Archives for posts with tag: role of stories

Storytelling lifeline for a homeless boy

January 26, 2011 //

Missing a chance to shine

“Sol’s” story is true, though I’ve changed his name out of deference for the young hero. I met him while working as Storytelling Director for Stagebridge, the US’s oldest senior theatre company

Marijo Joseph, a talented performer who often worked with Stagebridge, was teaching Sol and some of his classmates to be storytellers. The day of their school performance, Sol nearly missed his chance to shine.

When I stopped by the office to sign in, Sol was there on “house suspension”.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“The teacher said I was talking, but it wasn’t me.” Whatever the case, at that moment Sol was about to miss one of his few chances for positive recognition.

Marijo set off to persuade his classroom teacher to give him a reprieve long enough to perform. I chatted with him briefly, then went to the auditorium.

Sol becomes the story

Minutes before he was to take the stage, Sol hurried into the room. When his turn came, he gave a first-person narrative of a slave who had rowed hundreds of others to freedom. Sol was a natural storyteller. When he performed, he was the story. Though he was the only white child in his class, Sol crawled so completely into the character his skin color didn’t matter.

My eyes were on Sol so I didn’t notice a few classmates lifting their arms to sniff their armpits in a gesture of disdain. The mockery was cruel, but Sol often did reek of unwashed clothing on an unwashed body. His home was a van with no electricity. If he did homework it was by the glow of battery-operated tap lights. Baths and clean clothes were luxuries.

The children’s teasing was not surprising. I’d seen turkeys do the same thing. They’d spot a bit of blood on another turkey and keep pecking at it, sometimes until the victim died. In this case it was Sol’s spirit they were pecking.

Sol was one of those children who talk easily with adults but have trouble finding a niche with their peers. He was one of the few white children in the school, but deep poverty and a lack of age-appropriate social skills were what isolated him from his classmates.

He adored Marijo, who inspired him to stand tall in spite of the stones life was throwing in his path. As we left the gymnasium after the performance, Sol came up to her. “Thank you,” he said. “Stagebridge has provoked my interest in storytelling.”

Wondering how to help

Lady Laura performing at the 2004 Tellabration

Success in storytelling did not improve Sol’s classroom behaviour. When she couldn’t handle him any more, the teacher transferred him across the hall, to a classroom with a male teacher.

At Stagebridge we pondered how we could help the talented but troubled young man. We decided on a modest plan to focus his energy on something besides stirring up trouble.

Aside from Marijo, he also knew one of our skilled elders, Lady Laura. She had been his classroom’s special storyteller. She was the one who had first sparked his interest in storytelling. We decided to enlist her in our scheme.

Lady Laura was a retired black school teacher. She had dealt with every kind of challenge a student could throw in a teacher’s path. She graciously agreed to go into the school and let Sol interview her, then help him write a story about her good enough to record on radio.

With Lady Laura and Sol’s teacher both supportive, I drove to the school and spoke to Sol. I reminded him that we thought he was a very talented storyteller and asked if he would be willing to interview Lady Laura and write a story for radio. He would have to agree not to act out in class between then and the radio taping, and he would have to keep up with his studies in spite of the extra work. Sol was thrilled and promised to adhere to his end of the bargain.

A small success

I’d like to report the next few weeks were smooth sailing. They weren’t. Lady Laura found working with Sol challenging. His listening and writing skills were not well developed. And, to be honest, being in close proximity to a child with no washing facilities was not always pleasant.

But they both persevered, and on the day of the radio taping, Sol was one of nine children whose stories were recorded for future broadcast on KPFA.

As usual, I had loaded my van with children and adults needing a ride to the studio. My last stop on the return trip was Sol’s. A day earlier, when I offered to pick him up at the school and take him home after the taping, he told me I could drop him off at the bus stop. He’d catch the bus home.

So I was honoured when he felt comfortable enough to let me take him all the way to the beat-up van he and his mother called home. It was parked on a freeway overpass in a neighborhood so rundown the police probably didn’t bother with anything as insignificant as a broken-down van piled high with a family’s few worldly goods.

