are a people governed by a biocentric ethics, an ethics centered in the love of nature and a connection with the cosmic whole.

Here are the ancient practices of my grandparents that have lasted millenia. My parents taught me. My father showed me how, and I will teach my son. But when he is a bit older because it’s a matter of spirituality and philosophical belief, but it’s also a delicate topic since we are speaking of the guardians of nature. Here, we know them as Sanjua, that are guardians that are small, small stoned that walk and will punish a human who does not care for the plants, who does not care for the animals, who destroys. So, for millennia, this spiritual thought is what permitted our respect and survival of nature, and the animals.

Currently, with the mega projects they have implemented here … because there is a cement factory owned by a very rich man from Mexico. This has destroyed part of the fauna and flora nearby. They have been displaced. The birds have gone. Many of the animals have gone because of changes to the environment. Even the air is different. It’s contaminated by others. These factors come from the cement plant that is operating here in the middle of the mountain range.

So this inheritance is fundamental to me. I am not Catholic. I am not Christian. I am not evangelical. I have no other beliefs than this one, which is the love for nature, the connections we have with plants, animals, and insects. I tell this to my son, Everything, even the smallest insects, are sentient beings. You must not crush them because you are not superior to them. This way of thinking is what I want to pass on to my son as his inheritance.

But at the same time, I’m scared that this world isn’t ready for a person who thinks in this way. Because survival of the strongest demands one have more power, more nuclear armaments. Throughout history, we have seen this.

And, it frightens me that the same inheritance I want my son to have, at the same time, its all I have to give him. So, I don’t know, Amy. You see the paradox that I am in. What will I do? Because this is what I have for him and at the same time, I know that this could make him appear fragile or defenseless against others. No?

A: Ah! It’s complex. I’ve thought about this a great deal too, but I see it as a strength. I see it as power. I see it as an orientation towards life and not as fragility. Because from my own perspective, in violence holds no future. There is no future in violence. We were taught dominant historical narratives where there are always weapons. There is always a most powerful and their victims. I know that this is a human heritage that can exist at home due to domestic violence or in the public sphere. And it’s not only people who occupy the highest positions of power who can be violent to one another.

In my perspective, this inheritance that you received from your parents and grandparents, and that you want to give to your son, is the only way for the human family to survive. There is no future without this philosophy, perspective, and way of life that you have been given, and that you are passing on to the next generation.

Things should not always fall to the most violent, the most dominant. Well, this is our question. Yes. Is there strength and power in another philosophy of living? I don’t see another solution. A person can never really win through abuse of power or violence. And maybe it is because I come from a culture that has been deeply impacted by wars, that I do not see them as a solution.

M: Yes, exactly. It’s like the perdition of the human soul. The fact of thinking that because one is strong, if one is powerful, that one can crush the other. And that is history. Unfortunately, we don’t pay attention to history, but it has shown us that this is a grave error.

A: An enormous mistake, enormous mistake. I remember when I was a child that when we studied history, we studied wars. And, as a girl, I asked myself, “Is war our only history?”

I want to learn more through this audio project. The question driving this project is: What is our heritage of no-war, of non-violence, and how can this become powerful?

M: We are trapped, and they bring us to the mirror they want us to see. We must view things from other angles. From another perspective to see what is happening, and more than anything from another sensibility. Another author who helped me a lot said, what will save humanity is tenderness.

A: Yes! One hundred percent. What’s the author’s name?

M: Her name is Rita Segato. She is an Argentine who works very intensely on these themes. She has been in Brazil doing research. Her idea is impressive. When was the last time we looked at the other with tenderness? When can empathy provoke us to have the desire to help rather than to crush someone as an inferior? When it’s my turn to be the strongest. Now it’s my turn to be powerful. If I have power I crush the others. And there is no possibility that this “other” receives my own response. On the contrary, I want to dispossess you of everything, even your humanity.

Violence entangles us. It traps us. And we see this as normal. See a child starving. See a person begging. Freezing to death. We see it as normal.

Something caught my attention when we went to buy food at the store. There was a woman begging for food. Asking for money. My husband and I, we’re already accustomed to this but our son wasn’t. (My son) was eating chips and he says to her, “Here. Eat.” Something very natural. Humane. For us adults, it’s already been normalized. But for my young son, he just gave her his chips. We normalize everything that is supposed to make us human. But my son once gave food to a woman who was begging on the street, as a natural gesture. We as adults, are already anesthetized. This should not happen or we lose our humanity.

A: First of all, your son is already following your lessons of empathy. They aren’t taught in a course. He’s perceiving them. If someone is hungry, I’m going to share. It’s logical. I remember my grandfather G saying, not to give anything to anyone who is begging because “they should be demonstrating in front of the federal building.” He was in favor of protest and political action. He thought charity would never be enough.

M: Lately I’ve been thinking about this too. My son had never seen me do this, Amy. Him. His humanity. As a small child. Well, why wouldn’t I give her the chips if I’m eating and she’s hungry? His own human essence said, “She’s hungry? I’ll give her the chips.” While I thought, she should find work, not be begging because this will never end. And she was a young woman. I thought to myself, She could do other things to earn food access. I said this to myself, But I didn’t say anything aloud. When my son gave her the chips, I just congratulated him. I said, “That was very kind of you.”

A: Yes. Beautiful. In the city where I live there are many unhoused people living on the street. There is enough for everyone, but the structures of how we live are failing. Your son’s awareness and generosity make me happy. It comes naturally from within him. Of course, compartimos las papas!

If there is love for nature and a biocentric ethics, then moving from one place to another is not leaving the world. Crossing a border, for example to a state or country, is moving along the Earth. A natural process. My parents were from immigrant families. My mother was am immigrant. My father was the son of immigrants. I married and had children with an immigrant. Later on we divorced, but we continue as family. For me, immigration is something very natural. We must respect immigration because we don’t know the conditions people come from. It bothers me greatly how the immigrants is being represented as questionable. There are many reasons why people move from one place to another.

How does your social perspective on peace have to do with nature and the cosmic whole? How has this effected your studies, experience, and poetry about migration?

