Telling it Like it is | Storyteller Carolina Quiroga

Carolina Quiroga moved to Asheville only about a year ago, but she’s already a distinctive storyteller here, blending folk tales and her own experiences from her native Colombia with newer stories born from observations of her newly adopted home.

On July 11, she begins a residency of three weekly performances at Story Parlor in West Asheville. Today, we talk about straddling the line between her father’s expectations and her own desires, her self-appointed mission to educate certain people in the Southeast about Latin Americans and the kinds of stories she’s motivated to write and tell today.

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Transcript

Matt Peiken: Why Asheville of all places? 

Carolina Quiroga: It was more like life that brought us here.

My husband was looking for a VA job and he got selected for a VA in Richmond, Virginia. And so we went to Richmond, Virginia to look it up. So I was more like, Virginia is the place. And then we were like, Nope, not Richmond, Virginia. We're taking the Asheville one. 

Matt Peiken: What was different about Richmond that turned you off that you found welcoming in Asheville? What was different?

Carolina Quiroga: It reminded me very much of Dallas. It's very businesslike. And that's something that I was I don't, [00:01:00] I like a city that is like middle size, but I don't like two big cities because they become impersonal. Like people are just like robots. So it, it felt like I was in a, like the junk, the.

They call it the brick jungle or the something like that. I was like, nope. And here it was just, every time I came here in the past, I always had a good memory. 

Matt Peiken: So you had been in Asheville. You'd been here before. 

Carolina Quiroga: Yes. 

Matt Peiken: Okay. 

Carolina Quiroga: Yeah. 

Matt Peiken: So tell me about your upbringing in Colombia. Were you from an artistic family?

What, where did literature and the arts thread their way into your upbringing? 

Carolina Quiroga: No, no artist in my bloodline. My dad was like a couple of years ago was how did you become a storyteller? I never liked art. Your mom is not like artsy. What did this whole thing came from? And we have no idea, but my love for [00:02:00] stories is mostly from my moms.

She reads a lot, and she's a great storyteller, tall tale type of storyteller. So she would turn a simple anecdote into something fantastic, unbelievable and Satan and Jesus and, I don't know, sirens and titans and zoos that they're just kind of, Came into, so it's you're like, really that happened?

Yes. Yes. And then next time she tells it to you, she added something else and you're like, no, but wait, last time you talk, who's that, who's telling the story. You are me. Okay. 

Matt Peiken: What's funny to me is your father was wondering, look, we're not artistic. Where'd you get this from? And yet your mother, it's very clear where that was passed down to you.

Carolina Quiroga: Yeah. But I think the idea of art which is something that I kind worked against, in a way, for many years, was that literature, especially, was for the high culture. Literature is for those who [00:03:00] learn how to read and write, that go to universities, that have this amazing vocabulary, that speak fluently, that are very high Q, I don't know it's very special people.

And in that sense, they made look everybody else ignorant. And of course people don't appreciate or don't approach literature because when you read a book that is that big with those big words, it's like the book is telling you, you're dumb. 

Matt Peiken: At the same time, did you challenge yourself, or maybe not even looking at it as challenging yourself, but were you an avid reader? Did those barriers to reading matter to you, or were they real to you at all? 

Carolina Quiroga: In some cases I had those issues where I'm not understanding, but I like pushing myself. A lot. So like I read Toto when I was 12. Warren Peace. You wrote, 

Matt Peiken: you read Tolstoy at 12? Yes. Okay. 

Carolina Quiroga: I said I do like challenges.

Yeah, I read the the purple color, I think that's in English. The color [00:04:00] purple. Yeah, color purple. I read it in Spanish when I was 13. 

Matt Peiken: Wow. And these weren't school assignments, you just chose to read them on your own. When did you start noticing that synthesis between your mother's influence as a storyteller, which obviously she imbued in you without you even knowing it, and outside literature and telling stories yourself?

When did that start to become something real for you? 