The school year ended shortly after the radio taping. Next fall Sol was no longer in the same school. No one knew where he had gone. I’ve no idea what happened to him and don’t kid myself his life was forever transformed by his brush with storytelling.

I do know that for at least a while he knew others saw him as talented and valued. For at least a few weeks he believed he was strong enough to draw gems from the rough stones of his life. I hope the memory was a source of courage on the rough path ahead.

And sometimes, when I think of him, my heart just hurts.

Tags Classroom storytelling, Educational storytelling, importance of stories, role of stories, Storytelling in schools

Categories Healing power of stories, Memoir, Storytelling in schools, The importance of storytelling

The scant geography of wisdom

January 19, 2011 //

This piece first appeared in October 2010 as a guest post on Mary L. Tabor’s blog, Sex After Sixty. Mary is one of the most literate, eloquent writers I’ve come across. Her posts, and those of her guests, are consistently stimulating and thought provoking.

“The places I am hurt most mark the places I am least tolerant, most vicious. Where I have been gravely injured and am most healed, these form the scant geography of my wisdom. Where I have never been hurt at all, where I have never lacked for resource or nurture, these are the stories I find it most difficult to perceive.” ~ Joanne Arnott, “Storytelling: A Constellation” in By, For & About Women

Writing truth

The dear friend who sent me this quote years ago knew my story. I was a bird with broken wings when she and her spouse took me in. They gave me a resting place until I could fly on my own again.

The words came back to me as I read Mary L. Tabor’s literate, eloquent, and painful memoir, Sex After Sixty. There were times I was holding my breath, shrinking from the next revelation.

I know why. Mary has worked through her pain, resolved her confusion, and risen like the Phoenix. But while she was writing the blog that became a book, she was still in the middle of it. The rawness of her journey made me look into the sore places in my heart. In spite of the passage of years, I still have stories I am not ready to lift out of the journals and letters where they lie like ogres ready to eat my soul.

So it did not surprise me to learn that one of Mary’s readers reacted with alarm to something she read in Sex After Sixty. No one can write that honestly and not rake fingernails over someone’s soul wounds or deepest fears. When a reader recoils because the door to her spiritual closet has been flung open, the monsters released, the writer can’t help but feel responsible.

Daggers to another’s soul

During my years as a traveling storyteller, I occasionally knew I’d hit the explosion button in someone. (Others likely just smoldered quietly.) Sometimes the story that triggered the response was so innocuous I was completely flummoxed by the strong reaction. Other times, I knew the story might be difficult for some but hoped my telling would lead them to safety.

Early in my storytelling career, one story exploded in my face. It was the true account of a child who was the butt of teasing. I thought I had dealt with my own complicated reaction to her plight. So I launched the new work with a group I figured would be receptive to a story that dealt with difficult matter.

I could feel the atmosphere in the room change

I could feel the atmosphere change as the story unfolded. By the time I finished, the temperature in the room had changed from warm to frosty. Though the stories that followed were among my sure-fire audience pleasers, they might as well have been blocks of ice. They did nothing to thaw the room.

I’d experienced the gamut of responses to more challenging stories but never this kind of sudden freeze. Fortunately, a friend was in the audience. We had coffee together the next day. As I poured out my distress, she gently asked questions that helped me see that particular story was one that triggered emotions in me I hadn’t fully processed. I had told it too soon. The audience felt my discomfort, and it set off their own.

The experience taught me an important lesson about doing my own inner work on a story before sharing it with an audience. Most people are too polite to walk out when a story jars them. But a told story is not a book they can close or throw across the room. They are held captive.

Going public with pain

So it was with that painful lesson in mind that I was horrified when, years later, one of my storytelling students invited me to a one-woman show. She was inviting everyone she knew to hear the story of her years of being sexually abused by her father. She had rented a hall and baked cookies.

I was mortified but could think of no gentle way of refusing to come. She wanted me there, wanted me to see what she had done with what she had learned in the workshops. I wondered if she had been absent when I talked about the importance of not using the audience as a crying towel.

The hall was packed with her friends. She set the scene and began to spin a story of survival and triumph so magical I still get shivers when I think about it. She was no longer a victim. She carried no guilt. She was a strong, beautiful woman who had experienced the horrors of degradation but emerged whole and healthy. When the last words of her performance died away, the audience rose spontaneously in a standing ovation.

