Alice Grandoit-Šutka:

Welcome, Yessenia. We’re so happy to have you as a host for our first season of the Architectures of Planetary Well-Being Podcast. To kick off the season, we thought it would be great to give listeners a moment to acquaint themselves with you, as you are the first person to take us on this exploratory journey. So I thought this kind of episode could serve as a way for us to get to know you and maybe learn a little bit more about who you are, and also what you’ve learned or what you’ve taken away from this time in this journey with us.

So, to kick things off, I was just kind of curious to learn a little bit more about you. When did you first realize that you wanted to become a writer, and most specifically, focused on environmental and climate justice storytelling.

Yessenia Funes:

Yeah, this is a bit of a long story, so I’m going to try to condense it. But I think it starts from the very beginning with me. I grew up to two parents who were immigrants; they’re from El Salvador, and we grew up pretty poor. Eventually I just had my mom, a single mom in the picture, and there’s a lot of gang violence growing up. My family’s survivors of gun violence; teen pregnancy was quite normal growing up—there are all these different factors that sort of instilled in me this sense of injustice. I remember growing up thinking, “This doesn’t feel right.” And then I remember going to El Salvador with my mom and my dad and seeing what the sort of extreme end of that spectrum is, right? Kids running around without shoes, sewage being dumped into rivers. And I remember thinking, “This doesn’t feel right either.”

And I remember it dawned on me at some point in high school, there are people who have it well and have privilege and have it easy. I didn’t quite have a racial analysis lens yet at the time, or a class analysis lens, but I understood that some people have it easy and some people don’t. And that instilled in me this very real sense of wanting to do something about it—of justice, you may say. And yeah, writing was just kind of the one thing that I felt I was good at in school. I was never fond of science, never was fond of math. And so I was like, “Shit, I should just become a writer, because English class is the one class that I can do with my eyes closed.”

I don’t think I really understood what journalism was until I actually got to J-School. But it became quite clear to me once I got to J-School that climate change was going to be my focus, or rather environmental issues. I can’t remember if it was my freshman or my sophomore year that Superstorm Sandy hit New York. And that was the first time that I saw the words “climate justice,” and the first time that I felt scared about what could happen with rising global temperatures, rising sea levels. My mom lost power for about two weeks when Superstorm Sandy hit down on Long Island, and I was in Upstate New York. Plattsburgh is where I went to school, and I was totally shielded from that. But the fear and the concern were real.

And people were suffering after that, and it just made things, I think, feel much more visceral than they had before then. And so I quickly pivoted, picked up an Environmental Studies major and was quite focused. I didn’t take high school that seriously, but when I got to college, I was not messing around. I was really, really serious about my studies and really determined to figure out a way to get a job doing this work. Luckily, it all worked out. But yeah, I think that it was really, for me, it was my upbringing, the environment in which I was raised, the home in which I was raised—and then ultimately Superstorm Sandy just kind of shed this light on how all these things were connected for me.

And climate change, environmental issues, they just felt like a really easy way to cover and write about all these problems that I have issue with, through this lens of how much worse it’s going to get in a warming world. Yeah, so I guess that’s how I got here. And it’s actually taken me a little while to figure that out because I’ve been asked this question a few times, and when I first got asked this question, I was like, “Huh, I’m not sure.” And upon reflection, it’s all become much more clear now to me.

AGS:

Yessenia, I am thankful that you shared kind of where this has all started or where it all started for you. And just thinking about a lot of the things that you work on, both with Atmos and some kind of organizing projects, I’m very curious, kind of, what values kind of keep you grounded in this type of work?

YF:

Yeah. I feel like I could list words all day, but there are three that really came to mind immediately. That’s “truth,” “compassion,” and “understanding.” First and foremost, I’m a journalist, and for journalists, truth is our whole reason of being, right? Uncovering the truth, deciphering the truth, telling the multiple truths that can exist at a time. But also, I think for a long time, journalism has lacked compassion, especially toward communities like mine, whether that’s immigrant communities, whether that’s Latina communities, but also that of my peers: Black, Indigenous, other people of color, low-income folks.

