Category: Stories

A Greek immigrant tells stories to bring people together

Barbara Aliprantis (Photo/ Kaitlyn Elphinstone/ Cayman Cultural Foundation)

Barbara Aliprantis jokes that she started listening in utero. She was born with a superb memory, an expressive voice, and a vivid imagination – the recipe for the perfect storyteller.

“I remember the day I left the fishing village of Paros, Greece, when I was two and a half, as though it were yesterday,” she says. “I was on a donkey and my sister was on another donkey…my mother was crying – everyone was crying – that image stayed with me all my life.”

It was 1937 when Aliprantis left her native island in the Aegean Sea with her mother, brother, and sister, to join their father in New York.

“I found myself in a neighborhood in Flatbush, Brooklyn…I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood,” says Aliprantis, explaining her Jewish-NY accent.

Her immigration story was the first she ever told. It all started when her first grade teacher asked her to introduce herself, and her different background, in front of the class – and she’s been telling that story ever since.

“I didn’t even mind an audience even then,” she says, laughing. “I loved to tell stories and put on a show at the drop of a hat, and I’m doing that now. A teacher affects your eternity. It’s so important to let children know it’s good to be different.”

Aliprantis did not know at the time that telling her story would eventually lead her to becoming a professional storyteller who would produce workshops and events, in voice and sign language, in theaters, schools, libraries, community centers, and festivals all over the country.

“I have worn many hats in my life,” she says about her life before professional storytelling. “Being a Greek girl growing up in a Flatbush, Brooklyn [in the 1950’s] I [was expected to be] a nurse or a secretary. Three months into nursing training at Brooklyn College, I decided it wasn’t for me. I went to business school to study typing – it was probably the saddest part of my life.”

She then went to business school for six months, while what she really wanted was to get a job in show business.

“My first interview was at CBS,” recalls Aliprantis as if it were yesterday. “I was so nervous, I failed the typing test.”

She says she ended up getting a job at a corporation working for six men.

“Being a girl of the ‘50s – oh my God – it was whatever they wanted,” she says about the job that paid $85 a week – enough to pay the rent for her apartment in Queens. “It was a different time.”

Aliprantis married at 21, and 10 years later – in 1968 – she quit her job and went to Greece to adopt a baby boy. Three years later, she gave birth to a son. She says it was one of her dreams to be a mother – so she decided to stay at home and dedicate her time to raising her two boys.

In 1980, when her boys were bigger, she took a full-time position as a storyteller at a school for the deaf in the Bronx.

“I fell in love with it immediately,” says Aliprantis. “I started learning sign language on the job. I loved it. It changed my life.”

After 10 years there, she left to work with high schoolers in Queens.

“I will be forever grateful to the students and staff at both schools who taught me new ways to listen to the world and tell my stories,” says Aliprantis.

Back in 1985, while working at the school for the deaf, she had enrolled in Queensborough Community College to finally study acting and theater production – what she had always wanted to pursue as a young girl.

“I was the oldest one in the class, and the only one who did all the assignments,” says Aliprantis, who two years later enrolled in SUNY Empire State College and graduated in record time. “I got 89 life experience credits, and graduated in a year and a half with a BA in the performing arts and concentration in sign language and performance.

After graduation, Aliprantis taught an introductory course in sign language communication and storytelling at QCC for almost 30 years. Throughout the 1990’s she was a member of QCC’s Professional Theatre Residency Program and co-founded a not-for-profit community organization called the American Center for Theatre and Storytelling – now called the New York Story Exchange.

“In 1997, I established the Second Tuesday of the Month Evening Series at the famous Cornelia Street Cafe in Greenwich Village,” she says. “It is the longest running evening series for adults in NYC.”

The program entails three featured tellers, plus ‘Open Telling’ for three or four volunteer tellers to share a 5-minute story.

“The biggest misconception about storytelling is that it’s just for children,” says the woman who was honored at NY City Hall for her work. “It brings people together.”