Carolina Quiroga: I remember, we had a really nice literature teacher in ninth or tenth grade, and he handed, he put us in groups and he said, okay, each group is going to read these books. And we were given the book of Pedro Paramo, which is a Mexican book. And the author is Juan Rulfo.

And the teacher said, you might have to read this twice. And we're teenagers. We're like, why do we have to read this twice? This is too much. And and then we [00:05:00] researched a little and everybody said, you will have to read this book at least two times, otherwise you won't be able to get it. And the challenge was that we will all have to tell the story back to the classroom, because every group had a different book. So you definitely needed to know that story. Otherwise you won't be able to tell it. And I was the only one in my group that read it twice. And the book is really small, so it was easy to read. And it's about ghosts and, oh my gosh, I love ghosts.

So of course I read it, I loved it. He moves in time very much back and forth, the author. And when it was my turn, I started telling it. And it just came out so easily, and I was loving it, and it was magic to see everybody paying attention, and the story was like, it took over me, and I'm just telling it and telling it, and then it was time for the third person to tell, and everybody's, no Carolina, just, you keep telling, because we finally understand it.

I told it and that was [00:06:00] like my first time of grasping this power of storytelling. This magic, because it's magical. 

Matt Peiken: You mentioned you came to the U. S. ten years ago. Were you already deep into the storytelling circuit in Colombia? 

Carolina Quiroga: Not so much. But I had been doing for like about a year, a little bit in some schools and going to some universities. I was part of a group and I knew some of the best storytellers because of course our teacher was like letting us know you have to look at this person and thankfully we had YouTube in those times so we were able to watch some of those videos.

And sometimes they would come to the universities, which is very common in Colombia at that time. I don't know these days, but storytelling was very common. 

Matt Peiken: What kinds of stories were you inspired to tell early on? 

Carolina Quiroga: That's funny because I was pretty much telling a couple of stories that I wrote and the teacher had told us, [00:07:00] I'm not really good at following instructions.

I like doing things my way. He had said you need to read other people like short stories to start telling. And I chose not to do that because I was not very used to reading short stories, but novels. I really like really thick historical novels and switching to short stories was, it took me probably a decade.

And so in my head, I was like, no, I'm just going to write my own stuff. So I was telling I remember a story about a tick and it was an immigrant story and I wasn't an immigrant yet. 

Matt Peiken: This is a story you wrote. 

Carolina Quiroga: Yeah. 

Matt Peiken: Okay. It, while you were still in Colombia. 

Carolina Quiroga: Yep. 

Matt Peiken: Okay. So now that's interesting because I, I've, I find that as there's a certain fork in the road that happens with storytellers or even writers of any kind, when you choose to tell stories of your own creation versus stories that are already existing in the world, you started [00:08:00] early with your own story or a story you invented? Have you always been somebody who's written and told your own stories. You're shaking your head no. Why is that? 

Carolina Quiroga: That's a very good question. Part of me had never thought I could be a writer or I could write something and put it like, or maybe having a diary and never thought maybe I did have a diary with some friends like we would pass around and today I'll write and next day someone writes.

But Part of that is also because I studied engineering, then I studied graphic design. So none of those paths were leading me to talk about myself. Either in writing or orally. So to me it was very foreign, the idea. But when it came to write that story, the whole issue of migration was very heightened at the moment.

And they were talking about all these people that were leaving Colombia because of the violence. 

Matt Peiken: Were you in Bogota? 

Carolina Quiroga: No, in Cali. 

Matt Peiken: Okay. 

Carolina Quiroga: [00:09:00] Which, Cali was, at the time, like 20 years ago or 30 years ago, one of the dangerous cities in the world. And they were talking about all these people that were going through Mexico and it was horrible, and the narco traffic was all, so that kind of filtered My reality, and that's when I wrote that story, but no, I've been writing personal stories more consistently for the past eight months. 

Matt Peiken: Oh, just that recently. 

Carolina Quiroga: Yeah. 

Matt Peiken: So why did you come to the United States? It's interesting that you initially wrote a story about people leaving Colombia, that was a national issue.

