“The last thing on my mind was that my own mother would pour olive oil on me, and for me to scream, ‘Anny, Anny! I’m burning! I’m burning! Please help me!’”
That was part of the phone message Saúl Grullón ’15 left to catch the attention of the organizers of New England Public Radio’s Valley Voices story slam. Out of about 70 local residents who pitched stories, Grullón was chosen as one of 10 to take the stage on Sept. 14, 2014.
He stood before an audience of strangers on the second floor of Northampton’s Hinge bar and restaurant and told of the time that he, as a homeless teenager, visited his sister, Anny, to get her signature on a document testifying to their mother’s physical and verbal abuse. He flashed back to a scene from years earlier, in which his devoutly religious mother prayed and anointed him with olive oil, trying to rid him of the “curse” of being gay. Then she held a piece of paper to the stove and threw it at him, setting his shirt ablaze. His sister rushed to help and defend him.
“When I delivered [the beginning of] my story, you could hear people talking on the first floor, but when I delivered the ‘Hail Mary’ and the ‘I’m burning’ part, the whole bar was just silent—I couldn’t hear a thing—and it shocked me,” he says. “That was a really special moment for me, because I kind of felt like the whole world just stopped to listen.”
The listeners voted Grullón one of the evening’s most impressive storytellers, earning him a spot at the Best of Valley Voices Story Slam scheduled for April 18 at Northampton’s Academy of Music.
What might Grullón talk about at that event? He has lots of ideas. To him, writing and telling stories is “really magical, because it’s like I have a time machine and I’m traveling, and I’m revisiting these moments” from his past. Originally from the Dominican Republic, he grew up in the Bronx, N.Y., and Newark, N.J., living for a while in an emergency shelter. “Because I had a challenging childhood, I always liked to release that stress or that anxiety or anguish through storytelling or through speech and debate, which I did in high school,” he says. He enrolled in Essex County (Community) College before transferring to Amherst, where he’s now a double major in English and Spanish.
He’d like to see more of his Amherst classmates participate in story slams and public-speaking events, as a way to push themselves beyond their comfort zones, integrate with the broader community and share their hidden talents and histories. “I know so many great storytellers here, and it would just be great for them to have that opportunity,” he says. “There is more to school, or coming to a college like Amherst, than doing academically well, having straight A’s and perfect SATs. Your story matters.”