Bronx Stories

By Joshua Colon

“I will be in the Bronx forever and ever, beyond when I die,” said Rachele Lanzillotto as she addressed the crowd at the Bronx Stories event held at the Bronx Museum every month.

Dozens were in attendance for the program dedicated to highlighting the diverse experiences of Bronxites. The performers illustrated their stories through personal narratives such as poems and short stories.

Lanzillotto told the story of how she was diagnosed with cancer when she was 18 years old and was a patient at Sloan Kettering.

“When I go to Sloan Kettering and they take out cancerous tissue, guess what happens to the cancerous tissue… where do you think they put it?” Lanzillotto asked the crowd. Audience members varied with their answers but no one gave the answer that she was looking for.

“They have a tissue bank of frozen cancer cells in a warehouse in the Bronx where they have silos for every patient,” she explained. This is why Lanzillotto said that she would always be here.

She ended her segment with an empathetic statement: “My cells will be in the Bronx forever.”

As the crowd gathered in front of a painting named “The Rape of Nanking” by Roger Shimomura, a painter, Frank Rodriguez, a writer and filmmaker from the Bronx and Stanford University graduate, tried to decipher what was meaningful to him. “The artist forces you to ask yourself a question: What is that? Was I supposed to learn about that? Where is Nanking? Is that a person?” he asked himself.

He continued to decipher the work as he broke down some of the characters in the painting itself. “The title draws you to the second panel which can be (juxtaposed),” Rodriguez said. One of the characters within the painting itself is Pikachu from the Pokémon cartoon, which depicts what seems to be a rape. The painter, Shimomura, is putting the “fun” side, which is represented by the Pikachu with the dark underbelly of Japanese society, which in this case is “hentai,” Rodriguez said.

Another performer, Rafael Torres Jr. explained that he is from a third world country – Brazil.

“The Bronx is like Brazil,” he said. “The murder rate is up by the youth (because) they do kill. The killing cause the pain that they feeling is just too real,” said Torres, Jr., also known as Divine aka Don Divino, the winner of the 2012 Brio Award from Bronx Council of the Arts for Performance Poetry.

Torres stood next to a painting, which depicted a group of gentlemen sitting on the steps of a building in what seemed to be an impoverished neighborhood, and began to rap some verses of survival, which he is known for. Torres also discussed what it was like growing up with absolutely nothing growing up in the Bronx as a Latino. He rapped: “Yo represento el barrio que vive en sufrimiento,” (I represent the neighborhood that lives in suffering).

The host Simply Rob uses his personal life for his writings. He is a mentor of “at risk” youth of NYC Spoken Word Poetry and is a co-founder of the award winning all Latino poetry collective “El Grito De Poetas.” “El Grito De Poetas” is a poetry group of seven individuals who use poetry to share their poetic gifts, and give back to their communities. They have won many accolades for their work with schools and were awarded the Distinguished Service Award for their accomplishments in HIV/AIDS service delivery.

Simply Rob, his stage name, addressed his battle with drug addiction and how it changed his life for the worse and also how he has not fully recovered but is now on the right path — thanks in part to poetry. Before he recited one of his poems, he talked about how he was homeless and had absolutely nothing in 2006. It was then that he realized that he did not need any of that in his life. “I realized I don’t need drugs and my whole life was ahead of me,” he said.

 

Writing, he said, is all that he has to keep him sane and he writes because it is easier to express whatever he wants. Through writing, he “cleaned” himself.

“I used to have my whole life ahead of me and now at best, my glass is half full but I still thirst…,” he recited.

Attendees were enthusiastic about the performances. Audience member James Peach, 42, from the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx, said: “Personally, I thought everybody’s performance was fantastic… I think that anytime that we come to a space like the Bronx Museum where the community can get involved and they can give back their voice to what they have experienced, it is always going to be a positive.”

He added that it is really important that people even if they take one sentence, one line, or one word, from somebody’s poem, and they turn their life around, then any poem that any poet wrote is meaningful.

People came from around the city to witness this event. One audience member from Harlem named Zack, 22, said that he enjoyed all of the performances. “I find that the artists came with different viewpoints from their own personal lives. It was very introspective…”

Sixty-four-year-old Victor Mastro said he found the artists to be very creative.

“They had lots of energy and it was fun, fun, fun,” said Mastro who lives n the Jacobi area of the Bronx. “I feel that there is a rebirth, a re-influence of positive vision and creativity coming from the Bronx.” He said he would definitely like to come again to a Bronx Stories event.

Attendees are encouraged to bring their own stories to share at the monthly event.