How Jordan Brooks creates community through works of art

Editor’s note: Jordan Brooks first told this story on stage at the Des Moines Storytellers Project’s “Community.” The Des Moines Storytellers Project is a series of storytelling events in which community members work with Register journalists to tell true, first-person stories live on stage. An edited version appears below. There is a difference between being in a community and being in community with others. Being in a community is simply a matter of proximity. Being in community is a reciprocal exchange and active choice to be. Growing up I always felt like a kid between spaces. Born in the Philippines, raised in Pennsylvania. Grow up Baptist, attend Catholic grade school. Afterschool care in one neighborhood. Lived and played in another. No one place ever felt like it was my own but I had to understand how to move between them all. I constantly wrestled with the question, “Where am I supposed to be?” I wanted somewhere where I can feel seen, feel heard, feel recognized, feel understood. My mother’s side of the family is large and lives in a small city called Erie where I grew up. Erie, Pennsylvania, is like the size of Davenport. Even in such a small...