In the spring of 2017, I spent two weeks with my 75-year-old abuela in La Mora, Guanajuato. During this time, she answered many questions about how our lives and stories are interconnected. “Me Voy” was born from the audio recordings I collected while living in a world of her memories.

“Me Voy” is a multimedia performance of light/color, audio recordings, ritual, and poetry. The performance is an ode to the intergenerational trauma grandchildren inherit through diasporic immigrant narratives. The piece explores how these memories are manifested through personal family history and time travel. It was performed during SANA: An Art Gathering, a DIY two-day multi-artist installation. The intent of the show was to showcase emerging local artists from Dallas as a form of resistance to the gentrification happening rapidly in the Oak Cliff neighborhood. We intentionally brought the art world into the home of friends to make our space accessible. “Me Voy” is a weaving and undoing of the stories and sounds of my grandmother’s roots. What happens when the dreamer meets her dream?

I created the stage for my performance with curtains, sheets, plastic table covers, and LED lights. The color of the lighting would change at the discretion of a friend while I performed. I distorted three separate audio recordings to create a soundscape of a cricket and mariachi serenade, a church sermon, and a conversation my grandmother had with a taxi driver on our way back home. I then added pieces of one of my poems so that it would seep in between these memories and create a dialogue. As this played, I performed a ritual as an offering of my own memories to my ancestors with gifts I’d received from important women in my life. These gifts included a book by James Baldwin, my great grandmother’s tape collection, chocolate from my sister, and a painting of a rose from my art mentor. After the ritual, I took a seat at my writing desk. Masked by a sheer curtain, I rolled a blunt and wrote on my typewriter as the last recording played. My grandmother’s voice echoed as she told the taxi driver her immigration story. Afterwards I turned on an old battery radio, and with static playing in the background I broke the fourth wall to read my poem in its full form to the audience. The dream, now a living memory, speaks to the future.