At first glance, creating a piece of digital storytelling media appeared easy—write a story, find pictures that tell that story, and create a “movie.” As I started to approach the story it became evident to me that a story without personal resonance, or intrinsic value would create a less than stellar story for both the viewer and me. I thought about a familiar adage in creative writing, “no surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.”

Could I surprise myself? I wondered.

I did not expect to, but initially I struggled with the entire concept of “storytelling.” Not because I felt incapable of telling a story, but instead I didn’t feel I had a worthy story. Admittedly, this questioning of worthiness hung over my creative process until the last third of my creation process. Initially, no topic was worthy; then, when I settled on a topic I started to think my ideas about the topic were not worthy, or even valid. I questioned whether I even had a story to tell.

Looking back, this struggle with story worthiness and positioning was the most important learning process of creating my digital story. Again and again, I found myself needing to drill down, and sort of triangulate my story between three questions: who am I, what do I need to tell now, and how best can I deliver that message to my audience.

To begin I started culling pictures that I had instant access to, and that had an emotion reverence for me—easy, pictures from my garden. In the beginning, I sort of mindlessly curated any and all images that positioned me near or in my garden, as well as all gardening pictures. There were hundreds. As I went through the pictures I amassed, I realized only a few had emotional power for me, and reflected an inward story.

As I started letting go of pictures, I also started to search for the story, my story, and even deeper—meaning and value. This is where I found my own inward story, my own growth, my surprise.

I realized I wanted to gather pictures that reflected a lyrical, self-reflective, poetic approach to storytelling. I wanted to create a visual poem, that was also a non-traditional, self portrait. It is then that I started reflecting on gardening, and what it means to me. I grew up watching and standing next to my grandparents while they gardened. My Papa grew our pumpkins some years, we always had plums from Granma’s beloved plum tree, she cooked greens from collards and mustards she grew, and I fondly remember picking fresh tomatoes off a tomato plant before heading inside, popping it in my mouth without a care. Granma also had roses, and a beautiful collection of houseplants she tended to. She would always tell me about her life as a sharecropper back in Tennessee, on the tobacco fields, how she dreamed of going to school and becoming a nurse, but being the eldest she had to work the fields.

One of the most monumental books/essays I’ve read is Alice Walker’s “In Search of our Mother’s Gardens.” I read it as a stay-at-home mother, while dreaming of a life in academics, but making due creating art, with the materials I had available to me—old clothes for quilts, and growing food outside in the garden (then it was a financial necessity). Walker helped me to see Granma, myself through the eyes of our truth, and how often we Black women have to abandon our spiritual and artistic impulses to create to survive; however, this deeper resonate spirit still pops out. I committed to myself and Granma (who had since passed away) that I would realize my dreams of being an academic scholar, and still honor our voices and artistic spirit.

What I found was the process of telling a lyrical, poetic story required different things from me as the filmmaker. I had to consider presentation of my “thesis,” and decide whether this was something I wanted to speak, have viewers read, or abandon.

I did not find the answer until I went through the process, collected the pictures and poems, and allowed them to set the course.

While going through the technical process, I started thinking about the art of creating a visual self portrait. One of the things that became important to me was representing myself, as I see myself, along with my mother/grandmother/great-grandmother. I believe a self-portrait can be informed by images that are not directly visual representations of the artist. In this way, a self portrait is a lyrical, poetic expression of self. When teaching fiction I tell my students what a character chooses to see, what they focus on tells the reader as much about a character as any backstory you could provide, often times this seeing tells us more. It is intimate and unfiltered. This is what I was after.

Thinking about my gardening life and creative life it became clear which pictures I must choose—the ones that I felt were a self-portrait, and are reflective of me. My biggest artistic heroines are Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keefe. Frida is often quoted with stating she paints self portraits because she paints her reality, and she is always with herself. Georgia O’Keefe is known for her beautiful flower paintings that are hyper close-up, and force the reader to see the delicate beauty of flowers.

These ideas resonate with me deeply—I am my own reality, but also I often feel ignored or unseen, as a Black women. Being married to a Mexican man, who doesn’t fit most people’s idea of what a Mexican man looks like, we often see/experience a dichotomy of recognition while out in public together. He is addressed, I am not. He is doted on, I am ignored.

I identify closely with flowers because though we walk by them and know they exist, we never really look closely, and force ourselves to see the deep, intricate beauty of flowers. When was the last time you looked so closely at a flower you could see how it is put together? When was the last time you thought about the heroic beauty of Black women, and considered how we Black women are put together?

I wanted my digital storytelling piece to reflect this, yet I didn’t want to narrate it. As a writer and poet, I am notorious for asking, preferring my readers to think. I’m never interested in handing out word candy; I want to write poetry that alters how you think, see, feel—long term.

A few years back I started a series of self-portrait poems, a sort of “artistic” rendering of myself in words. I decided those would be my narration, and I would frame them with Walker’s, Kahlo’s, O’Keefe’s words.

As I started to complete the video, it came time to transition from black screen to video, and instinctively, I grabbed the dropper and chose my skin color. I expected a dark brown, a version of Black, and instead I got one of my most favorite colors—a deeply brown, pinky mauve. It felt like a personal discovery, a literal moment of realizing and seeing myself fully. I loved this color instinctively. Without a doubt I would be the background screen, in this way, I am woven through this self portrait, holding these images together and connecting myself to the earth.  

Note: An oil self-portrait is included first in fragments, then as a whole, mirroring my own movement from seeing myself in pieces than as a whole, and also as a nod to Frida Kahlo.