M: I agree with you that migration is, and should be seen as, something natural. In effect, there is no reason to close borders to limit what people wish to seek, other worlds, other opportunities, and move themselves. Simply to relocate for their own development. There are many reasons that lead to migration.

I study this theme of migration. The perspective that many Mexicans of Indigenous origins have, is a deep attachment to one’s territory. The issue of taking Braceros to help you over there has gone on for many years. When this situation started people went and returned naturally. They earned their money. They returned to Mexico. Because there is a very strong sense of rootedness to the land. Humans are like this. We are like this. It’s as if your territory calls to you. Your landscape. Your land. Your birthplace. Where you grew up. Where your grandmother was born. Where your grandparents were born. Calls to you. Naturally, if borders were not closed, people would go and return. They wouldn’t stay there trapped.

So, it’s truly absurd. Once they arrive in your country, they can’t leave because borders are closed while naturally people could come and go as they wished.

A: Yes.

M: In the case of the Otomí people, they have a very strong attachment to their land because their spiritual thinking, their thoughts, religiosity, and philosophy of life is completely tied to territory. Because that is where the guardians are. That is where their ombligos are. There is a custom among Indigenous peoples of burying the umbilical cord at the base of a tree in a ceremony performed by the parents. And so they say, “el ombligo te jala.” Your bellybutton pulls you. It pulls you so you return. That’s why many people cross the border in the most horrible ways, crossing the river, and they return to their towns. Then they go again. Why? Because there is a profound rootedness to territory. So, respect for territory and for the free movement of people.

A: Yes. Yes. I love that. So, to close our conversation today — and our conversations will continue because that’s friendship. I give thanks for your friendship. For being connected. Collaborating together provides a lot of motivation in my life.

These are difficult times and we have to have people to dream with. I heard Angela Davis say that it is very important to cultivate the imagination. We cannot allow ourselves to fall into the lack of imagination because without imagination there is no possibility. And, she didn’t say this but without possibility it’s difficult to raise our children. It is difficult to write. It is difficult to confront the powers that are frozen in domination, abuse of power, and the realities of climate change.

It is a difficult time to dream, but I am going to ask you for your dreams. Ideally, what would you like in order to spread your own heritage of peace? How would you like to expand the heritage of peace of your ancestors?

M: I feel happy because you are a very restless woman who likes to provoke urgent and necessary reflections. Ever since I met you. I remember that we went walking. Do you remember the beach?

A: Mhm.

M: We talked and talked as we walked. And many things emerged where you live. I thank you deeply for your trust and consideration. The imagination can awaken us so that we don’t simply look at injustices and remain passive. I admire you greatly because you fight by raising your voice so people can have the right to move across this planet, this Earth. I don’t know what cages or walls could stop that. Human nature is free. Free to be wherever it wants, to inhabit wherever we please. This is our planet Earth. You and I have talked about many times before. Its a subject that moves straight through me. It moves me deeply. It generates many feelings because of my family, but it also moves me because of the violence that arises from it. Truly, what I want is for us to be free to care for this planet together. All of us. The entire human race. Care for this planet that is ours. It is our mother. Mother Earth is our mother. Everything she provides is to be shared. It is for everyone.

There is a very beautiful poem by Federico García Lorca that I had the honor of translating into Otomí. It says that this land, that gives fruit, is for everyone. Not for a few. Not for the most powerful. Not for the one who shouts the loudest, or the one with the most weapons. It is for everyone. The Earth belongs to everyone, and we must care for it, not exploit it—not chase rare earths or oil and all those things that cause so much struggle and war.

A: Viva, viva viva. Aṣẹ Aṣẹ Aṣẹ. Did you bring us a poem today?

M: I published a poem in a journal from the Universidad de Guadalajara called Luvina. It’s a poem I wrote called “Norte.” Norte, los caminantes nocturnos. It’s a migration poem. I began ideating it and writing when I was in Texas with family last semester. I will read it for you in Otomí and in Spanish.

A: Thank you.

M. León reads aloud from her plurilingual poem “Norte” on the podcast.

A: Thank you for this treasure of a poem. Thank you for your time, your friendship, your struggle, your affection, your tenderness.

M: Oh yes. Tenderness! We must share tenderness.

A: It is a great pleasure and honor to be alongside you. In these times, I wish you everything beautiful—for you and your family, your communities, lands, and futures.

M: No, thank you, Amy, always—for sharing and for provoking beautiful reflections. You can always count on me.

A: Equally. I am here for you too.

M: Thank you. Let’s see when we will walk together again on the beach.

Recursos / Resources

• El Valle del Mezquital

• Poemas, Margarita Leon, Luvina.

• “Resuena el Grito de García Lorca en lenguas indígenas por Daniel Francisco, 9/12/2024.

• “Fallece el poeta y editor Eduardo Hurtado Montalvo a los 75 años”

• Rita Segato, Antropologia Argentina.

This interview has been edited and condensed. Subscribe to Inheritance of Peace with Amy Shimshon-Santo on Apple Podcasts or on Substack at Warm Blooded Mammal With Hair. Theme music for this program is by Avila Santo. This series highlights survivors, everyday people from across the generations and various walks of life —poets, researchers, shepherds, healers — who discuss our Inheritance of Peace as foundational for a just society.

Herencia de Paz es una serie plurilingüe. Los episodios se graban en el idioma de preferencia del entrevistado. Este episodio está grabado en español con transcripciónes en inglés y español.

I want to be a sanctuary, even in times of chaos or corruption. I learned this from my father and grandmother. They gave me an inheritance of peace. This series highlights the inheritance of peace of survivors — everyday people from different generations and walks of life. Poets. Researchers. Shepherds. Healers. Tune in to Inheritance of Peace with Amy Shuimshon-Santo on Substack or Apple Podcasts.

“The equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

- Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Dear Ones,

Please receive my good wishes for your thriving. I hope that you are taking good care of yourselves and your loved ones.

