Street Roots • Nov. 20-26, 2015
Commentary
Page 10
----------- THERE’S NO STOPPING —
CHERYL GREEN
COURTESY PHOTO BY ESTHER JUDD
Cheryl Green is the producer and co-director of the documentary “Who Am I to Stop It. ”
AND WHO AM I TO STOP HER ANYWAY? -------
Disability-justice advocate
produced a documentary
about isolation and
art after brain injury
BY SUE ZALOKAR
st A ff writer
heryl Green is a media artist, activist
and owner of StoryMinders, an
organization set on changing the
public’s perception about people
experiencing traumatic brain injury.
She holds two master’s degrees, one in
performance as public practice and another
in speech-language pathology. Green makes
films and media that combine personal
narrative and self-advocacy to create
S
dynamic, artistic tools for disability justice.
I met her when she emailed me in early
August in regard to a Street Roots interview
I did with Frances Fagan, a women who had
suffered a brain tumor, spent a lot of time
healing and rebuilding her life, and was
granted a full scholarship to Yale University.
Green told me, “You didn’t attempt to
downplay her health because the public
would be too scared by it, nor did you use it
as a prop to lure people into a voyeuristic
look at someone with a messed-up brain.”
This sparked my interest in Green’s work.
She is the producer and co-director of the
documentary “Who Am I To Stop It,”
working in tandem with producer and
co-director Cynthia J. Lopez. The film
explores isolation, art and transformation
after brain injury and addresses the difficult
questions around loneliness, stigma, poverty
and how people find their way in the world.
Green identifies as a peer to the artists
featured in the film. In 2010, she sustained a
traumatic brain injury herself and reached
out to the disability arts community to
better understand her own brain and
recovery after injury. Today, Green works as
a fierce social justice advocate.
“Who Am I to Stop It” will be released in
2016, and Green hopes to premiere the film
in Portland in the spring. She told me about
the impetus to make the film.
Cheryl Green: In the brain injury world,
there is this sense that your life is so
drastically changed that sometimes we still
talk about needing to have your life saved
long after your physical life may be
threatened.
For me, in 2010,1 ended up having to go
on medical leave and then eventually
resigning from my job - which I hadn’t even
started. That really threatened my identity. I
had just spent several years going to school
to study. It really threw all of my plans for a
loop.
When I could, I engaged with disability
arts and got involved in disability culture and
community through developing an artistic
practice. I felt like that part of my life was
saved.
I had lost most of my friends, which is
very common with TBI (traumatic brain
injury). And I reignited a whole friendship
circle. I had a sense of community. I had
places to go, things to do. The artistic
practice gave me a sense of purpose and
involvement again. I wanted to know if
anybody else would describe the arts as
having saved their life after a brain injury as
well.
See GREEN, page 11