Elaine Del Valle

I grew up as the youngest of four, enveloped in the love of an altruistic, righteous mother and her ten siblings who used humor and Vicks Vapor Rub as cure-alls. Family get-togethers meant forming an assembly line to make Puerto Rican pasteles and laughing through tears at their endless joke-filled recollections, seemingly in competition for the best childhood trauma. Their disarming way of sharing wisdom through their wounds and using laughter to develop shame resilience continues to inform my artistic approach. It has ingrained in me the healing power of storytelling.

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We lived in Brownsville, Brooklyn--the murder capital of New York--a community more populated than 98.5% of the nation's neighborhoods.