We cannot control others’ responses

Most of my own challenging experiences, and those of colleagues, have not had such straightforward causes and effects. A colleague was telling a story to a group of school children when one little girl burst into tears. The death of a parent in an old folktale sent the child into spasms of grief. The storyteller decided to retire that particular story from her repertoire.

Some time after the incident, my friend learned the child’s mother had died only months before. Her father had never talked with his daughter about their loss. Instead, he had walled off his emotions and tried to give her a normal childhood.

The child felt she had to protect her father from her own sorrow so never mentioned her mother—until the story ripped off her protective scarring. The teacher who called my friend had spoken with the father and learned the story had been a key. Father and daughter used it to unlock and share their grief.

The truth is, beyond setting our own internal house in order and trying to act responsibly, we cannot control the impact our stories have, whether they or written or told.

An opportunity to reflect

I remember telling a story to a group of American middle school students on a military base in Germany. It was clear they were on the edge of out-of-control when they walked in the room. With young people this age, a storyteller has less than five minutes to captivate or lose them. If they’re not captivated, they will make the next hour feel like a year, a very tortured, painful year.

So I told them the story of Tayzanne, a haunting story that never failed to calm the antsiest group. I did not tell it because I loved the story, though I did and still do. I wielded it like a club, hoping to bludgeon them into submission. [The whole episode can be read in “Bite till the blood runs”.

It worked. They were still and attentive and actually seemed sorry when the hour ended. I didn’t know until a year later how much the story had unsettled them. When I returned to the school, they wanted to hear the story again. It was the only story they wanted to hear. We spent the entire time exploring its mysteries together, examining their questions like precious jewels.

When our best efforts are rejected

For the most part, storytellers and writers are not offered the luxury of exploring together whatever it is that unsettles our listeners or readers. Critics can trash us. Audiences can turn away. They can send angry letters or make distressed phone calls. They do not owe us any deep, honest exploration of what it was that prompted their dismay.

When Mary shared one reader’s troubling response to her eloquent book, I wrote back: “The woman may not be able to articulate what scared her so much that she had to run away screaming. Perhaps she’s not yet healed from some relationship or is involved in one that’s on shaky grounds. Maybe she’s held captive by religious teachings she is afraid to question, in case the answers might crumble her world.

“Whatever the case, she’s taken her own anxieties and projected them onto you, in a way that triggers the deepest fear in any writer – that what we have to say is unworthy and that perhaps that means we are unworthy. That you’ve had so much positive response to your splendid book gets placed on one side of the balance. On the other side is the heavy stone of her reaction. No one’s immune from the bashing that does to the spirit, even someone as accomplished, talented, open, and intelligent as you.”

Wisdom from one who came before

In her 1938 book, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit, Barbara Ueland wrote, “I think that when people condemn what we do, they are symbolically destroying us. Hence the excruciatingly painful feeling, though to our common sense it seems foolish and self-centered to feel so badly.”

When we release our story children, the products of our creative imaginations, into the world, we become sensitive plants, recoiling from unkind touch. It is then we need the words of Barbara Ueland:

“What comes truly from me is true, whether anybody believes it or not. It is my truth.”

Tags meaning of stories, Personal narratives, power of stories, role of stories, writing to remember

Categories Memoir, Personal narratives, The art of storytelling

Learning to be afraid

January 12, 2011 //

No one was more delighted with the stories of Mohammed bel Halfaoui than the storyteller himself. He had learned them from his mother, in the rhyming phrases of Arabic folktales. He would recite them in Arabic, then in French. Though the stories delighted me in the language I could understand, Mohammed always rued how much they lost in translation.

Still, the stories are layered and rich, even in English. This one seems sadly appropriate for the week after a crazed gunman in Arizona opened fire on Congresswoman Gabrielle Griffins. As I type, she lies in a hospital, a bullet hole through her head. Six others died.

