In a year like no other, immigrant women of all walks of life reflect on the ever-changing meaning of home and belonging.
Introducing Real People. Real Lives and Broghanne Jessamine (00:00 – 01:38)
Hello! Welcome to the podcast Real People, Real Lives, Women Immigrants of New York, a storytelling project from New Women New Yorkers.
Real People, Real Lives highlights a diverse picture of immigrant women living in the city. It elevates these narratives, moving beyond statistics and political rhetoric.
In the Summer and Fall of 2020, we interviewed immigrant women of all walks of life. They were selected through an open call or contacted directly, to ensure the participation of women from different backgrounds, and affected by the pandemic in various ways.
The participants talked about their immigrant experience within the backdrop of a year like no other – marked by the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and the presidential election. Each story you will hear is a unique mix of determination, hope, challenges, and victories – small and big.
Today, meet Broghanne, an actress and entrepreneur from Scotland. Tired of the same acting roles and transformed by a traumatic experience, she created her own film company. Her goal is to empower women’s voices and focus on stories that are rarely told in the mainstream movie industry.
[Music]
[Broghanne’s edited interview]
Coming to New York (01:39 – 05:13)
In my head, it has always been kind of a plan, the last step of success within the acting world is moving to America and live in New York or Los Angeles.
I moved here and I didn’t really think all the way through very much. I had just turned 18 and I was like: this is going to be great! I’ll just move to America, to New York, and things will work out! Being older now, thinking it through, I didn’t know what I was in for. So the first months were hard because I had a very strong Scottish accent and no one couldn’t understand what I was saying.
I think it was up to two years, I had a board on my wall, a white board, with: “this is what this word means, this is what this word means”, so I could actually figure it out. Even saying my name was really hard.
I think I didn’t realize how expensive it would be to live here would be because I grew up with a national health service. I didn’t even tether to the fact that I would have to pay a monthly premium that doesn’t even cover your doctor.
I continue to make sure I have enough money in my bank account, if worst comes to worst I have money to fly myself home in order to have national healthcare so I can take actually care of myself.
I worked in restaurants, I was a hostess and a cocktail waitress, I had all these really odd jobs for survival because I thought, like most people do when they enter the acting industry, that you’ll have a job that is going to pay you and that’s not at all what this is, specially in New York, where there’s a lot of unpaid work.
There were definitely a few days where I sat alone and very much was like “What have I done?”, “Did I do the right thing?”, “Why am I doing this to myself?” Just like having all those questions, but there was a lot of determination: I’m going to make this work, I’m going to stay at least for a year and then I can make a decision if I’m staying or I’m going.
A lot of times you feel lonely in New York, because you are alone and the city is very busy, there are so many people around you but you are kind of alone so I think it’s so important to find your community, other immigrants to whom you can talk. It was a life changer for me, being able to find other immigrant women and say: “oh, back home”, or talking about homesickness. As someone who comes from a different country feels different to talk to someone who comes from a different state.
Because it’s such a big city in such a small space, and so people from so many places, it has allowed me to be part of a whole bunch of other communities, see so many different people that wouldn’t necessarily have met or have a relationship with, experiences cultures that I wouldn’t have growing up or working in Scotland, it’s a very small country.
There’s a whole bunch of amazing opportunities that have happened, the relationships and friendships I gained, especially among immigrants. I think what people do when they are immigrants, you seem to attach yourself to other immigrants so we get to talk about, what’s going on, what’s not so great, how can we help each other, build each other, which it’s really nice.
It allowed me to grow and to experience so much more of the world and other people’s perspectives that I wouldn’t have had beforehand.
[music interlude]
Fitting in (05:14 – 07:03)
I adapted a lot. I came here and I was like I’m going to be a film actor, I’m going to get all these jobs, I’m going to be Scottish the entire time versus: ok, you have to hide that part and you have to be able to get an American accent, be likable [laughs]
Acting jobs are a whole animal to themselves.The whole idea is that you throw spaghetti into a wall and hope that something sticks and tastes good [laughs] for lack of a better metaphor. When I was in acting school, I was told, I think in the first year and the beginning of the second year, professors said “look, you’re not getting a role if you can’t do a semi-ok American accent. They are not going to hire you if you’re Scottish. If you are Irish, they hire you…”
It very much pigeonholed me [the accent] and still does to an extent. It was only this year in March that I got a job specifically because I had a Scotich accent, and not because I was putting on an American accent and I’ve been working in the US for the five, six years now. That was hard, that it’s hard and I didn’t think about it because also when I was working in the UK you are in the UK and you just have the accent you have. Unless you work at the BBC and you have to have a BBC accent.
The American Dream is totally a thing…I think, technically, if you go by traditional values, I’ve done it, but it is not the way I thought it would happen.
I didn’t think it would take this long. I thought it was going to happen immediately because that’s what we are told. You know, everyone is an overnight success.
[music interlude]
Moving forward (07:04 – 12:36)
I was sexually assaulted in 2018. It’s a whole other aspect of it right. It feels a lot more violent, how you are treated once people find it about it. I feel that there’s still probable those beliefs back home in Scotland, and my experience is in America, that’s the whole thing. In Scotland, they don’t say it to your face whereas here I feel that there’s a lot of talk directly on your face…”so what were you wearing?”; “Why you’re doing this thing? or “Why were you talking to this person?”. I feel that there’s a lot of blaming the victim. As a woman, as a survivor, I know, it’s a worldwide thing, but it’s very hard when you are sitting there and you’re like these are people……I know it’s internalized. It’s a very interesting conservative yet not conservative country. It’s very puritan in that sense.
