If skin could speak, think about the individual stories it could tell — shamed by blemishes, oppressed by color, bruised and silenced by violence.
Such personal experiences about health, culture, medicine and healing are the focus of a citywide program called “UnSilencing Anatomies” that began Saturday and goes through Nov. 30.
Participation by individual Tucsonans willing to share their own body experiences, whether it’s the story of an illness or another health experience, is a key to the two-month series of events. The project hashtag is #unsilenceyourbody
UnSilencing Anatomies is a collaboration between Tucson-based Kore Press and several local partners, including the University of Arizona, the Tucson Chinese Cultural Center, La Pilita and other local cultural, health and justice centers.
The series of events was inspired by Silent Anatomies, a 2015 book of poems and art by Monica Ong that was published by Kore Press, which is a nonprofit literary publisher of contemporary women’s writing. The poems in the book came out of a series of art installations about medicine and memory. The poems explore subjects ranging from skin whitening to ancestors’ feelings of shame about having daughters instead of sons.
The aim of UnSilencing Anatomies is to have an impact health disparities, through community conversation, reflection and “body-based story-telling,” organizers say. Health disparities may involve themes like ethnicity, sexuality and gender.
“Monica’s book is the inspiration, knowing the range of communities that were really touched by it,” said Lisa Bowden, who is the founder and executive director of Kore Press. “It was an opportunity for us to do what we call literary activism.”
The last time Kore Press did a similar large-scale engagement project was in 2011 when it organized a community-wide ”Big Read,” a form of a national initiative intended to foster a love of literature.
UnSilencing Anatomies will include a number of community events, among them a talk by Ong about poetry and public health followed by a panel discussion with academics and artists about fears and cultural assumptions that shape public health and public safety.
The event is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 5, in Drachman Hall at the UA College of Pharmacy. Scheduled panelists at that event are feminist sociologist Monica J. Casper, who is associate dean for academic affairs and inclusion at the UA’s College of Social and Behavioral Sciences; mobile health clinic founder Deanna Lewis; and poet TC Tolbert.
Other events include a group poetry reading at 6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 7, at the La Pilita Cultural Center, and a screening of public health digital stories at the YWCA on Friday, Oct. 21.
“It’s really bringing together folks interested in closing the gap on justice between different kinds of bodies, genders and races, particularly in a medical setting,” Bowden said.
“The book has been used in health disparity classes to teach cultural competence and empathy development to help educate the next generation of medical students.”
At the heart of the program is a request for public participation. Organizers have set up 26 “Nerve Centers” around town where UnSilencing Anatomies asks for body-based stories from community members. Each site asks different questions meant for reflection.
Stories may be submitted online, via text, emailed to kore@korepress.org or placed in drop boxes that will be set up in various locations around town. The idea is to get the general public talking about medicine, literature and the role of the personal story, Bowden said.
“They can bring the silenced stories into the public realm,” said Katherine Standefer, a local writer and teacher who writes about the body, consent, and medical technology.
“The tricky piece is always what stories get told, and who gets their voices heard — there are all these questions of access.”
Standefer, who teaches medical humanities at the UA College of Medicine, will be hosting a reading and interactive conversation at 6 p.m. Nov. 15 titled, “UnSilencing the Sexual Body.”
One of the issues she hopes to discuss is how medical forms can alienate people. For example, if a person seeking sexual health services doesn’t identify as either male or female, having to check one of these boxes at the beginning of a visit can make them feel unseen and create anxiety.
Standefer hopes community members will come forward with stories about the shame and stigma that keeps them from seeking medical services in the first place. That’s the kind of information that can spark community dialogue and also help medical providers and overall health, she said.
“When artists tell stories in the right way, it helps all of our imaginations,” she said.
