Asheville – A newcomer’s perspective


Lisa Watson was an Air Force brat (“actually, an Air Force Princess”), so she grew up “all over the place.” She was born in Washington, D.C., but she has North Carolina roots: her mother grew up in Boone, her father in Ahoskie near the coast. She\’s the first of her generation to come back to and see for herself why the WNC mountains are called “the Great Smokies.” Well educated, experienced in her career as an educator, and looking for an opportunity to take risks and think creatively, she made a conscious decision to move here.

PHOTO BY CATHRYN SHAFFER

She looks at Asheville both through the eyes of a newcomer and those of
a black woman. Lisa knew before moving here last July that finding work
and affordable housing would be difficult. “Everybody knows about the
housing and jobs problems here,” she says. “You have to have a real
reason to move here, a personal reason, something you\’ve identified.
And you need faith that you\’ll overcome the problems — faith in
yourself, faith in love, faith in something.” Anyone who knows her
understands the basis of her faith in herself: an ebullient, determined
optimism tempered, but not at all curbed, by high intelligence and
profound common sense.


 With an undergraduate degree in Theatre Education from Virginia
Commonwealth University and a double Masters from New York University
in Arts Administration and Education, Watson spent two years in Sierra
Leone, West Africa, with the Peace Corps as a young woman. Back in New
York she developed Camp Mariah for the Big Apple\’s Fresh Air Fund,
which drew the attention of singer (and Fresh Air Fund board member)
Mariah Carey and was named to honor her support. “My being here in
Asheville is very special,” Watson says. “I wanted the opportunity to
be creative, to launch something.” And one reason for choosing to come
here was Asheville\’s very lack of jobs. “You have to create something
for yourself here,” she
emphasizes. “Asheville is filled with creative people, with its history
of nurturing artists and outsiders. I was looking for a place where
doors will open, for opportunities to present themselves, for my dreams
to come to fruition. What I dream of doing is helping adolescents find
personal peace in decision making and living, and of developing a
program that offers retreats and renewal opportunities in Asheville for
educators nationwide.”


Now, after almost nine months here, she\’s glad she made the move.
“There\’s a real “I can\’ attitude here. For example, for the Mayor to do
what she did — coming from the projects, and getting the whole
community to accept her and elect her as Mayor — I can\’t think of
another place where that could have happened.” And, like many voters,
she believes that Mayor Bellamy won not because she ran as a woman, or
as an African American, but because she was the candidate with the
ideas and leadership that best reflected the public\’s aspirations. On
the other hand, “When I found out there are nine public housing
projects — NINE projects here — I was aghast. Learning the history of
some of the things that happened here, the injustices, that the city
destroyed whole neighborhoods and moved people into the projects . . .
how appalling!” But she recognizes that Asheville has, in many ways,
overcome that past. With her background in education and the arts, it
was natural that she was attracted by a job at the Asheville City
Schools Foundation.



She has a part-time job with the Kindness Campaign, works with the
Afrotina Coalition, and volunteers with other organizations. “There\’s a
lot of conservatism in the black community, but it\’s a cultural or
social conservatism, not political.” She sees a great deal of outreach
from educated, financially secure African Americans and Hispanics
towards those with less opportunity, and she finds that “affinity
groups are more prevalent than tribalism.” She finds that “there are so
many alternatives” to traditional ways of fitting in to a new community.



It is, at heart, a hesitation to embrace the non-traditional, but a
willingness to accept it among others who choose it. She saw the same
thing in Sierra Leone — a friendliness and openness to the new and
different, coupled with a preference of maintaining traditions within
one\’s own community. Watson finds that a “new breed\’ of African
American newcomers are moving here who are part of that community but
also live and work outside it — among the diverse, usually multi-racial
“affinity groups” she\’s found here. Watson herself knows diversity: her
mother has a Native American background, she has aunts who are
Japanese, and her sister married a white man. She has spent most of her
career in New York and Washington, D.C., where she produced live,
in-school performances and experiential education programs for young
people. “Asheville is like a small town that\’s really a big town,” she
says, reflecting on the move from America\’s largest city to North
Carolina\’s seventh-largest.



With so much diversity here already, in terms of cultural groups,
social interests, and lifestyles — “the hippies — there\’s a whole
generation of kids who grew up in that open-minded culture!” — Watson
has discovered that “it\’s easier to be trusting here, to show your
essence, because you can assume that you\’ll be judged based on who you
are and what your interests are rather than on your skin color or other
first impressions. In most places, people fit into boxes, there are
rooms and walls; here, there are sliding screens like in Japanese
houses, and you can flow from one into another.” Watson is clear and
concise about why she thinks Asheville is a good place to be, whether
as a newcomer, as a woman, or as a black woman. “If you\’re meant to be
here, the door\’s open. There\’s really no lack of consciousness, support
or assistance from other people. There are lots of people interested
in, and really invested in, what you do here.”