When I was a teen, my grandfather Gene would often ask me “who are you working with?” He said this because he was curious about my political life. Some of the many negative impacts of the current regime are violence, chaos, overwhelm, and isolation. I realized that I could benefit from giving myself assignments to feel more connected with people I admire. I’ve been tinkering with ways of socialize my writing practice.

Inheritance of Peace

My late father and grandmother were peace activists during times of war. Their values and actions had a protective impact on me. I feel them as an inheritance of peace. I’ve begun interviewing people about their legacies of peace. The first conversation features poet Margarita León whose inheritance of peace is bioethics. Our audio conversation is accompanied by bilingual transcripts in English and Spanish.

Winter 2026 / Highlights

• Write your Story, the global space for creative writers that I’ve been facilitating, is now entering its second year.

• I guided a “Wear Your Story” workshop for the Circular Library in Venice. This was an opportunity to know our clothes by connecting storytelling to a local clothing swap. Lydia Thomas wrote a blog post about the experience. The workshop was a chance to think together about lifecycle design, circular economies, and fashion. According to Vibhu Mishra of the U.N., “doubling the lifespan of clothing could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 44 per cent.”

• Multidisciplinary artist Alma Cielo has been leading the 1000 Voices Project with support from the LA Conservancy. Alma and I started co-teaching a ceramics and creative writing series for local Firebirds (e.g., people who’ve been impacted by the LA wildfires). The next workshop will be on February 21 in Pasadena at the Armory. Special thanks to Cristal Trujillo for hosting us!

• For LA based activists with ties to the Middle East, New Ground: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change is a unique space for interfaith collaboration. I’m grateful to Aziza Hasan and enjoyed supporting their efforts.

• On a personal note, my first born married the love of his life this month and we have been ritualizing, connecting, and celebrating.

• Piecework: Ethnographies of Place received positive reviews from Library Thing. Here are a couple of excerpts:

  • “I have never been to Los Angeles, but reading Amy Shimshon-Santo’s book made it seem like a vibrant, complicated, and familiar place. Her ethnographic skill, artistic sensibilities, and empathy for the often-overlooked perspectives of youth shine through in these essays and pictures. My favorite chapter was on the author’s grandmother, an activist named Reva Mucha, and her persecution by the US government during the Cold War. After reading this book, I want to become more aware of the history in my own community and family.”

  • “Piecework is comprised of essays that encourage collective action as an extension of social justice, but by the end you have an intimate portrait of the author and her ancestry…It goes without saying that Piecework is thought provoking, but what I wasn’t expecting was the plethora of gorgeous photography. The entire book was exquisite to read.”

[Hand painted text in roman letters and braille float above a chocolate candy bar braille display. Cover art by Joey Hernandez.]

Hello Friends,

Please receive my good wishes for your thriving!

Over the years, making community books has become central to my social practice. As an artist and educator, I facilitate spaces where people tap into their creative courage. Sometimes my inner voice whispers, This is amazing. We should make a book!

I’m writing to let you know about Writing Braille With Chocolate, a new chapbook that grew out of the spring semester of the Braille Challenge Writing Workshops produced by the Braille Institute Library. The project fostered a national literary community for high school students who are blind or visually impaired (VI) while cultivating the next generation of young authors. The workshops encouraged fresh thinking and experimentation while gaining expertise at world building with words.

I was recruited for the project by Lisa Lepore, Library Director for the Braille Institute. She needed an experienced educator who was equally comfortable in creative and academic writing. In the fall, I taught the creative writing section, and in the spring she asked me to coordinate the project. Before I arrived, the project had been the brainchild of Lisa Lepore and Karen Arcos with coordination by Tiffany Zhao.

In the spring we partnered with Creo Changemakers, the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS) Patron Services, and Antioch University’s Creative Writing MFA program. The writing space was intentionally braille-centric. Youth met each week with blind and VI professionals in the arts, academia, accessible publishing, and library services: Dr. M. Leona Godin, Dr. Robert Englebretson, Dr. Karen Arcos, Dr. Judith Dixon, Anna Dresner, and Tamara Rorie. I prompted the guests to share who they are, what they do, and one thing they are excited about that is changing the world for the better. Lively discussions ensued and youth leapt off these debates into their own writing.

To raise the stakes, we invited youth to submit work for a chapbook. Specifically, we wanted to learn together how to gain inclusion in BARD (the Braille and Audio Reading Download), a program of the National Library Service (NLS) and the Library of Congress. We imagined Writing Braille With Chocolate as an experiential learning project to amplify youth voices while introducing teens to accessible publishing through action. The chapbook now celebrates youth voices while reminding us of the joy and creativity we can find in accessible libraries.

Students who wished to participate contributed essays, short stories, and poems. We also included process reflections from project staff as take aways for teachers and administers. The team generated multiple assets (accessible word and pdf docs, audiobook, digital braille, and ebook).

I was designated Editor-in-Chief and worked with youth and Madalyn Spangler of BIA’s communications division to edit the book. Ivan Johnson of BIA library services brainstormed strategies for recording an audiobook with youth authors who lived in different regions and didn’t have access to a professional recording studio. Youth read and recorded their own works aloud using their phones or Zoom from multiple locations. He prepared the audiobook for submission to BARD while NLS’s Patron Services guided us through the digital braille development.

Rufaydeh Najy, Eleanor Habecker, and Alondra Pagan-Galarza became a youth editorial council who read their own work and stepped up for friend’s who preferred not to recite. (Playwright Vasanth Santosham, our graduate student fellow, also recited a story at the request of one youth author!) Youth also designed and recorded a promotional podcast interview with Ms. Tamara Rorie, the Director of Patron Services at NLS.

Making a community book is never simple. I know this from experience. But this process was further impacted by the social conditions we have been facing. After youth performed a public reading for friends and families, we turned toward publishing preparation. Meanwhile, the executive branch of the federal government made flagrant cuts to public funding for museum and library services, public education, and the arts. Over the summer, the violence of the ICE raids in major cities, plus cuts to public services nationwide, raised the heat on everything. The government shut down finally paused our work with NLS when our federal partners were sadly furloughed.