And so it’s really important to me that in telling the truth and in writing the stories that uncover truths, that I’m doing so in a compassionate way that humanizes people, that gives them a voice, that centers their lived experience versus what the government or what their oppressors would say. And then really understanding, because I think that at the end of the day, what I’m hoping that I’m able to accomplish by doing this, by telling these truths through a lens of compassion, is that I’m creating a sense of understanding from others, right?

In a lot of the interviews that we’ve done in this season, it’s become clear to me that part of why there is such division and tension and hate that exists right now—white supremacy—comes down to a lack of understanding, I think, between different groups, right? I think that if we can understand one another a little better by telling each other’s truths through this compassionate approach, then maybe we can finally learn to see each other as equals and as individuals and as peers, as kin. And so those are the three that came to mind. I mean, there’s so many other terms like “justice” and “equity” that I could also rant about. But I think for me, those are the three that really guide my work in storytelling.

AGS:

Thanks for that. I also feel like they’re three that can kind of—they’re both kind of personal. I totally can relate to “equity” and “justice,” but I think sometimes just in the day-to-day, the things that you can kind of constantly return to, maybe even the things that you feel like you have control over—those three sound really beautiful.

YF:

Thanks. Yeah. I feel like also “justice” and “equity” is, everyone, it just feels overdone at this point. And part of me is like, what are the three that are different, that maybe we don’t hear said over and over again?

AGS:

Exactly. I can relate. I have a question for you. I’m kind of curious now that we’re kind of in this visionary state, and I feel like this kind of time together this season has allowed us to take some step back—some steps back—or some time away to kind of envision something different. What do you envision for the future of our planet’s well-being?

YF:

Oh man. I actually wrote this story for Patagonia a couple years ago. It’s called “A Letter to 2030”—“A Letter from 2030,” rather. And essentially, it’s me writing where I’m in the year 2030 and describing what I’m seeing to… I write the letter to one of my best friends, and really wrote it thinking a lot about her son, who was just recently born at the time. He’s mixed race, but he’s Black, and thinking about the world that he was being born into and how I want the world to change, both for his sake but also for the sake of all the other children. And I think a lot about my own children who do not yet exist, who I would love to exist in the near future.

And so I think the most simple way of describing this is: what I want to see for the future is a world where the skin color of my children doesn’t predetermine what opportunities they have, their health outcomes, how safe they’ll be. And what that looks like is a world where the air is cleaner, right? Where our politicians aren’t being puppeteered by the fossil fuel industry. A world where we invest in renewable energy and push that technology forward. A world where land has returned to Indigenous people, where Black and Brown folks aren’t incarcerated at disproportionate rates. And I used to not really connect these specific sort of ideas and hopes to architecture, but after this season and after the interviews we’ve done and the conversations we’ve had, it’s become clear to me that all of this is directly linked to architecture, which has been really fascinating for me to sort of explore.

AGS:

On the topic of architecture—and thanks for sharing—this season when we approached you, I’m sure there was a little bit of hesitance around why we would ask you to be a part of a quote-unquote "architectures" conversation. And as you know, with re:arc, a lot of what we’re trying to do is kind of open up how people perceive and understand the practices of architecture and design. Thus, you’ll see us constantly talking about these architectures with an “S,” and design, and also the built environment. How have your understandings of these concepts kind of changed and shifted throughout the season?

YF:

Look, before I met you, Alice, before I was introduced to re:arc, I had this very specific sort of idea of what architectures are, and is. I sort of just imagine a white dude with circular glasses, his blueprints, designing the world’s next gorgeous building or theater or something. I either imagined this really futuristic hipster-type person or really old-school European art, the European art that’s woven into so much of its buildings that get... It was very much associated with buildings and whiteness.