After the assault I went through, it was the worst time. I was working in two plays and there was talk of the #MeToo movement, but the talk was in a way to further the male roles. I got fed up. I was annoyed, I wanted to reclaim the power, this is not standing down and letting it ruin me. So I founded my own production company.
I have these poems I’ve written down in like a journal, I was like I just need to get these words inside of me and the only way I think I can do it…Cause I was not quite ready to talk to anyone about it.
I’ll just turn into a film, maybe it will help me in a sense of healing… I can make this and I can make other women feel less alone. That’s the whole goal of it. We produced it, we filmed it, we did voice over, we got a composer to do the music and then in December 2019 we put it online and never touch it again. And then I decided that this was not doing justice to it. So we screened the film along with a panel conversations with other survivors about the stigmas survivors face, how to support yourself as a survivor and also as a loved one, a friend, can support a survivor.
I was so scared of what people would say about this film, because it was so personal to me. Everyone was so lovely.
It was the first time I had to tell people what happened. It reclaimed my narrative, it reclaimed the power of myself, let it go a little bit. The film has gone to festivals, kind of it’s taken its own life.
We focused very much on the survivor experience afterwards versus seeking for justice for the perpetrator or on the event itself because the entire point was: how do you live with this?
One of the panelists said: it’s the worst sisterhood communities to ever be part of, but it links so many of us.
You’re not alone, this is not something that it’s your fault, you have to constantly tell yourself. There’s no shame in it, you shouldn’t feel ashamed or guilty. It happened to you and it’s awful but you can build outside of that, and doesn’t’ have to consume you.
It was one of the first times I felt I actually belonged, I was so proud, fulfilled…This is what I’m here to do, this is something I can make a change and make people’s lives better, make them feel heard.
The company is called Elemental Women Productions, the whole idea that we are formed of earth, water, air, fire…
Every project has to be focused among women, 75% of our cast, crew and admin staff as a company have to identify as women, non-binary, gender non conforming individuals, we have to donate, 20% of tickets go straight to an organization that is linked. We source all of our props, costumes and things like that from women owned-business, so there’s a lot of supporting and empowering these voices and making sure that we are building a community we are not in competition with other people.
It’s been developing far to larger than I thought it would be. In my head: I’ll do one or two projects a year and we already did 4, 5. We’ve been around for almost 2 years.
[music interlude]
Life in the pandemic (12:39 – 13:38)
It’s definitely one of those unprecedented world events.
(0:35-0:47)
I live with my husband and the good thing is that we still like each other considering we’ve been staying all the time together for I don’t know however long [laughs]
(01:33-01:45)
I have built a makeshift voice over booth in my closet, very New York City apartment style, so I do audiobooks and animation character’s voices.
(01:50-02:04)
There’s been a whole stuff of virtual theater. Everyone uses Zoom to do readings of plays, there’s really a nice way for everyone to connect and still have a creative outlet. So I’ve been able to do that as well.
(02:34-02:50)
There are a lot of hard things that happened with the pandemic, but this is a nice thing that came out of it. I produced a reading and it was the first time my family were able to see me perform in eight years.
[Short music interlude]
Election Year (13:39 – 15:33)
I felt for a little while that the world is kind of in a tipping point and if you focus on America very much it has been on this tipping point, being at the edge of the cliff, which ways is going to go.
I remember in the 2016 election…do I even want to be here? I did have that thought.
I do think that, politically-wise, depending on how this election goes, I’m very much on the fence of if I’m staying for another four years, I don’t think I could deal with it.
From what I was told by people, from multiple elections, it’s generally how it goes: the republicans are in power and they undo everything the democrats did, the democrats come and undo everything republicans did. What’s the point? [laughs] Let’s pick and move forward.
I have experienced a lot more misogyny in the last few years, things that are said that’s like “this is not ok, what’s going on here”. To be able to debate if people have the right to live is just…People have the right to live, people should have the right to live, the right to health care, to education, these are things that…the value of a human life shouldn’t be debatable.
I’m choosing to be here, right, I wasn’t born here, so it’s harder to justify in that sense. My mom and dad and sisters are like: “what’s going on?” And I: “I don’t know”. And they are like: “When are you coming home?” I don’t know the answer to that either because I don’t know if I want to stay and fight for that and potentially become a citizen. I qualify now. Do I want to get citizenship and make sure I vote for the next time or just call it quits and just leave?
Closing/Credits (15:34 – 16:43)
Thank you so much for tuning in to our podcast today. This week’s episode was produced by Arielle Kandel and Bruna Shapira. Editing by Natalia Rolim. My name is Daniella Golombeski, and I am thrilled to host this podcast.
For more information about Real People. Real Lives. and the full transcript of this episode, head to nywomenimmigrants.org. Next week, you’ll meet Shorai, a grassroots organizer who fled domestic violence in Zimbabwe.
The 3rd edition of Real People. Real Lives. Women Immigrants of New York is made possible in part with funding from the William Talbott Hillman Foundation.
. See you next week![Music]