This situation made me think of Joni Mitchell’s lyric, “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone!” I’ve certainly benefited from access to uncensored public libraries, and have worked to expand — rather than reduce — access. Libraries matter! I hope that we all demand continued support for accessible libraries for all.

Getting things done always demands creativity and diligence. But moving this project forward at a time like this required pivots, patience, and outright stubbornness.

Author Interviews

Check out “Behind the Chapbook With Our Authors” a blog post where youth who chose to be interviewed discuss their writing lives.

Writing Braille With Chocolate on BARD

Before long, NLS patrons will be able to experience Writing Braille With Chocolate on BARD. I’ll share the links here once they are live!

In addition, braille readers will soon be able to download accessible book files directly from an evergreen project page on the Braille Institute of America website. (For now, message me and I will send them along!)

Writing Braille With Chocolate on Biblioboard

Writing Braille With Chocolate is now available in audiobook and ebook on Biblioboard. BiblioBoard is a national digital library platform that helps libraries share curated digital with their patrons.

Writing Braille With Chocolate Collection on Biblioboard

Writing Braille With Chocolate AUDIOBOOK on Biblioboard

Writing Braille With Chocolate EBOOK on Biblioboard

Youth Podcast

Rufaydeh Najy, Eleanor Habecker, and Alondra Pagan-Galarza interviewed Ms. Tamara Rorie, Director of Patron Services for the NLS. They asked questions about everything from her new guide dog, to the changing landscape of accessible books, to the impact of the Marrakesh Treaty on accessible literature worldwide.

An Excerpt . . .

For readers who would like to know more about the project, I’m including the introduction I wrote for the chapbook below.

Savor This Book

Our Writing Recipe

Writing Braille with Chocolate highlights the ideas of youth writers in the Braille Challenge Writing Workshops. Making this chapbook was a way to learn together by doing. We studied writing, publishing, and libraries while creating a born accessible chapbook. Our guiding principle was to foster a creative, non-competitive space for youth writers working in braille to explore new ideas, take positive risks, and flourish in literary community.

Youth participated from rural and urban communities across the United States. We had to announce our Zoom workshop sessions in three different time zones for the Michiganders, Californians, Floridians, North Carolinians, Hoosiers, Idahoans, New Yorkers, and Oregonians could participate. Together, we created a playful, friendly, rigorous writing community that welcomed everyone’s cultures, faiths, and perspectives.

To spark intergenerational conversations, each session welcomed accomplished blind authors — who are thriving artists, editors, and scientists — to speak about their lives, careers, and share one great idea that is changing the world for the better. We discussed cutting-edge topics including independence and interdependence; indigeneity and language revitalization; disability as art and scented performances; artificial intelligence and apps for blind people, and accessibility in publishing and library services.

Youth composed new works during each workshop and read their compositions aloud to their peers. The first semester, I led the creative writing sessions while Karen Arcos accompanied a series of guest speakers in academic writing sessions. In the second semester, I coordinated the program, led the creative writing workshops with Vasanth Santosham, and Norman Kolpas guided the academic essay writing cohort.

Our pilot year culminated with a public reading of new works by youth for families and friends. BCWW alumni later interviewed Tamara Rorie, Head of Patron Services at the National Library Services for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS) asking her about her new guide dog, how she reads 400 books a year, how braille has changed in her lifetime, and the favorite things she gets to do in her federal leadership role.

Writing Chocolate

After the first workshop, we asked writers to share one thing they appreciated from the experience. Alondra Pagan-Galarza cited two ideas spoken by Robert Englebretson, or Dr. E, professor of linguistics at Rice University. The first thing she liked was that he said, “It’s a really good time to be blind.” The second quote requires some context. Tiffany Zhao had asked the writers what kind of chocolate they preferred: “dark chocolate, milk chocolate, or white chocolate?” Dr. E. responded, “If you don’t want to read braille using white chocolate, I suggest you go to the Library of Congress at NLS.” As a budding poet and essayist, Pagan-Galarza found this hilarious.

Dr. E’s play on library access and chocolate provoked the title for this chapbook. What is a writer’s life without reading, without writing? It’s a life without sweetness, without pleasure, without chocolate.

Find Your Flavor

You will find many flavors inside this chapbook. Cacao. Azucar. Canela. Fiction. Nonfiction. Poetry. Braille is sweet, and it continues to evolve just like all of us. After reading Helen Keller’s essay “The Sighted Hand,” everyone in the creative writing cohort became obsessed with multi-sensory writing. How might our perfectly different bodies tell stories that are true to all our senses? On that breakthrough day, Rufaydeh Najy wrote that braille “stimulates and exposes a close bond between your five senses, love, and intelligence” and Eleanor Habecker wrote “Homecoming.” Momentum grew from there.

This collection opens with a song written during a master class with composer Avila Santo. The writers forged bonds of friendship that helped everyone leap into storytelling. Writers sang together, “I’ll be right by your side / To help you through your ups and downs.”

The first series of stories are about dog people and cat people. In “Homecoming,” Habecker shares a story about coming home to her cats. Her multisensory descriptions elevate the story from more common ocularcentrist texts. (Read more about ocularcentrism in M. Leona Godin’s wonderful book There Plant Eyes). Readers experience a cat meowing and feel one cat rub against the door “to show that he wants out.” In “Just Humans,” Habecker flips the narrator’s role to take on the persona of a cat in a household of humans. In Pagan-Galarza’s poem “My Kind of Nature” readers experience a friendship between a person and her guide dog as they walk through a treelined area. “Two friends stroll through a path / with low ticklish branches. / My guide stops.” In Emerson Archuleta’s nonfiction essay, “A Dog Handler’s Guide to Independence,” she shares the story of being matched with her guide dog Izzy. “I had a mix of emotions. Part of me was ecstatic, but the other part of me was nervous. Not only was I not using my cane, something I had used for years, but I now would have to trust Izzy.”

