Stories unfold on a large strip of butcher paper in Sally Adam’s classroom at Chautauqua Elementary School, where Latino families have gathered over the last two months to talk about their lives on Vashon and the lives they left behind in Mexico.

Lucina Antunez, a mother of four who came to Vashon 11 years ago, drew a picture of a bright blue river next to a towering rock and some mango trees — a place that reminds her of the river in the Mexican state of Guerrero where she and her sisters used to wash their clothes, bathe and swim.

Her husband Vicente Pereyda drew his own rendition of Ober Park — a lively scene where dozens of people play soccer and other games; nearby is a picture of the Mexican flag, drawn by his son, 8-year-old Emmanuel Pereyda Antunez.

The families have written a long poem together, which was read aloud at Poetry Fest two weeks ago. They’ve shared stories. They’ve talked about what they miss most and what they wish for now that they’re here in the United States.

“My wish is that one of these days all of the Latin people get together and play together,” said Vicente Pereyda at one of the recent get-togethers in Adam’s classroom. “I wish we could do that every month.”

Maritza Hernandez, another participant, agreed. 

“I enjoy being together and having Hispanic people gather,” she said in Spanish, while Vashon poet Tom Pruiksma translated. “This has been one of the only ways to see each other.”

The Latino families — in small groups and large ones — have been gathering since April under the auspices of the Vecinos, or “neighbors,” Project, an effort on Adam’s part to facilitate a kind of cultural exchange right here on Vashon. Adam’s goal is to use storytelling, poetry and ultimately the publishing of a book to give Vashon’s Latino community a voice and a greater presence on the Island, where they’ve often felt unseen, she said.

Indeed, Adam said, she felt encouraged to move forward on the project last November, after she first suggested it to Lucina Antunez. Antunez, an active parent at Chautauqua who speaks only a little English, instantly seized the idea. “We feel so invisible on Vashon,” she told Adam.

Now, after four evening workshops in a Chautauqua classroom, something else has emerged, Adam noted. Vashon’s small Latino community, many of them coming from very different parts of Mexico, are not only discovering a voice they’d like to share with the larger community. They’re also discovering each other.

“It’s helped the Latino community,” Lucina Antunez said of their recent get-togethers, while Adam translated. “We’re all coming from Mexico, but Mexico is a diverse place.”

Adam, who teaches Span-ish at The Harbor School and works as a family advocate for the Vashon Island School District, joined forces with Antunez and others at Chautauqua last fall to see if they could bring the Spanish-speaking community together and, in the process, give them a greater presence both at the elementary school and in the larger Vashon community.

Then, last fall, Adam was perusing the school district’s website when she discovered the Vashon Artists in the Schools program, run by Vashon Allied Arts, and read about Merna Hecht, a nationally recognized storyteller and creative writing coach who has worked extensively with immigrant children in the Tacoma School District. 

Hecht’s role at Foss High School, where she helped refugee students tell their stories of arrival, inspired Adam. “I thought, ‘That’s what we need here.’”

Adam approached VAA staff members, who encouraged her to write a proposal. She did, the proposal was funded, and what has unfolded since is a rich, multi-layered and still-evolving project, with Hecht and Pruiksma, two of VAA’s “artists in the schools,” working closely with Adam, Antunez and others to bring the vision to fruition.

“It’s a blossoming project,” Adam said, smiling.

Over the course of the last two months, families and children — sometimes as many as 32 people — have gotten together in a classroom on the second floor of Chautauqua, where they’ve shared a simple meal, chatted and then begun the work of storytelling and poetry writing. Pruiksma, who learned Spanish while living in Oaxaca, Mexico, and has an MFA in creative writing, has sometimes offered up prompts to open up a creative path: What comes up for you in May? What’s a wish for the future? What surprised you most when you first arrived to the United States?

Several poems and stories — written in Spanish, with Pruiksma writing translations — have emerged, including a poem that he read two weeks ago at Poetry Fest. Each stanza, written by a different member of the group, begins with the words, “I remember.”

“I remember the nights of summer,/hot, humid, with a sky of shining stars.”

“I remember how my mother scolded me/when I made mischief.”

“I remember the sounds of the hummingbirds/fighting for their food/and the voice of the man shouting/‘gas, gas’ from his truck.”

Hecht has worked with the children over the course of the two-month project, while Pruiksma has worked with the adults, many of whom speak only a little English. The poetry that has emerged has been rich and evocative, he said.

“In Mexico, … people love to talk and tell stories. There’s an art to it. People there are good storytellers, in a way that has declined in North America. They still have something of the speakers’ art,” he said.

He’s also been deeply moved by the stories and themes people have brought forward, he said. One woman, for instance, “wrote a wonderful meditation on the month of May,” he said — a piece that focused on both the festivals and community celebrations that unfold each May, as well as the many birthdays in her extended family.

“The entire month of May was a fiesta,” he said. 

Their family relationships — those with their aging, often traditional parents as well as with their American children — have also emerged as an important topic, he said. 

“It’s interesting to be working with people who stand between two very different worlds at the same time as they stand between two very different generations,” Pruiksma said.

The project will lead to a book of poetry and stories, its shape and size still to be determined. Adam also says that Vashon artist Olivia Pendergast has agreed to work with participants to create a mural sometime this summer.

Meanwhile, some of those involved in the project say they hope the connections they’ve made as a result of their get-togethers will continue after the project ends.

“It’s like a new experience for me,” said Carlos Hernandez, who described himself as a loner who likes to tend to his vegetables at home on the weekends. “It’s fun to get to know people, to talk about our families and listen to each other’s stories.”