Prieto
Yosimar Reyes and his grandmother in San Jose, California. Photo by Jean Melasaine
Artist highlights the immigrant experience and disrupts border narratives
Yosimar Reyes is a poet, writer, and storyteller. He is also undocumented.
He’s combined all of this into performance art that showcases what it’s like to grow up undocumented in the United States.
Through the one-man show “Prieto” which means dark-skinned in Spanish, Reyes explores his coming of age in the 1990s as a queer and undocumented kid in San Jose, California.
His narrative takes the audience more than 500 miles away from the border between the United States and Mexico. But the lines around legality and limitations drawn by the border remain central to his life in San Jose and pivotal to his stage performance.
However, Reyes’ work is no monotone recollection filled with despair. At the core of “Prieto” is his desire to add comedic twists to the retelling of key experiences and moments in his life – certainly a different lens for viewing the twists and turns of undocumented life.
“I wanted to have a play that also made audiences laugh and made immigration not so serious, but digestible in that way through humor… For me, I think that's the way that I've coped with my status,” Reyes said.
Reyes and his family arrived in East San Jose in 1991. The family moved into a street lined with apartment complexes, and the unit they moved into was in the only building that did not require renters to list a Social Security number on their applications. He ended up growing up surrounded by undocumented families with a strong sense of their status.
Reyes has come to view this border art project as a collaboration between his family and the eastside San Jose community. “I didn't grow up like, ‘oh, this is a shameful secret.’ People spoke about it as a matter of fact, ‘no tienes papeles (you have no papers),’ it is what it is.”
‘We need to change strategies and not focus our resources on trying to convince people that don't want to understand us.’
He recalls the community being resourceful. There was always someone who could say where to get hired, where to get an ID in order to work, and who could offer rides. It was this experience that formed the foundation of his early work as an organizer in the fight for the rights of undocumented students.
“I was shocked at the fact that we were depicted as these people that didn't have anything,” Reyes said. “And I was, like, no. We've survived 20-plus years. There’s a certain level of genius in being ingenious, and why aren't we using those stories, or why aren't we showcasing us?”
Part of his art is a push to shift the discussion from what he views as outdated narratives of immigrants making themselves small and anonymous in order to reduce anti-immigrant anxiety. He argues that this process, over some time, leads immigrants to forget that they can be confident, bold, and loud.
“I think about how we've been telling undocumented stories … and yet we don't have nothing. So that tells us that maybe we need to change strategies and not focus our resources on trying to convince people that don't want to understand us,” Reyes said. “I'm going to take care of the people that need to be taken care of, and that is undocumented people … I'm gonna write poems. I'm gonna write stories. I'm gonna write books. I'm gonna write jokes to an undocumented audience … I know sometimes it's hard as an artist ‘cuz people think that I'm limiting myself, but it's not that. I think it is just prioritizing.”
Author Yosimar Reyes. Photo by Jean Melasaine
Eastside story
The one-man play takes the audience to San Jose, where Reyes returned after living in Los Angeles. He said he needed to be back home with his family, as a way to spend time and care for his grandmother, who was nearing 90. He wanted to share the anecdotes and stories he wrote in his one-man play to try to get a clear sense of how things happened. His stage narrative takes audiences through his relationship with his grandmother, and at a point in the story, he begins a conversation by asking, “What is a country?” Why do people continue to fight to stay in a place that’s hostile toward them?
The performance also fills voids in the community’s history. Reyes notes the lack of stories and awareness about elders who have migrated to the United States. He says, “My grandma is grappling with the fact that she doesn't have the luxury of time. We can't wait another 20 years … Nobody advocates for undocumented elders; there's no conversation. There are people that can't retire; they're still working, and what happens to undocumented elders? Where do they go back to?”
Reyes views his play as an intergenerational narrative that goes beyond the community. He argues that immigrants are divided into categories and subcategories. There is a reality, he said, that ignores older generations of immigrants. Untouched as well are the emotional components that come with seeing undocumented parents and grandparents with limited access to healthcare and other resources.
Yosimar Reyes performing at Occidental College, 2020. Courtesy Reyes
Covid everywhere
For Reyes, this point was cemented through his community’s experience during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We were living in the apartment complex,” he recalled. “All my neighbors lost their jobs, positive Covid cases were everywhere. The ladies were still working and had no resources because nobody was giving us aid … I wanted to introduce those kinds of conversations too, of you're already poor, and you're still dealing with all these things … I think for me, it's about the human condition, and hopefully, by targeting the human condition, it becomes universal.”
Amid the pandemic, Reyes has struggled to stage his play before a live audience. He hopes to launch the show in October of this year at the Brava Theater in San Francisco’s Mission District. He wants to curate a space that brings audiences into a narrative that celebrates his community and how they haven’t let their legal status stop them from achieving their goals.
“There's nothing beautiful about being undocumented. If there's one semblance of beauty, it’s that by us being loud, we found each other, and now we can rely on each other's stories to keep moving forward.”
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Cora Cervantes-Orta was born in Mexico and raised in Los Angeles. Growing up within a diverse community taught her to understand issues from different perspectives. She completed her undergraduate studies at Columbia University and her Master's degree in multimedia journalism at New York University. Her work has been published by NBC News Digital, Al-Jazeera, NPR's Latino USA, Salon, NAHJ: palabra and Narratively. She has produced stories for MSNBC and NBC News NOW. During her time at NBC Universal she has worked as Diversity Coordinator for NBC News and MSNBC, and as an associate producer for MSNBC’s PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton. Currently, she is an associate coverage producer for NBC News. Cora is passionate about equity in representation in media. She currently serves as vice president of NAHJ’s Los Angeles Chapter. She resides in East Los Angeles, California.