Did you already have it in your head and in your spirit that I'm going to be leaving too? And then why did you? 

Carolina Quiroga: I did. I very young age, I thought to myself I want to leave. I want to see the world. I wasn't sure if I wanted to leave forever and then come back or how that was going to play out. But soon after I, I was like finishing engineering, my dad wanted [00:10:00] an engineer in the house.

Matt Peiken: That answers a question I was just going to ask you. I know nothing about you, but I don't see you naturally or natively being interested in engineering. You pursued that because that was your father's wish. 

Carolina Quiroga: Yes. Yeah. 

Matt Peiken: Same thing with design or?

Carolina Quiroga: Yeah, my first thing inclination when I was about to, you know, finish high school, my dad had the talk and it's like, What do you want to do with your life? What are you going to study? And I said I would like to be a forensics anthropologist. Because I love watching those shows where they were like digging these bones and all that stuff.

And my dad said, Nope. What's next? I was like Psychology? Nope. What's next? Sociology? History? And to all the things I said which were really human related humanistic, he said, no. And he said, your options are you study engineering or you become a doctor. Which one is it? And I was like which one is the easiest? I'm go with the engineering. 

Matt Peiken: And studying engineering, is that what brought you to the United [00:11:00] States? 

Carolina Quiroga: No, actually, what brought me was I turned 30. I had already graduated from all that stuff and worked, and I was not happy with my life. Necessarily, I was working with arts and promoting arts.

And from working with artists, I saw them performing and casting that spell of magic with music or spoken word or whatever it was dancing and I said to myself I want to be there. I want to be on stage . 

 I actually came to do a master's in storytelling because when I turned 30, I had the crisis of the 30s. What am I doing with my life? Where am I going? So I talked to a friend and I said, I think I'm just going to have to save some money. I'm not just, I'm just going to backpack to Nepal, sit on a rock or something, just meditate and find my purpose because where I'm at, this is not it. I'm good at what I'm doing. People like what I do, but it's not making me happy. And he said aren't you a part of [00:12:00] a storytelling troupe? Don't you sometimes tell stories and stuff like that? I said, yes. Someone from Colombia went to the U S and got a master's in storytelling.

And I said, that's impossible. No one goes to study storytelling. You just get up on stage or on the plaza, and you just start telling. This is not like that type of profession. And he said, No, look it up. To prove him wrong. I looked it up. And there was a master's in storytelling.

Matt Peiken: And that was at East Tennessee State University, right? Because there's a big storytelling, a national storytelling festival that happens near there, right? So you went there. What did your father have to say about this decision? 

Carolina Quiroga: I applied and a couple months later, I dared to tell my dad and I said, Hey, I applied and I think they had already said yes.

And my dad said I'm not going to help you. And I said, I was just telling you that I'm doing it. I have the money and that's it. We had a good relationship. It was just [00:13:00] yeah, no, I'm not, don't expect anything from me. Eight months passed and when it was time for me to come to the U. S., My dad said, I'm coming with you. 

Matt Peiken: Why? 

Carolina Quiroga: He changed his mind. He came and he helped me set up. He helped me even with money. 

Matt Peiken: Was your mother still around or? Yes. Okay, so you went here and studied. How did that either validate Or open things for you that just would not have been possible before you even understood that there was a way to get a master's degree in storytelling.

Carolina Quiroga: When I first came, I didn't have it clear what I was getting myself to, what I wanted to get out of this. To me was maybe I just like polish my English somehow and just get back. I don't know. But it was more towards the second year that I start seeing, Oh, I'm actually good at this.

And there is a need and the need is [00:14:00] what really hooked me and made me consider pursuing it as a career and also staying. 

Matt Peiken: Define that need. What was the need that you interpreted? 

Carolina Quiroga: We had to do this practicum hours, and so we had to fill up 40 hours of storytelling. And so you have to go to schools or different places and every time you would go there.