It’s the day of their memorial service. Sarah Palin is accusing her opponents of “blood libel” for objecting to her placing shooting targets, aka crosshairs, on a map of Democrats (including Giffords) who voted for health care. President Obama is flying to Tucson to attend the service. His 2008 election unleashed a flood of racism and rhetoric that heightened the pervasive fear broken open by the attacks of September 2011.

The tragic shooting is leading to a lot of soul searching in a nation where bombast has replaced rational discussion in all too many arenas. Mainstream and independent media are filled with discussions about mental health, gun control, political discourse, social justice, and the need for civility.

The simple tale of a mouse and a kitten is ostensibly about two creatures who are predator and prey by nature. Their coming to that realization is normal, in the scheme of things. However, folktales are never about the surface story. Children are not born knowing who is predator and prey. They are not born recognizing The Other as enemy. This little story points out the problem, not the solution, but perhaps it can lead to some open discussion about tolerance and accepting differences.

Here, from the storyteller who gave me Man with No Brain and Habra with the Lion, comes the tale of the little mouse and the kitten.

One day, a little mouse said to his mother, “I’m big now. Let me go outside and play on my own. It’s not fair to keep me cooped up in this hole.”

The mouse’s mother had always watched over him carefully. She feared the dangers that threaten small mice. Most of all, she feared the cat, who would pounce on her child and eat him.

But at last, seeing how much her son had grown and how keen he was to explore the outside world, she agreed. “Very well, but don’t stay outside too long, and, above all, beware of the cat. He is our greatest enemy.”

The little mouse was thrilled. At last his dream was coming true. He was going outside alone, with no parents to scold him.

The little mouse was outside on his own, for the very first time (Photo by Som Juan, somjuan's Flickr Photostream)

He ran outside, cheerful and proud. He felt like a grown-up mouse. He could go anywhere he wished, all by himself. He scurried around. Sometimes he stopped and raised his head, looking to the left, then to the right. Then he ran back and forth, delirious with happiness.

He was full of his new-found joy when he saw a little cat. “Oh, hooray,” he said to himself. “I can have a nice friend if this pretty little creature will play with me.”

The kitten was also out on his own for the very first time. As soon as he saw the little mouse, he said to himself, “What a pretty, sweet little creature. If only he wants to play with me!” He approached the little mouse as softly as he could.

The little mouse was delighted. “Do you want to play with me?”

The cat replied, “Yes, I do!”

The two young animals began to play tag. They wrestled and rolled on the ground. They boxed with their paws. They bit each other’s ears. They ran around in circles, chasing each other’s tails, but always gently, delighted with their game.

Tomorrow we'll meet again and play like we did today (Photo by Buffa from thebuffafamily Flickr Photostream)

They forgot everything else until the sun began to set. The little mouse said to the kitten, “That’s enough for now. I’m afraid Mama will scold me. Goodbye.”

The kitten replied, “I’m sorry we have to stop. Goodbye. But tomorrow morning we’ll meet again and play like we did today.”

The little ones returned to their homes. When the mouse saw her son, she was relieved.

“Where were you, my child? I was so afraid for you. You were gone the whole day. I was very worried. I was afraid the cat had devoured you. Never stay outside such a long time! It’s not safe.”

But the little mouse was full of the day’s fun. He was impatient with his mother’s warnings. Finally he interrupted, “Oh, if I told you everything… I made a friend. We played together all day long. Oh, Mother, if you could see how cute he is, how handsome, how friendly. I’m sure you would like him. From now on, when I go outside, I won’t be alone. Now I have a friend to play with, from morning till night.”

His mother grew thoughtful. “Yes, my son, that’s good. That’s good. But tell me a little about your friend. Can you describe him to me?”

“Oh, Mama, if you only saw him! It’s true he’s a little bigger than I am but not too much. And his head is a little large and round. And his fur is as soft as silk, so nice to stroke. And he is yellow, and his tail is about that long and thick. And he doesn’t talk the way we do. It’s so pretty to hear him. He says, ‘Me…ow! Me…ow! Me…ow!’ Or he says, ‘Me…ew! Me…ew! Me…ew!’”

Mother Mouse was no longer listening. She had nearly fainted. What she had dreaded most had happened. It was a miracle her child was still alive.

