To show quiet progress, he aims his lens at society’s margins
The ability to make change isn’t only the province of the powerful. Our video storyteller finds joy in revealing the agency and interdependence of some of those whose stories are not always in full view.
Jingnan Peng works in many storytelling formats. But it’s from behind a video camera that he feels most able to bring a story to life.
“The camera takes the audience into the lives of the subjects,” he says on the Monitor’s “Why We Wrote This” podcast, in a way that’s vivid, immediate, and deeply immersive.
That serves Jing whether he’s illuminating the world of a Black quilter or the creator of Islamic marriage contracts, or revealing the developers of a tactile language for the DeafBlind community or an organization determined to help people with disabilities to vote.
Jing often gravitates toward underdogs, and to the change-makers among them.
“Especially with underrepresented communities,” he says, “people might not know much about the full spectrum and the full complexity of their lives.” To him, that includes a sense of agency and empowered collaboration that’s often ignored. “I hope that [my reporting] will broaden people’s horizon.”
Episode transcript
[MUSIC]
Samantha Laine Perfas: Welcome to “Why We Wrote This.” I’m your host, Samantha Laine Perfas. Today, I’m joined by someone who is often working behind the scenes on this podcast, but who does incredible multimedia work for the Monitor, Jingnan Peng. Jing produces the majority of the episodes you listen to, but he also has extensive experience reporting video stories for the Monitor. Today, we’re going to talk about some of the work he’s done, especially his work reporting on underrepresented communities. Welcome Jing!
Jingnan Peng: Hi, Sam.
Laine Perfas: To get started, why don’t you just tell us a little bit about yourself.
Peng: So I grew up in Beijing. At the age of 18, I came to the US for college and grad school, and I’ve been with the Monitor for six years. I mainly do video pieces.
Laine Perfas: What type of stories do you typically pursue?
Peng: Yeah, I realize I have done a lot of stories that are about minority groups. I do a fair amount of stories about the disability community. I think there’s a personal connection there because my parents, they’re both disabled. And also I’ve done some videos that look at the experience of Black communities, Native Americans, etc.
Laine Perfas: Could you give us some examples of recent videos you’ve done? What was it that was powerful about them to report, or what was it that made them video-worthy?
Peng: I just reported a story in Georgia about a disabled veteran who organizes free, accessible rides for disabled folks to go vote. In 2020, they offered more than 150 rides for people with a variety of disabilities. And this year for the midterms, they’ve gotten hundreds of rides out. And I think it’s a great example of disabled people helping each other.
Suzanne Thornton: I can let you use my wheelchair so you can use it, go vote, and then we’ll swap out.
Jes Gordon: Oh, that’s okay, I want to try to… I want to try! [Laughs]
Peng: People might often see stories where disabled folks are framed as the ones who need help, the ones who are receiving help, sometimes from able-bodied folks. But the truth is that disabled people are constantly helping each other. From various videos that I’ve reported, I’ve been witnessing the agency and ingenuity of disabled folks.
Laine Perfas: Another somewhat recent video you did was looking at a language nest in Alaska. Could you talk about that one, too?
Peng: I went with my colleague Jess Mendoza to Fairbanks, Alaska, to capture a day at a language nest, which is a daycare that immerses kids, toddlers, in their ancestral language. So it’s a method used by Indigenous communities around the world to revitalize their languages. In the US there are many factors that have contributed to the marginalization or disappearance of Native American languages.
Evon Peter: With my mother, there was one of the early teachers who literally hit her over the head with a log, a piece of firewood, for speaking her language. And my mom is quite defiant, she said she spoke our language again, and he hit her again. And she spoke our language again, defiantly, and he said, “I would hit you again with this log but I’m worried it’s going to cause brain damage to you, so get out of here.” My mother had not even shared that story with me until we started Tanan Ch’at’oh. Our parents’ or grandparents’ generation chose not to speak that language to their kids because they didn’t want their kids to suffer those same humiliations and wounds. And that was very hard for my generation. There was this hurt of not feeling native enough in some cases because we weren’t able to understand our language or to speak our language.
Peng: It was really striking to be in a space where that language is the only language that you are allowed to speak. There is an intention behind the space that is to create an environment where that ancestral language is not marginalized. What I witnessed in the language nest is a space where the language is associated with love, care, and joy.
Hilda Johnson: When the children come to me and say something in Gwich’in, it just sometimes brings tears to my eyes listening to little babies talk in our native language.
Peng: And I really hope that brings healing to multiple generations of the community.
Laine Perfas: What would you say is the value of video as a format as opposed to a print story or a podcast?
Peng: There’s something about video that is really immersive. You know, the camera takes the audience into the lives of the subjects. And so there is a certain immediacy and vividness that you don’t quite get with a text story. For instance, you know, I did a story about a Black quilt artist. And I can put my camera, you know, super close to her sewing machine and I can put my camera super close to her face, like her expression when she’s making that quilt. There’s this, all of this wonderful detail and texture of the lives of my subjects.
Laine Perfas: How do you approach a video reporting as a Monitor journalist?
Peng: I try to find change makers. The Monitor loves to do solutions journalism, which [means] stories that not only explore a problem, but also look at people who are working to address them. It’s a wonderful instinct to have because a story that only looks at the problems might not be covering the whole picture. So when I am researching for stories, that is a compass that I have. Where are the change-makers?
Laine Perfas: When you produce these videos, what is your hope in terms of how it might impact the viewer?
Peng: I hope that it will broaden people’s horizon. Especially with underrepresented communities, people might not know much about the full spectrum and the full complexity of their lives. When I was in Georgia reporting on the disabled veteran who’s organizing free accessible rides to the polls, I was really struck by one thing they said. They said that being disabled taught them how people are interconnected and interdependent. For something as simple as just going out on an outing with other disabled folks, some people might need help with eating or drinking. Some people might need help with going to the bathroom. And so they just help each other. COVID has perhaps made the whole society realize how we’re interdependent. But that is a wisdom that disabled people might already have and have had for a long time.
[MUSIC]
Laine Perfas: Thank you for listening. To find a transcript and our show notes which include links to some of Jing’s work, go to CSMonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis. This episode was hosted by me, Samantha Laine Perfas and co-produced with Jingnan Peng and Morgan Anderson, edited by Clay Collins. Alyssa Britton was our engineer, with original music by Noel Flatt. Produced by the Christian Science Monitor. Copyright 2023.
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