It was like, okay You're only telling for 10 minutes. So that's what you put in your log So I had to go to so many places And after going to so many places At the time, my accent was far more like thicker than it is right now, and this is Tennessee. So the more I was telling like, okay, this story comes from, I don't know, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Argentina, because I was mostly telling Latin American stories because that's what I felt more comfortable with. And people didn't know where things were located. 

Matt Peiken: Did you find your reason for telling these Latin American stories to [00:15:00] largely white audiences, did your whole reason for storytelling change when you were no longer talking to fellow Colombians? 

Carolina Quiroga: Oh yeah, it became an educational purpose, and that's how it remained for about 10 years.

My purpose was contributing to the understanding and appreciation of Latin American cultures. Because I would come to schools or festivals and even just asking, this story comes from Argentina, what do you think is Argentina? I would say, do you think it's another planet? Do you think it's a brand of sneakers?

Or do you think it's a country? And sometimes you would see their faces not knowing. 

Matt Peiken: Now, these are adults or youth? 

Carolina Quiroga: Youth. 

Matt Peiken: They're all youth. 

Carolina Quiroga: But in some cases we did have adults and it's like, what do you think? I don't know. Puerto Rico is located. Nothing. 

Matt Peiken: Wow. That says a lot about our educational system. What did that tell you about your newly adopted country and your place in it? 

Carolina Quiroga: I did struggle at first [00:16:00] quite a bit. Because. I did experience a little bit of racism. It wasn't too terrible or hard, but I, you come from a country from your country, your place where, everybody sees you as someone kind of the same.

And then I come here and people assume immediately that I'm Mexican. And then my reason for being here is that I was running for something or, the reasons that they think The usual immigrant is coming for, and I was like, no, first of all, I'm from Colombia, which is in South America. And it's not a city in Mexico, as someone has stated. Second, I did not hear because I was running from violence or I don't have a sad story. I came here to do a master's in storytelling. My plan was to get it and head out, but I fell in love. So I stayed. 

Matt Peiken: Now, how long were you in Johnson City?

Carolina Quiroga: Two years. 

Matt Peiken: Just two years. And then, you did a lot of work, I noticed When you started [00:17:00] performing in festivals and other storytelling events, they were in San Antonio. You did quite a bit early on. Did you move to Texas? Yes, which I think would exacerbate the misunderstanding that a lot of people in Texas they see somebody of your skin complexion your accent They would think just obviously you're from Mexico or no, is that not the case?

Carolina Quiroga: No, no San Antonio did welcome me in such an amazing way. It felt like I had moved back home It was just like that 

Matt Peiken: There's so many more latin americans 

Carolina Quiroga: Yeah, and the Mexicans knew I was not Mexican and even the Caucasian people were like, yeah and you're not Mexican because I guess they had already so much contact with Mexican Americans and Mexicans that they were like It was easy for them to identify.

No, you're not. Where are you? 

Matt Peiken: It's interesting that your storytelling you knew or you sensed very early on that there'd be an educational component to it, and then when you moved to San Antonio, no longer was that Necessary in the same way. How did your storytelling [00:18:00] evolve at that point? 

Carolina Quiroga: I kept it just Educational but this time was more for the appreciation part because now San Antonio is very Mexican oriented, right?

So I was like, okay, there's more parts in Latin America let me show you these other stories but being so much surrounded by Mexican Americans made me actually fall in love with Mexico so much that I started even a Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead show that I've been performing for 10 years because I ended up appreciating so much and they would tell me their stories.

They would tell me they're somewhere sad, somewhere not sad, that everybody has a different story why they're here. And it switched from trying to tell people like where these places are located from let's appreciate that the Mexican culture is beautiful, but we also have these other cultures that are great. And how can we just be friends and be bigger and be [00:19:00] stronger. 

Matt Peiken: And at this time you were telling, So you were telling other people's stories, you were telling already composed written stories. 

Carolina Quiroga: Yeah, it was either myths, legends, folktales, literature pieces. Yeah, that was it. I was not doing any writing. 