“My dear child, your little friend is a cat! Creatures like that eat mice. He must still be very small and not yet know that mice are his daily food. But beware. His parents will tell him. Don’t go near him again.”

The little mouse didn’t understand a thing his mother said. How could such a sweet little friend ever think of eating him? He turned to his father.

Father Mouse laughed softly. Finally he said, “My little son, cats are our most dangerous enemies. Listen to your mother. Stay inside, safe from the cat. We’re warning you for your own good.”

That was the scene in the mouse’s home. Now let’s see what happened when the kitten went home. His mother was also upset and asked why he had stayed outside so long.

The kitten said, “Dear Mother, if you’d only seen the little friend I met. He’s so handsome, so cute. We played together all day long. We pretended to fight. He bit me; I bit him. He made me fall down. I made him fall down. I’m so lucky to find a good friend. I’ll never be alone when I go outside to play.”

Mother Cat was delighted to see her child so happy. Finally, she said, “Tell us about your pretty little friend.”

Little fool, and you didn't eat him? (Photo by Kevin Dooley from kevindooley's Flickr Photostream)

“Oh, Mama, if you saw him! He is little, much smaller than I am. He has a pretty, thin little tail. His little head isn’t round like mine. But he has such a pretty nose, narrow and pointed. His ears are pointed too, and so small. And he doesn’t talk like us. He says softly, ‘squeak, squeak’.”

“Little fool,” said his mother. “And you didn’t eat him? That was a mouse! And mice, you little nitwit, are what we eat. Do you understand? Cats eat mice. Always. And you actually had a mouse between your paws and let it get away and are proud of yourself? I am ashamed to have such a stupid child. Tomorrow, you must look for him. As soon as he is near, pounce. Grab him and gobble him up. Do you understand?”

The kitten could not believe his ears. “Eat him? But why? And then who would I play with?”

His father burst out laughing. “My son, listen to your mother. Cats eat mice and have since the world began. Tomorrow we will see what kind of cat you are. As soon as the little mouse comes near, jump on him and devour him. Show us that you are a real cat.

When morning came, the kitten went outside in search of the little mouse. But there was no trace of the mouse anywhere. Not in the courtyard. Not in the street.

Then the kitten saw a tiny hole. He watched it carefully and recognized the shiny eyes of his little mouse friend, safe inside his home.

In his sweetest, slyest voice, the kitten said, “Hello. Come on out, and we’ll play as we did yesterday.”

But the little mouse cried out, “Never! Everything your father and mother told you yesterday, my father and mother told me.”

And so the story ends, of the mouse who learned about cats and the kitten who learned about mice.

Children can be taught fear. They can also be taught compassion and tolerance. (Photo by Denis Defreyne, Flickr Creative Commons)

A post script: In an opinion piece in the January 11th issue of the New York Times, Robert Wright has this to say: “The point is that Americans who wildly depict other Americans as dark conspirators, as the enemy, are in fact increasing the chances, however marginally, that those Americans will be attacked.” His piece is aptly titled: “First Comes Fear”.

Tags cultural stories, importance of stories, role of stories, Storytelling in schools

Categories Algerian folktales, Folklore, Meaning of stories, Stories, The importance of storytelling

We’re not dumb kids

December 15, 2010 //

From February 2004 through April 2005 I was Storytelling Director for Stagebridge, America’s oldest senior theatre. My job was to work with seniors who were taking stories into the inner-city schools of Oakland, California. At the time, the position was supported by a federal grant intended to support literacy programs. Though reading improvement is hard to correlate with any one thing, the researchers working with the program were able to measure a statistically significant difference between students in classes with a storyteller and those without. “We’re Not Dumb Kids” is just one of many stories from an extraordinary year.

When Jim McWilliams walked into the class, a room full of fifth graders fell silent. They knew something good was coming.

Jim was “their” storyteller. Once a month the retired lawyer came into the inner-city Oakland school to tell stories to the class. When he spoke of leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, he called them Medgar (Evers) or Martin (Luther King). They had been friends and fellow activists, not just names he read in the newspaper.

The school lay in the heart of a city pocked like a bombing target. Some neighbourhoods were so derelict they looked as if they had been abandoned, and in many ways they had been. Drugs were sold openly. Violence was so common when children talked about gang beatings or drive-by shootings they were generally not referring to television shows.

