Mayagüez public school students to present book on hurricanes, earthquake & pandemic

By THE STAR STAFF

The University of Puerto Rico (UPR) Mayagüez Campus will present the book “Para contarnos: memorias que superan numeros” (To Tell Us: Memories That Surpass Numbers) today in Tarzan Hall, featuring texts and works by Mayagüez public school students.

In “Para contarnos,” “young people from western Puerto Rico tell us how hurricanes, earthquakes, the coronavirus pandemic, and the hasty return to in-person school disrupted their school experience and upended their lives,” anthropologist Ivelisse Rivera Bonilla said. “The complexity of everyday life is expressed in incisively simple prose that moves and stuns, shocks and enlightens.”

The publication brings together more than 100 texts and dozens of artworks created by 50 students from socioeconomically disadvantaged sectors of Mayagüez that document their experience following hurricanes Irma and Maria, the earthquakes of 2020, and the pandemic. The co-editors are professors Jocelyn A. Géliga Vargas and Sandra L. Soto Santiago, from the English Department at UPR Mayagüez.

The volume is the result of writing workshops led by Vibeke Betances Lacourt, Beatriz Llenín Figueroa, Jocelyn A. Géliga Vargas and Sandra L. Soto Santiago, and art-making workshops led by S. Damary Burgos and Yasmine Hernández. The workshops took place during summer camps and Saturday sessions at the University Center for Access between 2022 and 2024, with support from several entities and the campus itself.

“‘Para contarnos’ highlights the challenges our youth face in western Puerto Rico. These are enormous challenges,” Géliga Vargas said. “Fortunately, the participants have had the support of a committed team of tutors from the Mayagüez Campus and collaborators who have joined this effort in pursuit of educational justice.”

The presentation will be at 10:30 a.m. and will be led by Betances Lacourt and Burgos. Several of the student authors will read from their texts.