Matt Peiken: Interesting. And that only until about eight months ago that was the case. Why did you start shifting just that recently to your own voice? 

Carolina Quiroga: I think The reason has different point origins and one is the language writing in English about myself feels weird. So it's maybe I should write it in Spanish, but then, oh, I have to translate it.

Oh then there's also the older generations pass on to my generation, the whole thing of don't talk about the things that the pains, the wounds. No, those are things that you have to leave at home. It's like you wash the clothes at home. Lava la ropa en la casa. Don't do it outside. So don't talk about because the moment you [00:20:00] talk about yourself in front of others, they're gonna know about us.

Does it make sense? 

Matt Peiken: It totally does and at the same time you said just a little while ago Part of the myth you were dispelling is no, I didn't come from trouble. I'm not running away from something. And yet now when you're writing your own stories, you are exposing some things that are maybe less than sunny.

What were you interested in telling people about yourself? 

Carolina Quiroga: I'm actually very interested in talking about many things, but I had to start with the easiest. And the easiest was to talk about my journey here. My first couple of years as an immigrant, as a student. 

Matt Peiken: Your first couple of years in Johnson city, which are very, it's an hour away from here.

It's relevant. What did you think that you wanted to harness from that experience 10 years ago, that is still very active for you and relevant today that you think audiences in Asheville needed to hear? 

Carolina Quiroga: For instance, the last story that I wrote is called on [00:21:00] Inglis because like the word the sound sh in Spanish doesn't exist.

So for Spanish speakers, sometimes the sh or the th are very hard to pronounce. Part of my experience, which at the time was painful and I was highly depressed the first year when I came here and I went the first three months, I almost left and went back home because I was like, Nope, this was a mistake.

I thought I knew English and clearly I don't. People are not understanding me and I'm not understanding them. Of course, the Tennessean accent is pretty, had something to do with that and how I forced myself to try only speak in English, write in English, listen in English, be surrounded by mostly English speakers.

I really pushed myself hard in that aspect because wanted to be understood. But at the same time, what I ended up was repressing and putting away other things that were my culture, what really made me happy and all [00:22:00] that, although I was telling Latin American stories, but in English.

And I wasn't putting too much Spanish in it because I was afraid. One time once someone said, there's a story that has a bit of Spanish in it, but it's a joke. And someone in the audience shouted, speak English. That and hearing all this rhetoric on the news of all these things that are happening to other Spanish speakers made me block that. And I said, I have to only speak English. 

Matt Peiken: Wow. I would think in some ways you would have a little defiant streak in you. And that might make you more determined to at least have a bilingual story or to float in and out. But no. 

Carolina Quiroga: No, because I had some weird. experiences. I was one time in, in San Antonio.

And curiously, most of the Caucasian people that I met have been incredibly amazingly nice with me. But I was at a conference or something, and I was at my booth, and a lady came and she looked like me. [00:23:00] And so I thought immediately I can speak Spanish to her and I start speaking Spanish and she said, I only speak English and she had a last name here that was Hispanic.

And I said your name. And she's, she said, really mad at me. My people have been in this country for centuries. And I was like, Oh, that opened a whole door, a door that I had never seen, which is Hispanics have been here also for very long. And I was making an assumption that everybody that looked like me would have just arrived a couple decades or years.

And so that made me like, maybe I should just only speak English. And the few times when I have someone that spoke Spanish and they wanted, we would engage. But I just closed myself in that sense. And it was until last year with this Mexican American old man that I was talking once and he kept weaving English and Spanish into English.

And so beautifully, although he was surrounded by a bunch of English [00:24:00] speakers and everybody was like, yes, and happy around him. And I was like. Can I do that and they won't be mad at me? And so that story I wrote is, he taught me that I don't need to be ashamed or embarrassed or afraid. That it's their problem. 

Matt Peiken: Now that you felt yourself having this permission to go in and out of your Native language and English. What did that do to not only your storytelling in terms of how you told your stories, but what kinds of stories you wanted to tell? 