The next offerings in the collection reveal the love for cultures, music, language, and dance. In “My Indian World,” Alexis Sanchez conveys her character’s pleasure for “dancing bells called ghungros on their feet.” She returns to a similar theme with ample lyrics, as her characters in “Raja, Rani, and Raji” both dance and sing. The importance of cultures also appears in a short story by Maria De Nooy who tackles her character’s desire to learn Chinese and master its tonal notes by studying with a kind neighbor. For her, the patience to study Chinese becomes a “Gift of Perseverance.”

The next series of works use fiction, science fiction, and poetry to transform difficult emotions. In the prologue to her short story “An Invisible Wish,” Najy asks, “How will our young heroine accomplish her goals and forever change society to satisfy herself and others?” How can she do this if she is invisible?” Her character achieves presence through humor (who ate all the brownies?) and self-acceptance, while laughing at her “invisible ADHD.” Pagan-Galarza uses her poetic sensibility to alchemize emotions in her “Pain Poem” and “The Elements and Me.” Panchito Trujillo brings readers into a wild world occupied by androids where “we have to write with pens that have no ink.”

The collection closes with three critical essays that express opinions on an array of topics. In “The Essence of Success,” Emma Grace Olech defines her own perspective of success by studying three exemplary individuals — all the while knowing that “every single person seems to acquire a unique interpretation of success based on their life experiences.” In her jazzy title, “Super Sonic Everything,” Pagan-Galarza wishes to master her own superpowers through music, psychology, and sociology. In her examination of “AI Use in Schools,” Elena De Nooy rejects the use of artificial intelligence in classrooms on the grounds that it “denies students the opportunity to master the craft of writing, it hinders the development of students’ own voices as writers, and it denies students the rewards that come through hard work.”

Add Sprinkles

Authorial advice is sprinkled in from author interviews and stirred into the mix of this book. “Read as much literature as possible in a variety of genres,” advises Olech. “This provides exposure to a diverse array of writing styles, allowing you to determine which ones you would like to emulate as you develop your own style. In addition, it is important to just begin writing, as experience is the best teacher in this art.” Like anything else you want to gain expertise in, writing takes practice. “As a story begins to unfold in my mind,” writes Najy, “I make time every single day to add and develop it.” Sometimes writers must leap into the fray and play. “Part of the fun for me is seeing what happens next,” writes Habecker. “The trick is planning enough that I have an idea of what I’m doing but not so much that I feel confined.”

Every writer must tap into their own unique voice and write the stories they wish to tell. We cheer each writer on as they continue to grow and explore their ideas. We thank everyone who helped to make the dream a reality, and we hope that readers find something delicious to savor in this collection.

Braille Challenge Writing Workshops Team

Authors

• Alexis Sanchez

• Alondra Pagan-Galarza

• Eleanor Habecker

• Rufaydeh Najy

• Emerson Archuleta

• Maria De Nooy

• Panchito Trujillo

• Emma Grace Olech

• Elena De Nooy

Fall 2024

Guest Speakers:

• Dr. Simon Fischer-Baum

• Norman Kolpas

• Dr. Alison and Morgan Cook-Sather

• Dr. Stacy Marie Branham

• Chad Allen

• Dr. Robert Englebretson

• Claire Stanley

Teachers / Facilitators:

• Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo (Dr. A)

• Dr. Karen Arcos

• Avila Santo, Guest Artist

Project Coordination: Lisa Lepore, Tiffany Zhao, Dr. Karen Arcos, Scott Ogden

Spring 2025

Guest Speakers:

• Dr. Karen Arcos

• Dr. Robert Englebretson

• Dr. M Leona Godin

• Dr. Judith Dixon

• Anna Dresner

Teachers:

• Dr. A

• Norman Kolpas

• Vasanth Santosham, Graduate Fellow

Book Production:

• Audiobook: Ivan Johnson

• Digital Braille: NLS Patron Engagement Services

• Print: Dr. A & Madalyn Spangler

Project Coordination: Dr. A

Thank you for reading and listening! I hope that you enjoy the audiobook of Writing Braille With Chocolate recorded in the writers’ own voices.

I also hope that you are finding ways to take care of yourself and your loved ones.

Amy

Dear Ones,

This post peeks inside Piecework: Ethnographies of Place before it hits bookstores and libraries near you. You will find an excerpt from the introduction “I’m in a Relationship with an Essay” for audiophiles and bookworms.

If you find yourself saying, “Wait. I thought Amy was a poet?!” You aren’t wrong. She is, she is. Friends, there are many layers to this life! I’m also a social scientist and urbanist who was a professor and arts educator for 30+ years.

Piecework is for people who care about public memory at a time of orchestrated erasure. Its for storytellers, social researchers, and creatives. New books are always a chance to connect and think together. Contact info@creochangemakers.com to schedule a reading, workshop, or guest appearance on your podcast or speaker series.

• About the Book

• Read Author Interview

• Order your copy

I’m In a Relationship with an Essay

(Excerpt)

My daughter maintains an archive of strange things people say. One afternoon she scrolled through her smartphone to cite me back to myself. “Here it is,” she said grinning. “I’m in a relationship with an essay.” I must have blurted that out one day between the desk and the kitchen, while shifting from writing to mothering-mode. The essays in this book were written at home and my children were often my witnesses. As an artist, mother, and teacher, writing essays challenged me to pay attention to what was going on within and around us. Piecework honors the life force of numerous children and adults in schools, communities, and homes. Its a book on collective action made of ethnographies and auto-ethnographies of place with some poems sprinkled in. I hope the book inspires activists, teachers, and families to tell their own stories and share them with their communities.

I became a mother in my twenties and ended up raising two fabulous human beings as a single parent. My “career” snaked through a life in dance, capoeira, urban planning, teaching, teaching teachers, community arts, launching start ups, growing programs, and writing. My love of teaching connected me with schools, community centers, and research universities where I worked with people across the life cycle: from kindergardners to doctoral candidates and from artists to nonprofit leaders.

Writing has been important to having a good life. I journaled, wrote poems, and drafted one slow-growth ethnographic essay at a time while raising children as a head of household. Eventually, my poems and essays became published and I could share them with more than close friends.

