Rosana

During the process of creating your digital story, what did you discover through the experience? 

“I think I’ve never told my story in that much detail before, I catch myself going back in time. Mix feelings of sadness and victory at the same time.”

After watching your digital story, what did you learn about yourself?

“I felt very emotional after watching the video, all the photos, all the little details, makes me go back in time. It was an amazing unique experience.”

Cumulatively, I recorded two hours of footage of Rosana. I produced five (1-3 min) videos documenting memories, moments, and stories Rosana shared during our time together. I recorded Rosana in her home in Sheboygan, WI, accompanied by her precious dog Nina. As we discussed her journey to the U.S., she expressed how difficult it was for her to thrive in the rural towns she and her ex-husband would live in. Not only did she feel isolated and alone, but she felt like she could not talk to anyone in her community. Her ex-husband used his position of cultural familiarity to create fear in Rosana. By telling her his perception of how interracial marriages were viewed by people in the U.S., she guarded herself from everyone around her.   

Rosana’s avoidance of her neighbors due to the fear created by her ex-husband’s cultural perception underscores Johannesen's fifth point of interpersonal silence, “The person is avoiding discussion of a controversial or sensitive issue out of fear.” (qtd in Glenn, Unspoken 11). Her ex-husband places an expected silence on Rosana when he expresses the danger of her encountering other Americans due to her skin color. Not only did this imposed silence stop her from building community, but also contributed to her isolation. Glenn points out the oppressive nature of expected silence, she states, “...women’s silence or the silence of any traditionally disenfranchised group often goes unremarked upon if noticed at all” (Unspoken 11). In additional digital stories, we learn the extent of the imposed silencing on Rosana, while her ex-husband did not support her in her quest to learn English or acquire her driver’s license. Rosana trusted her ex-husband’s depiction of a country she had no familiarity with, she reveals, “He’s my husband, everything he say, I believe.” Rosana’s experience supports Glenn’s argument of the systemic gendered attachment of speech and silence. Men dominate speech while silence historically is the ornament of the female sex, Glenn explains, “The person must remain silent or be hurt in some way, some emotional, intellectual, physical, or professional way. The silencer dominated the silenced, once again gendering the conditions of speaking and silence” (Unspoken 41).

A  powerful moment in this digital story is when Rosana breaks her silence on why she had fears of speaking with her neighbors. During Rosana’s digital story, she says “For me, in the time, was the most challenge was all the things my ex-husband told me about... my color... I think he pictured the U.S. people in so bad a way...how they will treat me.” While Rosana was silenced for years before her divorce, this moment in her digital story reveals the empowered position she now holds for herself. She no longer views American’s the same way her husband did. She reinforces her perspective with her Brazilian cultural background.. She now can re-author her story and explain to her children the oppressive logic she was fed when she arrived in the U.S.