Now, it’s really fascinating to me because I realize that architecture is not just about the buildings we live in and the buildings that we see. It’s not just about skyscrapers and European architecture. It’s also about what the land was before buildings, right? The decisions that went into deciding why things are placed where they were and who was consulted or who was not consulted, who was removed from these lands that these buildings can exist in the first place, what ecosystems were destroyed in order to have this infrastructure.

But also, it’s so clear to me now that architecture is, it’s just like, it’s beyond, right, the actual built environment and our landscape. It’s also about designing and envisioning and dreaming about the future we want to see, which is just such—it’s such an integral part of what my work is as a storyteller, is imagining and envisioning and dreaming about what we want to see and finding the voices of the people who are working to make that happen.

And so now, people that I never really thought of as architects, I look at them and I’m like, "I think you are an architect of your specific field," or, "You’re building something for us and for the world, and you’re leaving a legacy behind, that it might not be a tangible building made with concrete and glass, but you’re building something even more valuable than that." Which—maybe community, or maybe it’s art, maybe it’s education, right? And so, yeah, I think I have a newfound appreciation for architecture, and I’m just so fascinated to continue learning more about this. I definitely think this is the beginning of my foray into design and architecture, not the end of it.

AGS:

Happy to hear that. And as you know, we also see you and the work that you do as a type of architecture. So it was really wonderful and affirming to hear you say that you also see, kind of, storytelling as a form of architecture. Throughout the season, we see a plurality of architectures in each episode, actually, and we kind of just talked a little bit about what it personally means to you. But just kind of curious if there’s any highlights or moments from this season that really have kind of resonated with you to actually help you arrive at this kind of deeper understanding.

YF:

Yeah. I mean, our first episode, our interview with Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, 100%. I think that conversation really transformed my understanding of architectures, and I think that our listeners will walk away from that conversation having a newfound appreciation as well. So definitely encourage y’all, stay tuned for the first episode. I think also, our conversations with Nathalie and Cruz, WAI Architecture. I’m sorry, I might be misnaming their organization. Is it WAI Think Tank?

AGS:

Yes.

YF:

WAI Think Tank. Sorry, Cruz. Sorry, Nathalie. Their conversation on decolonization and the histories of architecture, and the ideas of maybe architecture isn’t about building, maybe it’s about tearing things down. There’s just so much unapologetic truths that were shared in that episode that were just really powerful to hear about. And these are things that Cruz and Nathalie talk about all the time, and so it was really cool to be able to capture some of that and record some of that.

Yeah, I mean, there’s so much that I think we have in the season, but what was made really clear to me about architectures that I think is going to be the same takeaway y’all have, or that the listeners have, is that it is more than structures, right? This is about power. It’s about who is given space, who is given safety, who is left abandoned. And I think that all of our conversations do a really, really beautiful job of shedding light on these truths while also shedding light on how we can transform and improve the field of architecture so that we don’t keep perpetuating the harms that it’s perpetuated in the past.

So there’s a lot of calling out of the awful, but also a lot of solution-building and dreaming, which is always really necessary. Especially now as the urgency around the climate crisis builds and the urgency around white supremacy builds, it feels important that we’re also trying to figure out, how do we fix this?

AGS:

Yessenia, thank you so much for joining us on this journey this season. We’re so excited to share with our listeners everything that we’ve learned alongside you, and we will be giving listeners every episode an opportunity to follow you and more about your work, and we look forward to being in touch with you soon.

YF:

Thank you, Alice. This has been a real pleasure of mine. So thank you for inviting me on this journey with you.

Audio:

Architectures of Planetary Well-Being is a podcast of revisions, a media initiative supported by re:arc institute, a philanthropic organization committed to supporting architectures of planetary well-being. For more information on re:arc, please visit www.rearc.institute. This season is hosted by Yessenia Funes. For more information on her work, you can follow her online at @yessfun, Y-E-S-S-F-U-N, and in her work, The Frontline at Atmos magazine. This podcast is produced by Minah Kwon and Andi Kristins. Music by In Atlas.