Most of the houses surrounding the school were in good repair. The streets were home to Black American families with middle-class aspirations, but many of the children in the school were from families barely scraping by or living in poverty. The hills above them were populated be comfortably middle- and upper-class white families. That kind of social disparity has high costs. The average academic ranking of the students in the school was low.

I visited the school to watch Jim in action. He started out with a short folktale, something surefire to warm up his audience. They listened, as they always did when Jim spoke, but they were listless and distracted.

Jim finished his story and looked around. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

The children answered glumly, “They’re closing our school.”

School closures were being announced regularly in the Bay Area, a curious consequence of the federal “No Child Left Behind” program that was mandating standardized tests and minimal performance standards. Schools that didn’t measure up to required standards were losing funding.

“Why are they closing your school?” Jim asked.

“Because we’re dumb kids.”

Jim McWilliams speaking with a young admirer after a performance in Oakland, California

Jim was startled, but he understood after their teacher read part of a news release. It named schools being closed because they were “underperforming”. The kids knew what that meant. They were dumb.

“Are you dumb kids?” Jim asked.

“No,” they chorused.

“So what are you going to do about it?”

It hadn’t occurred to the children they could challenge the school board’s decision. As Jim talked with them and asked them questions, the gloom in the class lifted. Jim organized students to write letters to the school board. He taught them how to protest the closure of the school and their portrayal as underachievers, how to get on the speakers’ list at the next board meeting, how to stand up for themselves, how to contact media and enlist allies. (They learned the lesson well and talked him into coming with them to the board meeting and speaking on their behalf.)

The children’s eyes were shining when we left. They were sitting tall. They were afire with enthusiasm and not because they expected the school board to reverse its decision. Jim had been clear that was unlikely.

Jim had given them something more important than winning a battle to keep the school open. He had given them a new story. They were not “dumb kids”. They were smart, socially active fighters for justice.

I don’t know how long they held onto that new story. I don’t know how many lives were changed that day. I do know a room full of children learned they could refuse to be labeled.

And that is a powerful story.

Tags Classroom storytelling, Educational storytelling, importance of stories, Jim McWilliams, No Child Left Behind, power of stories, role of stories, Storytelling in schools

Categories Healing power of stories, Memoir, Storytelling in schools, The importance of storytelling

Rehabilitating the rat’s reputation

December 8, 2010 //

My friend was adamant. “There are no rats in my neighborhood!”

I’d stopped by for a visit to a lovely home in a decidedly upper-middle-class area of Seattle. On my way up to the door, I spied a big, grey rat scurrying among the garden plants. Since rats are ubiquitous, I didn’t find anything unusual about it.

The friend I was visiting was offended when I mentioned the rat. Not her fault really. Rats have a bad reputation. When we think of rats in western cultures, we think of stories such as

rats spreading plague in the dark days of the Black Plague
the Pied Piper ridding Hamelin of rats by piping an enchanting tune
scenes in horror films where hundreds of rats attack a bound victim
rats stowing on board ships
expressions such as “rat-faced”, “I smell a rat”, “rat on someone”, “dirty rat”

Rats are intelligent, social creatures. They don’t deserve their bad reputation. They need a new story that will rehabilitate their image. Maybe something that will make labs think twice about inflicting pain. A story that will bring respect to these much-maligned rodents.

And here it is. Bart Weetjens admires rats. He knows there are some things they do better than humans, like recognize odors. So he trained them and put them to work sniffing out land mines and tuberculosis. Turns out they trump humans and our machines many times over on both those tasks. And they ask little in return.

This TED video is twelve minutes long. Watch this, and you’ll have a new story about rats, a story that will make you look at them with respect.

This is important because so many of the stereotypes and misconceptions that divide us as people, that rip apart organizations and shatter families and plunge us into wars, are really a function of unhealthy, inaccurate, or incomplete stories. I’m not saying that telling a new story about rats would convince the fleas who feed on them not to spread diseases from rats to humans. I’m not naive enough to claim that if we all knew the stories of Osama bin Laden, Margaret Thatcher, Gandhi, and our next door neighbour, we’d usher in peace on earth.

