Volume 4, Number 2 - Spring 2006
Literature is Not a
Luxury; It Nourishes
Talking with Sasa Olessi Montaño,
by Anndee Hochman
Literature levels the playing field. That’s what Sasa Olessi Montaño remembers from her first glimpse of a Gente y Cuentos program at Latinas Unidas, a resource and education center for Latina women in Trenton, in the early 1990s.
The group, led by coordinator Angélica Mariani, included recent immigrants who were barely literate in Spanish along with highly educated women who had been chemists or doctors in their home countries.
“I saw the power of the program—that these women from all different Latino countries cold come together and share their personal experiences around these works of literature,” says Montaño. “There was something they had in common as women, as mother, as newly arrived immigrants to the country.”
Montaño, now deputy director of the Mercer County Department of Human Services, has brought a fierce commitment to social justice to her work as a People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos board member for the past four years. She recently went on hiatus from the board.
“I don’t discount the literary value [of the program],” she says. “But I see the value as so much broader than that. It is an amazing tool to break down walls and barriers and find commonality among people.”
As human services deputy director, Montaño oversees programs for children and youth, seniors, disabled and homeless people—all of whom she sees as receptive audiences for People & Stories. Part of the program’s success, she says, is that it does not force participants to choose between subsistence needs—food, shelter, medical care—and what some may see as the “luxury” of discussing literature. “The beauty of the program is that it goes to where the people are.” By exposing people with little formal education to “literature of the elite,” the program can give participants a sense of access and increased self-esteem.
Montaño also notes the impact of literature in her own life. Raised bilingual and bicultural—her mother was from Spain—she didn’t discover Latin American literature until she majored in Hispanic studies at Bryn Mawr College. “I read Gabriel García Márquez…I’m getting goosebumps just talking about it. I enjoyed the discovery of my own culture and roots.”
Although Montaño’s current reading often consists of a rapid scan of The New York Times online, she still brings a stack of fiction to the pool each summer. “Reading gets you out of the day-to-day, stimulates your mind and brings you other perspectives.”
In her daily work, Montaño has witnessed growth in the number of working poor, families who are one paycheck—or one unexpected medical bill—away from homelessness. “There is such a division of race and class in this country, more so than ever. That’s very disheartening.
“What gives me hope? That we do have an election every four years, that the pendulum shifts. That we do have people who, at the end of the day, will make the right decisions.”