What advice about life would she tell her younger self if she could now?

“Nothing is ever lost,” says Aliprantis.” Everything happens for a reason. Every obstacle is for a reason. Sometimes the reason doesn’t reveal itself until later on.”

April 9, 2015
A nun provides peace in a violence ridden community in Mexico

Sister Consuelo Morales (Photo/Victor Hugo Valdivia)

Ever since Consuelo Morales was a small child in the northeastern metropolitan city of Monterrey, Mexico, she says she remembers feeling the unceasing urge to help others. She quickly learned doing so is what made her the happiest.

One day, when she was in elementary school, Morales recalls encountering some poor children who didn’t have any shoes.

“I took them to the shoe store where my mother bought my shoes, and I talked with the salespeople there to sell me 23 pairs of shoes,” says Morales. “I told them my mother would pay for them.”

Her mom was shocked when she got the bill later on. What also surprised her mom, Morales says, is when she was a little older and decided to become a Catholic nun.

“When I finished my BA, she sent me to Canada for two years to see if I could forget that I wanted to be a nun,” says Morales. “She was expecting me to marry, or anything else, but even there, I found some way to work with poor people. It is something I have inside of me.”

Morales spent many years working to help indigenous communities and children in Veracruz and Mexico City, and she returned to Monterrey in 1992, when she heard her home city was in dire need of help – from abuse in state-run orphanages to the forced displacement of people from their lands. It was then she helped found Citizens in Support of Human Rights (Ciudadanos en Apoyo de Derechos Humanos, CADHAC), and she has devoted her life to that cause for the past two decades.

Her work has been especially challenging from 2007 through 2012, she says, when the drug war started to reach a peak and the narcos started killing and kidnapping innocent members of the community. She has served as a support system for family members of the victims. According to the latest figures, it has taken the lives of nearly 23,000 people – and counting.

Courtesy CADHAC

Morales, now 67, still arrives at CADHAC around 8:30 am every morning. Throughout the day, she has appointments with people needing help with justice or violent situations.

“They come and ask questions and share information with us, and we help them resolve their problems,” says the nun. “We may help them, and stay beside them, but never in front of them. We help them with the tools to get justice.”

Most recently, Morales is one of the protagonists of a documentary film, “Kingdom of Shadows,” which speaks about the consequences of the U.S. – Mexico drug war.

“We all are involved in this, and we have to give the little we have to support and make a change in this situation,” she says.

What advice about life would she give her younger self with the wisdom she now has at this age?

“Try to be in harmony with yourself,” says Morales, adding, “Treat others as you would have them do unto you.”

March 19, 2015
From a career in advertising to shedding light on Israeli inventions

Marcella Rosen speaking at the Untold News Awards ceremony at the Harmonie Club in New York City on November 12, 2014. (Photo/ Jacqueline Iannacone)

When Marcella Rosen is passionate about any issue, she makes sure it is known – not in a pushy or obstinate manner, but in a “Can you believe it?” way.

After the native New Yorker graduated from Barnard College, she earned a masters in clinical psychology from Columbia University while working at night. It was then she realized she wanted to pursue business. The daughter of an orthodox rabbi, and professor, ended up having a 35-year award-winning career in advertising.

“I called up the heads of research at three advertising firms,” says Rosen about how she landed her first job in advertising. “I got three interviews, and I ended up getting the most interesting job…Advertising was a crazy world, but it was a very exciting time. I loved going to work.”

While at N.W. Ayer, she worked on famous accounts like AT&T’s “Reach Out and Touch Someone” ad in the late 1980’s. However, the campaign closest to her heart throughout her long career, she says, was the one that got 13 percent more women to vote in 1992. Rosen says the historic ad was a photo of a woman without a mouth, with the caption, “Most politicians still feel women should be seen and not heard.”