But I do believe we’d be more careful with each other, our fellow creatures, and our planet if we acknowledged that our stories are always like the ones the blind men told about the elephant—predicated on our partial knowledge of any topic we broach.

Tags business storytelling, importance of stories, meaning of stories, Organizational storytelling, Personal narratives, power of stories, role of stories

Categories Meaning of stories, Organizational storytelling, Personal narratives, Social myths, The importance of storytelling

Stories our lives tell us

November 7, 2010 //

This little video from Brian Andreas is a good reminder that we constantly edit our lives. So we might as well edit them in a way that gives us joy and a sense of accomplishment and possibility. Otherwise we’re just dragging around a heavy bag of regret, shame, guilt, disappointment, and all those other stones that invariably drop into our lives.

The editing is a daily event. Something happens. We tell friends about it. Some parts of the story work. Others fall flat. Unless we’re completely oblivious to the reactions of others, we make mental notes of what worked and what didn’t, where people’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion, when they lost interest, and the times they were leaning forward as if they were gobbling every word we uttered.

Next time we pull out that story, we spin a version influenced by the first telling…or the first ten tellings. Eventually we settle into a version we’re happy with.

At that point additional edits are only slight tailorings for specific audiences. The story line and chosen details remain pretty much the same, and we carry that story around just waiting for an opportunity to share it.

Of course, some stories stop working for us. We move on, choose a new way of looking at our life, forgive our nemesis. So we drop the story from our repertoire or subject it to major revisions.

Ivan Doig turns it around in a way that delights me in Ride with Me, Mariah Montana. He writes: “Memories are stories our lives tell us.”

Of course, stories do more than help us figure out who we are at any given time. They also create—or divide—community. Harold Rosen once wrote:

It is an interesting feature of personal storytelling that it usually sets in motion a sequence of stories. Tell a hospital story and you will provoke others, just as jokes beget jokes. If you analyse a sequence of this kind you will almost always discover that, far from being a random collection, they constitute an endeavor to reach a collective understanding of some important theme like fear, courage, loss of eccentricity. ~ Harold Rosen, “Stories At Work”

That makes the stories we tell even more important. We live them, exchange them, and try to pair them with other stories in a never-ending dance. And how we tell them makes a difference, in our own lives, to our families and friends, and to the larger community.

Tags importance of stories, meaning of stories, memoir, Personal narratives, role of stories, writing to remember

Categories Meaning of stories, Personal narratives, The importance of storytelling

Reinventing our leadership stories

November 3, 2010 //

Events in the U.S. and Canada are making me think about the upcoming Reinvention Summit Michael Margolis is masterminding. From November 11 to 22 over thirty storytelling visionaries will be gathering around the electronic fire, to share their insights and spark discussion.

The summit seems particularly timely to me since two major streams of reinvention stories have been kicked off in the last twenty-four hours. How these stories are crafted and played out will have significant impact in the coming months.

Before I went to bed on November 2nd, the U.S. Democrats and President Obama were already starting to create a new story. Having retained control of the Senate but lost the House, they were beginning to shape a story that could move beyond the heady optimism of the 2008 election without losing sight of the promised changes that swept them into office.

The Tea Party was already spinning stories that made their relatively poor showing sound like a major coup. And, of course, the Republicans were crowing about their takeover of the House and conveniently ignoring the Tea Party dissidents as they carved out a story about how they were going to put the brakes on every forward-thinking program that has managed to get past their heel-dragging in the past two years.

In Canada November 3rd started with another reinvention story in the making. The Premier of British Columbia, Gordon Campbell, suddenly announced he was resigning. He’s now in his third term, with an approval rating that has sunk to 9%. He dropped hints in his speech about how he’s going to edit the story of his years in the top spot in our province.

What was particularly interesting to me was listening to both his supporters and his opposition. The stories from his supporters were predictably laudatory but showed carefully crafted and shared briefing notes. By the third or fourth supporter, I knew almost word for word what they were going to say, thanks to the story editors in the Liberal Party inner sanctum.

