Poverty Heroes (Introduction)

by Staff Writer

The Poverty Hero Project was a literary and visual art project created by artists at POOR Magazine in collaboration with Community Defense Inc. The three lead artists; Lisa Gray-Garcia, Leroy Moore and Dee Gray facilitated a series of 10 eight week workshops on the creation of this new form of literary hero. These workshops culminated in a 55 page full color anthology published by POOR Press and a series of 12 radio narratives broadcast on PNN's KPFA radio show - to get a copy of the book or CD of the radio shows please contact POOR Press (415) 863-6306

Dee Gray's Statement

I developed the notion of Poverty Hero to be realized as a series of workshops in which each workshop participant would re-write the stories of poverty into stories of hope through literary and visual art

I incorporated several literary "devices" such as myth, fantasy, metaphor and story which would transform the stories of poor folks from the tragic to the heroic. I began the series by investigating several myths established in indigenous cultures as they would be appropriate for the majority of the communities who we were writing with (i.e. of color and from poverty) We began with a comprehensive study of The Hero With an African Face - a book by Clyde W. Ford on the Mythic Wisdom of Traditional Africa. We then studied The Myth of the chupacabra – the chupacabra is a campesino myth created out of a tragedy that occurred simultaneously in several communities across the Southern United States, Central and South America Each workshop participant created their own Chupacabra myth transforming their own 1st person experiences - all in preparation for their final creation of the Myth of Grace Wells - Poverty Hero

To make the transition from Fantasy to myth i.e. to apply the myth to a real person we next integrated a real man – i.e. a "bandit" from India who already had a very mythic, bigger than life quality based on his survival and resistance through extreme poverty and colonization.

We made many transformations of this man – man to animal – animal to man – man to man- man to woman and finally, back to his "real" self.

These early stories acted to "free up" the creative process of the workshop participants to enable the participants to transform the Poverty Hero; Grace Wells, an elder, disabled, African Descendent woman (83) who was facing eviction from her home of 14 years.

Through the rewriting of Grace’s story the participants not only honored Grace’s struggle through poverty and displacement but as well facilitated her resistance to that hopeless end through an alternative literary reality. This happened concurrently with the advocacy work that was done for Grace by the other POOR Magazine media organizers and participants who worked in tandem with Lawyers and community organizers to insure that in fact Grace was not displaced.

Dee Gray, writer, conceptual artist and Licensed Therapist, is the previously houseless, currently at-risk, Co-editor and Co- Director of POOR Magazine