Now retired from advertising, Rosen continues to pursue another cause full-time which she has been working on for more than a decade – raising awareness of the innovative work occurring in Israel. In 2010, she founded the non-profit/news website Untold News (which has a large following on Facebook), and two years later, she wrote the best-selling book, “Tiny Dynamo,” which talks about 21 of the many life-altering technological contributions Israel is making from airport security procedures that use psychology to making ocean water drinkable.

“There’s a pill which has a tiny camera inside it – you swallow it, and it takes pictures of your intestines and beams them back to your doctor’s computer,” says Rosen, excitedly. “One of my other favorites, which is more personal, is freezing breast tumors…You don’t need surgery. You do it in a doctor’s office and go back to work. [These innovations] help all of us.”

She says the country has a “can do” culture, despite its political strife.

“You think how much better life would be if all these wars stopped,” says Rosen. “Last summer, I was there, and at the same time we were having dinner, there were bomb sirens. You have to get up, and then after 10 minutes you go back and finish your dinner.”

However despite it all, she continues, “Israel has helped 52 countries in need from Haiti to sending doctors to the U.S. after Hurricane Sandy…and has made a disproportionate amount of inventions for being the size of New Jersey. It shows what human beings can do when they have to.”

As far as what piece of life advice she would give her younger self now?

“It’s always important to try. I’d rather not succeed than to not have tried,” says Rosen, who is also a pilot on her free time. “We can’t change the world, but in our own spheres we can make a difference. I care about women, and I care about unfairness…and I want to spread that as much as I can.”

March 5, 2015
The co-founder of P.F. Chang’s shares his recipe to success

Co-founder of P.F. Chang’s Philip Chiang (Courtesy Philip Chiang)

Philip Chiang always wanted to be an artist, but life had other plans for him. At 67, he is the co-founder and consultant for the 200-plus Chinese restaurant chain, with a nearly $1 billion revenue, P.F. Chang’s.

Chiang’s parents left China in 1949 to flee Mao Zedong’s communist dictatorship, and so Chiang spent most of his childhood in Japan. At 14, he migrated, with his mother and sister, to San Francisco’s Chinatown.

He credits his success today to his mother, Cecilia Chiang, who has been nicknamed “the mother of Chinese food in America” and is also winner of the 2013 James Beard Foundation Award for lifetime achievement.

Cecilia Chiang, 95 (Courtesy Philip Chiang)

At a time when the U.S. was only familiar with Cantonese cuisine, she introduced Mandarin cuisine of Northern China by opening the Mandarin restaurant in the 1960’s.

“She wasn’t a restaurateur – she just somehow got into it,” says Chiang proudly about his mother. “She became very successful and well-known – so things worked out. I think the intention was just to pay the bills.”

He goes on to explain that his mother was the seventh daughter of an aristocratic family. She grew up in a large courtyard home characteristic of upper class families, but the family lost everything during the Chinese Communist Revolution.

“She’s a survivor,” says Chiang, who learned most things, including recipes, from his mother.

While he was an art student in Los Angeles, Chiang used to help his mom out at the Mandarin, when it moved to Beverly Hills.

“I was the busboy and did miscellaneous stuff around the restaurant,” says Chiang, not knowing at the time how that would come in handy later on.

The experience actually inspired him to open his own restaurant, reflecting his own personality – simple and laid back. He called it Mandarette.

“It was a more casual, younger cafe,” says Chiang. “I liked the fancier food that my mom had, but I craved more everyday food – casual dining, instead of fancy that my mom was doing.

He opened Mandarette in Los Angeles where, he says, everyone is on a health kick.

“The food was lighter fresher, more health-oriented…and that’s what attracted people,” says Chiang.

As luck would have it, one of his customers there was Paul Fleming – owner of the famed Ruth Chris Steakhouse. Fleming became a big fan of Chiang’s food and asked him to help him open up a Chinese food restaurant in Scottsdale, Ariz. That was the first P.F. Chang’s which opened in 1993.

