Healing through Storytelling : A South Asian Collective Initiative

Hi! I am Pooja Garg. I am an award-winning storyteller, writer, social justice activist, and intersectional feminist passionate about community impact. I am also a poet.

I am a first-generation immigrant from India who made U.S. her home a decade ago. I identify as a domestic violence survivor who broke the cycle of abuse that 40 percent of South Asian women go through. As I look back, I am proud of my journey but I also recognize that survivorship is an everyday process.

In 2022, I was awarded a grant and fellowship by the University of South California Annerberg School of Communication & Journalism for Domestic Violence Impact Writing and Community Storytelling.

I was one of the ten writer-storytellers chosen by the USC Annenberg for the Fellowship. I am grateful they found merit in my application and I became the first and only writer-storyteller to earn this Fellowship outside of California.

As part of this Fellowship, I explored domestic violence and intergenerational trauma in South Asian community. I worked to create awareness around the affect of domestic violence on survivors, including children.

Over the course of a year, I also conducted listening circles and storytelling workshops with survivors in safe and trauma-informed spaces. I bring you these stories of domestic violence survivors and children from the South Asian community as part of awareness and healing initiative through storytelling. Respecting the privacy of survivors, these stories were rewritten in third person taking care not to reveal any identifying information.

Thank you for being here!