Potluck Stories: An Attempt To Shake Up The POV
At our first event in Santa Ana, CA on November 5, 2022 <3
A few months ago I was at a storytelling event in LA. It was my first time going since I moved and also since the onset of the pandemic. I hadn’t signed up to share a story, but from the moment I got there - I couldn’t wait for the event to start. There were so many people buzzing around and the venue had a kind of too cool, grungy vibe that my old millennial soul has just been thriving on for the last decade. The hosts were ex-New Yorkers and their dark humor was like catnip for my transplant heart. And then the stories began, and they were incredible. The storytellers were hilarious and raw and vulnerable and to me, they were courageous. With each story, I was drawn in deeper and deeper.
And then, the 7th storyteller came on stage. And he started talking about ringing yoga bells while his wife was giving birth. I thought of my two older sisters, and how they would absolutely freak if someone started doing that while they were trying to have babies haha. It suddenly hit me that the POV of each story was largely from a white, male perspective. …I began to take in the room very differently. As I looked around, I noticed lot of couples, a lot of varied age groups, and a lot of racial and gender diversity. This piqued my interest.
I started to wonder…Why are people like me here…people with brown skin, maybe a hijab on their head…but not in a way that we take up space? Why are we there to only learn, and not to contribute? Not to share? Are we not worthy? Are we scared? Are we too proud? Are we not proud enough? Are we too private? Are we out of place? Do our stories not deserve to be told and to be heard?
YES - welcome to the can of worms that is my brain in any given moment.
In the following weeks, I became obsessed..obsessed with this idea of stories, who they belong to, who receives them, who has the right to share them. I mulled over how I might create a space like this differently; who I might want to hear from, and what I was itching to share.
As a daughter of South Asian immigrants, I grew up hearing stories of a homeland that wasn’t mine; a homeland that I was “from” but had hardly been to; I heard stories sometimes half in another language mixed with English; stories of family members I’d never met sitting on the floor sharing lentils and celebrating the arrival of another mango season; I heard stories of 1947 - the year after my dad was born, when 1 nation became 2…and then later became 3.
These tales shaped my imagination which was full of scenes I had never visited or experienced..and yet were a part of me, a part of my muscle memory, a part of my understanding of how my parents came together, and eventually, how I came to be. These stories sometimes feel invisible to the naked eye, tucked into the color of my skin; only visible to those with shades of melanin too.
My mind went into overdrive. I imagined what might a space look like if I - with my brown skin and my female energy and my hijab - dare to replace the white, male, ex-New Yorker hosts, to create a space for storytelling? Who might show up, and who might feel a little more brave to tell their story? What might that kind of space bring? And what barriers might come down?
And as my mind raced into the future, in my heart, I felt like an imposter. What right did I have to put my name and face on anything again after my start up? I needed to get all my thoughts out of my head…so with fingertips to keys, I wrote a piece that allowed me to overcome…overcome shame, guilt, that heaviness in my heart telling me that I couldn’t. And with that came the YOLO mindset that us founders have a disproportionately high tendency to lean into.
I booked a venue…I made an Instagram page…I asked some friends for help…and VOILA. On November 5, my friend Anum Ahmed and I launched THE POTLUCK PRESENTS, our attempt to shake up the point of view. And it was awesome. I haven’t had that much fun in a long time. We made friends. We told stories. We laughed, we cried. We had 30+ people, we broke even, we heard from 8 story tellers, and we achieved an NPS score of 95%.
Our next event is tomorrow, December 3, 2022 in Long Beach California. Doors open at 2 pm, and our theme is “obstacles.” We have a few tickets left and I’d love to see you there >>> get tickets here.