“It was never meant to be a chain,” recalls Chiang. “After we did the first and second one, there was still no thought to do a chain. It just kept expanding, and we went along with it, and it grew.”

The Los Angeles resident says what he believes led to the chain’s success is that they serve the Chinese food which he himself likes to eat.

“Clean and simple,” says Chiang, who is now helping P.F. Chang’s with its international expansion when he’s not pursuing his art career (he just joined Instagram with the name “ChiangPhilip” to display his latest paintings inspired by nature). “I’m still doing the same thing 20 years later.”

He says being a restaurateur is a very difficult career, but his recipe to success is simple:

“In the end, I think people don’t need something different, just something really good,” says Chiang. “Very few people can do something well – even if it’s just a burger, or a salad – just do it really well.”

February 25, 2015
A language lover uses her passion to help immigrants succeed

Elizabeth Schwartz, co-owner of Better Speech Now (Courtesy Elizabeth Schwartz)

Elizabeth Schwartz, a 64-year-old native New Yorker, has always had a fascination with languages. She majored in French in college, she has traveled to four continents, and she is proficient in Spanish. She also earned a master’s degree in speech language pathology.

After working with children with disabilities for 20 years, and then after getting laid off from her full-time job supervising recent graduates in speech language pathology, Schwartz started her own business at 61. Through Better Speech Now, she helps immigrants achieve their professional goals in the U.S. by teaching them how to speak with a clearer American English accent.

“I was thinking about starting accent reduction for quite a while…it was almost the same time as getting laid off,” says Schwartz.

She explains that she set up the business with her friend, Sonu Sanghoee, in 2011. Together, they connected with the non-profit Queens Economic Development Corporation (QEDC).

“We won the start up competition in 2012, and they supported us every step of the way,” says Schwartz about the organization.

She explains it wasn’t an easy process since neither of them had ever started their own business before. They had to decide on a business structure, for one.

“We made like 12 drafts of the business plan, and we used the $10,000 we won to market ourselves and pay for a business coach,” says Schwartz. “It’s not like being a lawyer or a doctor — not everybody knows they can improve their accent. That’s how our business was born. We’ve been having a lot of fun.”

What also helped, she says, is the support of family and the community.

“My son is in the tech world, so he helped us with our website and Facebook page,” says Schwartz. “My partner’s cousin has an MBA, so he helped us…and we designed fliers and held an open house in the community.”

She says what she loves most about her work is that she is very passionate about what she does.

“I’m helping people with a significant problem,” says Schwartz. “People come here, and their accent is a real stumbling block for them. Day-to-day tasks can be very challenging — like talking on the phone.”

Schwartz says she also enjoys helping people with interviewing skills.

“We, as native [English] speakers don’t realize how difficult it can be to go someplace where our language is not understood,” she says. “I feel I am helping people with that…and it’s very gratifying.”

One of her favorite success stories is of an attorney from Hong Kong. She says before taking accent reduction classes, he used to shake from nerves in the courtroom whenever he had to argue before a judge.

“I really worked with him and built his confidence,” says Schwartz, adding that the average length of the program is an hour per week, for 12 weeks. “The guy from Hong Kong only had six weeks — that was the shortest, but I’ve had people who needed more.”

Schwartz usually works out of the Art House Astoria, which is in an area of diverse ethnic backgrounds in Queens, but she also has international clients with whom she works via Skype and e-mail.

Besides going to the gym almost every morning, Schwartz says her other favorite activity outside work is traveling to Washington, DC, whenever she can, to visit her 2-year-old grandson.

“He’s the light of my life,” she says. “I adore him.”

What is one piece of life advice she will advise him one day?

“Do what you are passionate about. Define what your passion is about, and that should be your life’s work,” says Schwartz. “When you’re my age, you want to look back and feel like you made a difference. In this economy, a lot of young people just grab whatever job they can get, and sometimes you have to do that, but you shouldn’t have to do that for a lifetime. Figure out what you love, and go for it.”

February 11, 2015