JEAN COSTA-SILVA
The art piece I’m submitting is a children’s book called “The Lost Star”, which I wrote myself. I began writing children’s stories in 2007 and this is the second ever story I wrote. I originally wrote it in Portuguese, and it tells the stories of people I met throughout my life: their strengths and their flaws. It was published as an eBook on Amazon in 2021, after I received funding from an agency to write stories that would motivate people through the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the criteria for the funding, I translated it into English, making it my first bilingual work.
What is the significance of this piece for you or your family?
This piece is very significant for me because, while it wasn’t the first children’s story I published, it was the first one I was funded to do. So, in a way, it felt like a small personal victory. Besides that, I had shared this story with my friends and family, and they all considered it their favorite. In a way, I feel like they are all a part of this book.
How did you (and or your family) move to the U.S.? Why did you move to the U.S.?
I moved to the U.S. in 2017, nearly ten years after I wrote this story, for a Fulbright Fellowship. I was assigned to teach Portuguese at the University of Georgia. At first, I wasn’t happy with my assignment because I had never heard about Georgia and I was worried about the experiences I would have as an immigrant in the south. However, Athens, GA is a unique place. While it is a medium-sized city, it has a college town quality to it, which makes it a very progressive and alternative area for young people. I fell in love with the university and decided to apply for my Ph.D. in Linguistics there. I came back in 2019 and have been living in the U.S. ever since. I moved to the Syracuse area in 2025, after I defended my Ph.D.
What does it mean for you to share these stories with the community here at Cortland (and beyond)?
The reason I chose to share these stories is because of a line a friend of mine, who’s an expert in decolonial studies, once said to me, “Heritage is often a benefit colonized peoples don’t have”. By this, she means that during the process of colonization, especially the brutal type the original peoples experienced in the Global South, the invader erased much of what was left before. We grow up not knowing about our past, be it our South American or European roots, and are taught not to ask these questions. Because of that, we often don’t have the sense of heirloom to be passed down. I wanted to share a story I wrote because it expresses some of the values I was taught by my family and friends and, in a way, this is the heirloom I will always keep with me.