Telling our stories and expanding the archive is an important part of social justice work. When I began teaching, I could not find much written about arts education or community arts practice from the perspectives of multi-diasporic families and communities like mine. I always felt a divide between home and the university and labored to mend the gap. My approach to research became: make yourself useful and create knowledge. Share what you learn for multiple publics.

There are many ways to write. Coming from a background in dance, I consider movement and music to be languages. My father used to say, “writing is thinking.” He wrote from outlines: 1, 2, 3. A, B, C. A linear approach felt impossible to me. Free verse and performance came more naturally. I did not learn how to write an essay until I went to college. The basic form of an introduction, conclusion, and three body paragraphs looked like two arrows pointing inward, and three rectangular idea cartridges. However, I slowly adapted to working with essay structures and became familiar with their architecture.

The etymology of the word essay means to weigh, ascertain, or try. Essays are good for asking questions, and I like that. They are also well suited for sharing an inquiry process with readers.

Writing essays helped me think for myself. I didn’t always feel empowered to speak in my own voice about what I intimately knew. I found it odd to not be able to mention myself as a knower in social science essays, or to refer to an idea without being able to cite it from a previously published text. Without an inclusive bibliography, how would I write about the worlds of knowledge around me?

As far as I know, I don’t come from writers. The people I knew were dancing, making music, painting, singing, creating sculpture, and telling stories. They were organizing for social and political change to defend immigrants and working people. Writing ethnography and autoethnography, participant observation and interviews, became ways for me to write about the unpublished dynamics of home, community, and place that surrounded me. I could write about women’s and children’s lives, and the classrooms and community spaces I was involved with. While I’ve written white papers and policy statements that set precedents for action, ethnography reveals how things actually play out on the ground.

Motherhood, teaching, and community work are vital, yet too often undervalued. My essays reflected on what I witnessed listening to children and adults, and what I learned through culture and art as valuable knowledge. Writing auto-ethnography provided the reflexivity I needed to become a protagonist in my own life. At the same time, my children grew into adults who write music, lyrics, screenplays, multimedia art works, essays, and poems. My former students author dances, prose, poetry and lead creative spaces, companies, classrooms, and policy debates.

How does a single mother wrangle time to write? When my son and daughter entered pre-school, I returned to school too. We spent evenings studying around the kitchen table with snacks. I resorted to reading homework aloud in a soft tone to the kids as good night stories that helped them fall asleep. By kindergarten, my youngest could read the Italian political philosopher Antonin Gramsci aloud, and my eldest had contributed his views on space and place in an email conversation with the geographer Edward Soja. As my kids grew, I taught just above their grade levels to prepare myself for what was coming next.

We made our home into a makeshift multimedia art studio. An unfurnished living room can be an open space for choreography, and a kitchen table is a good place for poetry workshops. We wrote, read, made music, danced, played capoeira, and experimented with every analogue and digital technology we could get our hands on.

Midlife is a time of reflection. As a mother, I was never offered a job that required me to “publish or perish” but I believed that writing was important to do. The essays in this book are a record of relationships to community. The book is organized around three themes: classrooms, communities, and migrations. It includes translocal interviews with colleagues in Brazil and Nigeria and a pep talk for cultural activists.

Piecework honors everyday people who work together to author their own lives. One essay at a time, writing the book helped me find meaning in deep and enduring connections to family, community, and place.

Piecework: Ethnographies of Place is a part of the Year of Womxn Initiative with Unsolicited Press and distributed by Asterism designed, built, and run by independent publishers.

Upcoming Readings:

November 15: No Fest: A Beyond Baroque Fundraiser

November 18: University Synagogue, Irvine

This post is in response to friends’ questions.

• How can I order Piecework?

• Can I still get copies of your previous books?

• Are audiobooks or online recordings available?

Here goes . . .

HOW CAN I ORDER YOUR NEW BOOK?

Cover Art by Sammy Savos

Piecework: Ethnographies of Place is available to pre-order through Asterism as a part of Unsolicited Presses’ Year of Womxn initiative.

Pre-order your personal copy of Piecework here.

WHAT IS PIECEWORK ABOUT?

The publisher wrote the following about my forthcoming nonfiction book Piecework:

“Amy writes with luminous clarity about identity, resilience, and reinvention. In this intimate and generous Q&A, she opens up about the magic of creative habits, the power of play, and what it means to author oneself into being.”

Unsolicited Press recently published an new author interview about the book. You can read the full interview as “Culture, Kinship, and Creative Action.” Here’s an excerpt:

What’s a fun fact about you that most of your readers don’t know?

I’ve had multiple lives. For example, I’ve lived on a farm with mango trees, cows, and boa constrictors in Central America. One fun fact from the U.S. is that I used to improvise professionally with artist friends. We did this in open spaces, clubs, theaters, and public spaces during the 80s. As dancers and musicians, we practiced constantly with each other and knew each other’s moves, range, and momentum. Once I was improvising with three other friends at the Pyramid Club. Two dancers. Two musicians. John Zorn was among them. Suddenly, a cymbal comes careening through space. It was accidentally launched from its stand by a trap set due to an overzealous drum stick. Our intuitions were so finely tuned that I could sense it coming toward me in the dark. I caught it on my pinky finger, raised my arm, and the cymbal rang out like a gong from my fingertip. We all oohed and aahed at the marvel of our synchronicity and my near escape from a sonic guillotine.

Community of Writers invited me to write an essay about my new books. I titled the essay “Being a Sanctuary Person” — which speaks to my current state of mind. You can read the full essay in the Omnium Gatherum Quarterly. Here’s an little excerpt:

Dance Lessons for Writing

I fell in love with dancing when I was a child, hiding behind trees to watch a dance company rehearse beneath a lofting green parachute. Heaven, I thought. People get to do that?! I followed my passion for movement and danced for decades until a series of events I won’t discuss here pushed me from running a dance company toward teaching and writing. Poetry became a haven for my heart. It was easily accessible, requiring only a pencil and a notebook, rather than rehearsal space and a cadre of dancers.

