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This show explores two themes with its title.

The first is how most storytellers, including documentary filmmakers are forced – understandably – to tell a story with an end.  While this may be considered “good storytelling”, these parameters are not entirely faithful to the ongoing narrative. The other issue we look at in this show is America’s long-running internal conflict with immigration, which continues to be a fierce and stark dividing line in this country. 

Joe Richman founded the program Radio Diaries well before podcasts existed. What he did was simple: he gave his carefully chosen subjects a microphone and a recorder and asked them to share their stories.  In 1992, he met a young man named Juan, who had recently arrived in US.  For the next 25 years, Joe followed Juan’s story, garnering a non-narrated audio history.  The bond that formed between storyteller and subject  fostered an ongoing openness, allowing listeners to stay with something long after most stories have – in a way – artificially ended. That relationship will be explored as well as Juan’s longtime struggle to become a legal resident of this country he has given so much to. 

This show also includes the stirring short documentary, The Undocumented Lawyer, which follows Lizbeth Mateo, who has never let her immigration status stop her from pursuing her dreams and helping those in need. This film reveals so much about why the issue of immigration remains so volatile and unresolved, it’s own never-ending story.

Our stories matter and while it would be nice to have a clear and concise beginning, middle and end to them, that is not generally how life works.

Speakers

Joe Richman

Joe Richman is a Peabody Award-winning producer and reporter and the founder of Radio Diaries, a non-profit organization. For two decades, Radio Diaries has helped to pioneer a model for working with people to document their own lives for public radio. Joe has collaborated with teenagers and octogenarians, prisoners and prison guards, gospel preachers and bra saleswomen, the famous and the unknown. Through his career, he has interviewed hundreds of people, from a seltzer delivery man to a Civil War widow to Nelson Mandela. The LA Times called Joe “a kind of Studs Terkel of the airwaves.”

Juan

Juan has been the subject of several Radio Diaries. By most measures he is an American success story with a thriving business and a loving family.  However, he remains undocumented, making his time in this country constantly uneasy.

Lizbeth Mateo

Lizbeth Mateo is the subject of the inspiring short documentary, The Undocumented Lawyer, which tells of her own life as a practicing attorney who remains undocumented. Despite this uncertainty about her own status, she remains insistent on working to help others achieve legality in this country, even though it gets harder and harder to do so.

Film

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