Look Who's Talkin': Expressions

Over the past 35 years, I have had many experiences in which I have seen art serve as an emotional outlet and enable people to express themselves in the wake of traumatic experiences.

In the late 1960’s, I headed a not-for-profit organization, The Black Emergency Coalition, which taught art and creative writing classes in prisons, in shelters for the prevention of cruelty to children, and in centers for senior citizens. Many, many individuals in each one of those groups openly expressed their profoundly positive feelings in response to the classes, and even more significantly, in response to their interactions with their peers. Years later I would still receive letters of gratitude from them, from prisoners and ex-prisoners, telling me all about the changes that the classes had worked on their lives.

Given my many years of experience in this field, I was surprised when I worked with the children who had been directly affected by Gulf Coast Hurricane Katrina. I conducted a series of art workshops in Louisiana and Mississippi for children who ranged in grade level from elementary school to high school.

When I met with them, it was almost immediately after they had returned to their homes and communities after the hurricane. Their responses to this experience, and to the classes, were something to behold. They were genuinely eager to speak about their time before, during, and after the hurricane. It did not take long for them to open, and sometimes, as they were recalling and processing their individual stories, they would seem to forget that I was even in the room. As I read their faces, I could tell that they were literally reliving their traumatic experiences in fine detail.

The wonderful, emotional letters I have received from these students are not so different from the letters I once received from those ex-prisoners. The students were grateful simply for the opportunity to draw, paint, and write about their own hurricane experiences, but they were just as grateful to hear their classmates share their experiences. I’ll be going back to the Gulf in the fall to meet with these students. I will ask them to write and paint, to tell me how they have been doing, how things have changed since the last time I was with them.

When I came home from teaching those special classes, I had a deeper appreciation of the human being’s capacity to survive, regardless of the troubles encountered in life. These and other children like them need opportunities to let it all out, to hear themselves repeat the traumatic things that happened to them at such a vulnerable point in their lives.

Benny Andrews

July 21, 2006