Two key lessons from dancing shaped my writing life. The first is personal responsibility to prepare your vessel. Develop a relationship with yourself, with your body. This has meant being attentive to health and mindfulness for emotional self-regulation. The second lesson was the importance of ensemble work (or being able to create in community). Dancing taught me to balance personal practice with social practice.

CAN I STILL GET COPIES OF YOUR PREVIOUS POETRY BOOKS?

Yes. Order PRINT COPY of Random Experiments in Bioluminescence from Flowersong Press.

The audiobook version includes my own voice, plus 10 of the 11 guest translators! Order the AUDIOBOOK of Random Experiments in Biluminescence here.

You can also order copies of Even the Milky Way is Undocumented and Catastrophic Molting. If are ordering online, try to order from the publisher. You can order signed copy directly from me.

ARE ANY OF THE POETRY READINGS AVAILABLE ONLINE?

Some of the public poetry readings for the recent book were recorded and are accessible online. Here are some options:

Earth Citizen at the University of Colorado Boulder I was blessed to read for Earth Day with special guests A’bena Awuku-Larbi, Jilly Canizares, Abosede Ogundare, and Akpa Arinzechukwu.

Book Launch at Beyond Baroque with Karen Llagas, Akpa Arinzechukwu, and yours truly.

Author Interview with the luminous Luivette Resto for Poetry LA

Alrighty! I hope that does it. Until the next time, I am sending you and your loved ones abundant good wishes for your thriving.

Gratefully,

Amy

Dear Ones,

Please receive my good wishes for your thriving. Thanks to everyone who reached out welcoming this online community writing space. I’ll keep the experiment going and share morsels from the WRITE YOUR STORY workshops I facilitate. The aim here is expanding access, and tapping into our creativity as a source of power and care as we navigate these challenging times.

Prescribing Play

A health care worker who I admire jokingly prescribed me “PLAY.” She wanted me to consider how PLAY could electrify my aims for wellness and justice. This inspired me to start a PLAY journal filled with jottings and collages. I’m also interrogating my notions about change making and researching ways that PLAY appears as a source of transformative energy.

“We need to find things to laugh about when things are hard.”

- Anonymous Health Care Worker

We first tried out the prompt that I will share in this post in a local park. We wrote together in a cool, shady spot. Monarch butterflies flit around the botanical life that surrounded us. Since WRITE YOUR STORY is an international group, friends met in person and called in via Zoom.

Before we get started, I want to thank everyone who sent me a note sharing gratitude for this online writing space. Also thanks to the new friends who signed up as paid subscribers. Please know that for anyone who wishes to participate but buying a paid subscription would be hardship, just drop me a note. Also, let me know if you’d like to sponsor community through a charitable donation. You can reach me at amy@creochangemakers.com. Thanks!

Writing Prompt

Getting the Most From the Prompt

Read more

Querides,

¡Les envío mis mejores deseos!

Esta nota es un experimento. Sí. Algo nuevo. Una prueba, uno, dos.

Me encanta facilitar círculos de escritura y tengo la suerte de poder hacerlo con personas increíbles de todo el mundo. Hay muchas razones por las que disfruto leer y escribir en comunidad: por ejemplo, veo cómo las personas se sorprenden al conectar con la dignidad de su propia historia, en cómo surge la sabiduría al escucharnos mutuamente.

Esta publicación comparte ideas sobre la preparación y una sugerencia para que disfruten de la escritura. Abriré la sección de comentarios; espero leerlos y cualquier conversación que surja, para quienes disfruten de una versión compatible con Substack de mis talleres ESCRIBE TU HISTORIA.

Así que, ¡vamos! ¿Quién quiere una comunidad de escritores sin fronteras? Si escribes, puedes usar todos tus idiomas. Y si eres traductor y quieres participar, ¡avísame!

PREPARÁNDOSE PARA LO QUE NO HAY

Primero, unas palabras sobre la importancia de la preparación. Un amigo dijo una vez que “la suerte favorece a los preparados.” La práctica sí importa. Si nos preparamos, es más probable que podamos aprovechar nuevas posibilidades cuando se presenten.

Cuando era estudiante universitario, uno de mis mejores amigos era de Lesoto. Se relacionaba con un grupo de estudiantes sudafricanos negros que se preparaban para ejercer una profesión en una realidad post-apartheid y tenían objetivos muy claros. No esperaban a que cayera el apartheid. Habían decidido su fin y se preparaban para asumir la responsabilidad en la sociedad que vendría. Los imperios caen. Las sociedades cambian. Las guerras terminan. Las cosas cambian. Incluso en el contexto del cambio climático y el fascismo, hay muchísimas acciones que aún podemos hacer. Los pequeños actos rompen la inercia. No solo podemos contribuir al cambio, también podemos prepararnos para la probabilidad en caso de que ocurra.

INSTRUCCIÓN: ENERGÍA

Es un momento importante para conectar con la propia energía (piensa en la energía como fuerza vital) Leer y escribir me ayudan a lograrlo. También las caminatas largas y el yoga. Estas prácticas me ayudan a conectar con mi energía: aprender de ella, experimentarla y moldearla.

El poema “Planetario” de Adrienne Rich concluye con una estrofa sobre la profunda ciencia de la autoría. Escribe: “Soy un instrumento en forma de mujer que intenta traducir pulsaciones en imágenes.” Aquí está el poema completo y el fragmento que he seleccionado para nosotros en español y inglés:

He estado toda mi vida en el

camino directo de una batería de señales

el lenguaje más intraducible

transmitido con mayor precisión del universo.

Soy una nube galáctica tan profunda tan intrin-

cada que una onda de luz podría tardar 15

años para viajar por mi cuerpo Y ha

tardado Soy un instrumento en la forma

de una mujer tentando de traducir pulsaciones

en imágenes para el alivio del cuerpo

y la reconstrucción de la mente.

“I have been standing all my life in the

direct path of a battery of signals

the most accurately transmitted most

untranslatable language in the universe

I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-

luted that a light wave could take 15

years to travel through me And has

taken I am an instrument in the shape

of a woman trying to translate pulsations

into images for the relief of the body

and the reconstruction of the mind.”

