Celebrating the Life Stories of NYCHA Residents

In November, a group of NYCHA’s older adult residents participated in a virtual celebration to honor three years of building community and sharing their life stories. 

The event was the culmination of a program facilitated by Life Story Club (LSC), a Brooklyn-based non-profit organization and NYCHA partner that creates small social clubs where older adults share life stories and enhance their sense of belonging, connection, and purpose. LSC works with older adults, including homebound adults. Groups of 10 to 15 older adults gather with a club facilitator, who guides the group in exchanging stories and co-creating a legacy project to celebrate their collective life experience. 

Lily Zhou, Founder of LSC, said: “We’re so proud of our partnership with NYCHA and to be part of your communities. When I take a moment to pause to think about what matters in life, I always come back to the fact that it’s our social connections and relationships that underpin our health and happiness. Our NYCHA storytellers share their family traditions, stories of growing up, their personal struggles, joys, achievements, and they just laugh and support one another. Part of what we do at Life Story Club is try to save a tiny sliver of the warmth, camaraderie, and collective wisdom of these groups by publishing one story from each storyteller into a small chapbook. These life experiences really need to be told and heard. We hope more NYCHA residents will honor us with their voices and stories in the future.” 

Life Story Club began partnering with NYCHA in 2020, during the pandemic; since then, over 100 adults have participated in clubs, and a total of four chapbooks were published with their stories. Participants share their stories with each other over the course of 10 to 12 weeks through Zoom, telephone, or in senior/community center spaces, encouraged along the way by LSC’s Bilingual Spanish-English Facilitator Stephanie Yanes.  

The 36 participants from the 2022 Life Story Clubs have had their work published in two chapbooks: “Life stories from Life Story Club & the New York City Housing Authority,” which features the English club’s stories on the themes of food, family, and traditions, and “Recetas Caseras Natural Remedies,” which features the Spanish club’s homemade and natural remedies for things such as healing a sore throat or a stye. 

UPACA 6 Resident Association President Maria Pacheco was a member of LSC’s Spanish club. “I am so proud to be part of this program because it’s not just for me, but for the other tenants and members of the tenant’s association,” Ms. Pacheco said. “It gives them something to do, something to look forward to. The story in this book [Recetas Caseras] brings me pleasure to share what family is about. I come from a large family and even though I was raised here in New York, I still carried my roots from Puerto Rico. The way we were raised was the old-fashioned way, my parents were the old school. I want my family, my children, and my grandchildren to follow our legacy and share and help each other, and that’s what’s in this book.” 

Anne Johnson, a member of LSC’s English group, joined the virtual celebration from a family member’s home in Virginia and shared a summary of the story she published in the chapbook of her move from Virginia to New York, modeling in the city, and a tragedy that struck her close-knit family. Ms. Johnson joined the club in May and said she “didn’t realize Life Story Club [at NYCHA] has been around for three years. This is a great group and I love all the people that are part of it. Thank you to Stephanie and Lily Zhou; it’s been a nice traveling road with you, guys.” 

“I’m really grateful to Life Story Club for bringing this program to us and providing our residents with an opportunity to express themselves,” said DaVida Rowley-Blackman, NYCHA’s Senior Director of Resident Participation & Civic Engagement. “I know the importance of storytelling and being able to have your voice be heard. What wonderful work you all have done. I hope you found this to be helpful, especially during the pandemic, when all of us were seeking connection and wanting to be together and couldn’t really do that in the way we were used to, so to have this as an outlet is just phenomenal. Thank you to the resident leaders and all of you who took the time to participate in this program; spread the word, make sure that your neighbors know.” 

Learn more about Life Story Club here: https://lifestoryclub.org/.