Carolina Quiroga: I think it made the stories like it fits better. Like the shirt or the dress just fits better before it was like more like imposed. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. I would imagine too that there are certain phrases that just don't exist in English, that there are certain things you say in Spanish that there is no equal or at least easy equal in English and also vice versa. 

Carolina Quiroga: Yes, that's true. That's true. And sometimes I'm bringing it more and more into it [00:25:00] and it's becoming more organic and sometimes I'm like, Oh, maybe I need to translate. But there are times when I said to myself, I'm not going to translate that part because if they're really paying attention to the story, they'll know what it is.

And I've heard people laughing. English speakers laughing in the moment when I said something in Spanish. Maybe they speak a little Spanish or maybe they don't, but I heard them laughing and to me it was like, Oh there's something much bigger than this mere language that we think is only necessary to, for communication.

There's something else like I don't know what it is, but there's something that helps us comprehend much better what's happening. It could be just the gestures or the fact that the story was leading us to that. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah, let me ask you, what did your father have to say when he started watching you perform your stories for the first time?

Carolina Quiroga: My father is like a [00:26:00] robot. So he's an engineer. He has a PhD. He studies a lot. The first time he came, I was in, in a museum and in San Antonio doing a Mayan storytelling. I fell in love with the Mayan culture and they hired me to come and tell Mayan stories and my dad came and he was like, That was uh, muy bonito, muy bonito.

That was good, but I really didn't understand. Because my dad is a very logical type of person. The fantasy or the storytelling aspect to him is a little Hard sometimes, like he nonfiction he can only handle nonfiction 

Matt Peiken: well how is he going to respond if he hasn't already to your stories that you've written to document and retell your own immigrant story and Assimilation story. Has he heard any of these and is he coming to any of these performances here?

Carolina Quiroga: They're in Colombia. He hasn't come back since that time. He hasn't heard those [00:27:00] stories, and I would be curious to hear what he has to say, because But that's something that I never told him, that I was depressed during that time. That I almost left and dropped everything and went back.

Because the moment he actually came and helped me and my family and my friends were all proud of me. Carolina, you're going to the United States to do a master. We're so proud of you. You're like, you're making it. And here I am like all depressed. And to finally let them know that it wasn't all rosy and all amazing. And it was actually pretty hard. 

I had to confront my ego so much, a depression that I never had before, feeling alienated, but also humbling up. Because, I had some ideas about myself, how tough I was, blah, blah, blah, and all of a sudden no, you have, life stripped me off of all that and said, you have to start again.

Matt Peiken: So how do [00:28:00] you spend your days now? What's your work? What do you do? 

Carolina Quiroga: Stories are the central part of everything. I read a lot. I've been trying to force myself to write once a week, at least. I have some stories already written and they're personal stories. Some are, I try to write them at first okay, maybe this is healing in a sense Something I haven't talked about it before, not with anybody, but then I see a point like, okay, I really want to tell this, but I don't want it to come with this is my healing moment.

I want to come with something else. So I rewrite the story several times until it comes something that I'm like, yes, this is it. This is my lesson. Doesn't need to be anybody else lesson. This is just mine. And so that's when I'm. I come to places like this to Story Parlor, to tell the story.

Matt Peiken: Do you see yourself always staying in the U S as your home base now, or do you still have ideas of going back to Colombia on a, if not a more permanent level [00:29:00] and maybe but, or on a part time level and having that culture and family close to you and still be relevant to you. 

Carolina Quiroga: I think I'm going to be staying here. The world is getting really tricky everywhere. 

Matt Peiken: This country is getting really tricky. 

Carolina Quiroga: It is, but Colombia is also getting tricky, although it has always been trickier. But last time I went, I just couldn't handle it. At the time I wasn't yet a citizen. I've been a citizen for six months and ever since I became a citizen I'm starting to, there's a weird change in me and the more I keep feeling that changes like. It looks like, no matter what, I am staying here.