Me gusta cómo esta estrofa transmite respeto por lo que ocurre en nuestro interior constantemente, aunque a menudo sin darnos cuenta, cuando le damos sentido a nuestras experiencias. Considera la ciencia de tus propias fuentes de energía. ¿Cómo accedes y utilizas la energía? ¿Cuáles son las señales que recibes que, con o sin precisión, representan quién eres realmente? ¿Cómo te estás convirtiendo en un ser sofisticado, capaz de cuidar tu cuerpo y pensar por ti mismo?

Si quieres participar, lee el extracto de “Planetario” de Rich. Relájate y concéntrate en el lenguaje. Elige un segmento que te interese o que te resuene. Escribe libremente durante 10 a 20 minutos. Al escribir, concéntrate en la curiosidad y no en el juego. Sé auténtico contigo mismo y libera tus juicios. Comparte lo que escribas conmigo por correo electrónico o en la sección de comentarios para que otros lo lean y respondan. ¡Listos!

Cuídense mucho.

Amy

[Preparado en el español con cariño por Amy, Delia X. Chavez, y Julio César Morales Gabriel]

Dear Ones,

I am sending you good wishes!

This note is an experiment. Yes. Something new. Testing, one, two.

I love facilitating writing circles and am lucky to be able to do this with amazing humans all over the world. There are lots of reasons why I love reading and writing in community. I love witnessing people surprise themselves when they tap into the dignity of their own story. I love how wisdom grows from actually listening to each other.

With the aim of inclusivity, this post shares thoughts on preparation and a prompt for your own writing pleasure. I’ll open up the comments section, look forward to reading you, and to any conversations that bubble up. This is for people who would enjoy a Substack friendly version of my WRITE YOUR STORY workshops.

So, here we go. Who wants a borderless writing community? This first post is in English (except for the bilingual Spanish-English prompt), but I’ll follow up soon with more language options. If you write, please feel free to use all of your languages. And if you are a translator who wants to play along, let me know.

Read more

You’re invited to the official LA book launch for Random Experiments in Bioluminescence!

When: Saturday, May 3, 2:00 pm

Where: Beyond Baroque 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291

Register Here

Join Amy Shimshon-Santo, Àkpà Árinzèchukwu, and Karen Llagas — for an afternoon of eco-poetry and community conversation at the LA launch of Amy’s book Random Experiments in Bioluminescence. Choral, cryptographic, and exhilarating, her work is a homecoming to the body and the planet, cultivating respect for multiple languages, and awe for life in our pluriverse. The poems ask us to become attentive to multi-species, biotic and abiotic phenomena, and welcome plurilingualism into our everyday lives. Expect a playful space for fresh thinking for people of all ages.

Author Biographies

Amy Shimshon-Santo is a writer, educator, and culture maker who believes that creativity is a powerful tool for personal and social transformation. She was born on Tovaangar land in current day Los Angeles, and has immediate family in the Southwest, the Middle East, and South America. Amy is the author of Random Experiments in Bioluminescence (Flowersong Press, 2024), Catastrophic Molting (Flowersong Press, 2022), Even the Milky Way is Undocumented (Unsolicited Press, 2020), the limited edition chapbook Endless Bowls of Sky (Placeholder Press, 2020). Her essays have appeared in GeoHumanities, Urban Education, and Imagining America, and come together in her forthcoming collection Piecework: Ethnographies of Place (Unsolicited Press, 2025). She has been nominated for an Emmy Award, two Pushcart Prizes, a Rainbow Reads Award, Best of the Net (Poetry), and was a finalist for the NightBoat Poetry Prize. She has performed and taught throughout the Northern Territories, Latin America, West Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Karen Llagas

Karen Llagas’s chapbook, All Of Us Are Cleaved, was published by Nomadic Press/Black Lawrence Press in 2023. Her first collection of poetry, Archipelago Dust, was published by Meritage Press in 2010. Karen has recently translated Dancing Hands: A Story of Friendship in Filipino Sign Language (Chronicle Books, 2023), which won a Schneider Family Book Award, and How Do You Eat Color? (Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2025). A recipient of the 2022 RHINO Founder’s Prize, Filamore Tabios, Sr. Memorial Poetry Prize, an Elizabeth George Award and a Hedgebrook residency, her poems, translations & prose have also appeared in various journals and anthologies. She has an MFA from Warren Wilson College and teaches Filipino/Tagalog at UC Berkeley.

Àkpà Árinzèchukwu

Àkpà Árinzèchukwu is a 2023 Oxbelly Writing Retreat Fellow, a winner of the 2021 Poetry Archive Worldview Prize, a Best of the Net nominee, Pushcart, and Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, shortlisted for the FT/Bodley Head Prize, and a finalist for the 2020 Black Warrior Review Fiction Prize. His works appear in Kenyon Review, Adda, Transition, Black Warrior Review, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He is the curator of Muqabalal, a bilingual conversation series, co-host of Muqabalal’s Poem a Day in Translation, and the Church of Poetry.

Praise of Random Experiments in Bioluminescence

“Amy Shimshon-Santo’s poetry is an exploration of the deeper connections between the selves and identities molded by languages, cultures, and the land(s) we inhabit."

-Leonora Simonovis, Study of the Raft

"Words dance across the page. These pages bring us back to our most embodied, enmeshed selves, bring us back to the Earth and its abundant wonders."

-Gayle Brandeis, The Art of Misdiagnosis

“This book is fire! It reads like a score. A choreography of creatures. It raises questions of how radical poetic forms can make environmental poetry more sharp and true.”

-Lydia Liu, The Problem of Deer

"Amy Shimshon-Santo is the most organic poet I have ever read. Her polylingualism extends beyond our species, feeding us meaning from panoramic angles."

-Mamle Wolo, Flying Through Water

“Amy Shimshon-Santo’s poems are the words of a survivor, a warrior, and a creator. Time and time again, across borders and languages, she takes us into sensuous and deeply emotional places, finding beauty and rootedness and meaning in everyday moments and extraordinary landscapes.”

-Héctor Tobar, Our Migrant Souls