Bihl Haus Arts Exhibit: Una Voz Destada
In conjunction with the February 1, 2020 13th Annual Community Service Learning Conference focusing on Trauma-informed Care, Bihl Haus Arts has installed an exhibit Una Voz Destada: The Art, Writings and Trauma of an Immigrant Child in the Briscoe Library. The newly created exhibit has been shown only once before in September of 2019.
These haunting drawings and journal entries are the reflection of a
childhood in excruciating isolation and culture shock. It is the pain of
an immigrant child who, rather than reject her ancestral language and
identity, chooses to adopt selective mutism, and say nothing at all.
The exhibit displays the work of Rocío Alvarado who at 12, moved to El Paso, Texas, from her home in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
What should have been the picture-
postcard dream of a life and an education in the U.S. quickly
becomes a nightmare of in-school abuse — emotional, physical and
educational.
Later in life, Rocío went on to teach for several years as a dual language teacher in San Antonio and Somerset, Texas. Her notebook (upon which the exhibit is based) was not discovered until January 2018, more than two years after her death from cancer at the age of 54.
