My Heart Comes From My Ancestors

Read the Stories Watch a Performance Excerpt

Origins

Gertrude Stein’s famous quote about Oakland, “There is no there there,” referred to her lost family home, and to the paved-over orange groves of her youth—their lushness overtaken by the housing and roads of modern development.

Yet today, Oakland flourishes with another kind of abundance: a rich diversity of cultures unmatched, perhaps, anywhere in the United States—or the world, for that matter. Descendants of immigrants from Latin America, Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, as well as descendants of Native Americans, sit side by side in public school classrooms and call Oakland their home.

The stories from My Heart Comes From My Ancestors form a map of our common human experience and speak to the “heart” of the American experiment. They are our living heritage, the fruits of our democracy, rooted and flourishing in California soil.

Background

ALICE: Arts and Learning in Children's Education is an arts-based literacy program that brings visual and performing artists into public school classrooms to enhance literacy and creativity, and to promote cultural exchange.

Children from six third grade classes in two Oakland schools conducted oral history interviews with their elders. The interviews were culled, edited and formed into a dance/theatre performance by Helen Stoltzfus, director of ALICE; in collaboration with Fua Dia Congo, Oakland's premiere Congolese dance company.

In the spring of 2005, 125 children, 60 from Thornhill Elementary and 65 from Fruitvale Elementary, performed for each other in My Heart Comes From My Ancestors. The enclosed stories are from that performance. The words are the children's.