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On the other hand, some of his opponents, taken by surprise at the Premier’s resignation, were telling stories that were polar opposites of the ones they’d been telling during the years of Campbell’s tight control and the months of anti-HST campaigning. (For those not in BC or Canada, we’ve recently been slapped with a Harmonized Sales Tax of 12%. Depending on which stories you believe, it’s either a heinous attack on our pocketbooks or a smart approach that will bring business to the province.) I was relieved when one opponent refused to gloss over the gutting of the civil service or the privatization of so many things that were delivered into corporate hands.

In both the U.S. and Canada, there’ll be a lot of story rewrites in the coming weeks. So this is a particularly good time to jump into the Reinvention Summit and engage in some vigorous discussion about the role of stories, why they are so powerful, and what it all means for us, as story-making creatures.

Registration starts as low as $11.11. You can tune in during the scheduled times or download the broadcasts for later listening. With so many thoughtful speakers lined up, the summit will have no trouble supporting the statement, “If you want to change the world, change your story.”

Tags How to tell a story, importance of stories, meaning of stories, Organizational storytelling, power of stories, role of stories

Categories Organizational storytelling, The importance of storytelling

Landing a new story

October 26, 2010 //

When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969, I was in Rome. An appliance store employee had thought to point a television toward the street and turn up the volume. A circle of excited Italians was gathered around me.

I didn’t speak Italian so it was only later that I heard Armstrong’s now-famous sentence: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” (The “a” in that sentence is not a misprint. Nearly forty years later, sound analysis confirmed what Armstrong always insisted he meant to say.)

Summer of 1969 was not the easiest time for young Americans to be backpacking around Europe. The War in Vietnam stirred anti-American sentiment to a high pitch. Hitchhikers who could be identified as from the US waited longer for rides. The French conveniently swept their own colonial presence in Vietnam under the political rug. German youth, weary of the long shadow of Nazism, were happy to have another target for finger pointing.

I’d had a year of political debates as a graduate student at the Université de Clermont-Ferrand. When the academic year ended, I just wanted to enjoy some carefree travel months before returning to the States. The fierce questions followed me into every youth hostel across Europe.

But not in Rome, on July 20, 1969. On that day I could wear my heritage proudly. For a short time, I could bask in the congratulations of an impressed world. I was part of a new story.

Stories. That’s how we remember major events. We set them into the context of our lives, give them personal meaning, exchange them like precious stones, ask each other, “Where were you when…?” The stories allow us to circle around a momentous happening, turn over the stones of our memories, and share our own perspectives.

That’s what Jay O’Callahan did when NASA asked him to create a story in honour of the space agency’s 50th anniversary. One of the three stories he chose for his extraordinary work, “Forged in the Stars”, is the 1969 Apollo moon landing.

Jay’s story adds a new stone to my collection. He tells the story through Neil Armstrong’s voice, recounting what it felt like to see the blue ball of Earth from the bleak landscape of the moon. He has generously shared an excerpt on YouTube.

I love the story he tells, both for its grandeur and artistry and also for its power to take me back to a street in Rome, in the summer of 1969.

Tags historical memory, importance of stories, role of stories

Categories Memoir, The importance of storytelling

How stories came to be

October 11, 2010 //

Since 1860 the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) has granted annual awards to talented students. This year the RDS Taylor Award was given to Laura Dowling for her video animation, Storytellers of Ireland.

Northern Irish storyteller Liz Weir brought the animated video to my attention, and I was immediately enchanted. As Laura takes us through an atmospheric scene populated by characters from many tales, she writes that stories were invented “to answer the great unanswerable questions”.

In just three minutes she captures the wonder and mystery of storytelling, that power of a great tale or legend “to bring a hush to a room, a catch to the breath, a leap to the curious heart”.

Tags importance of stories, Irish storytelling, role of stories

Categories The art of storytelling, The importance of storytelling

Tell a story; start a movement

September 13, 2010 //

I’d like to have been in the audience for Marshall Ganz’s lecture for the 2001 meeting of the American Sociological Association. I’d have been listening intently when he said, “story telling may be what most distinguishes social movements from interest groups and other forms of collective actions”.

Somewhere in my wandering around in the huge digital library that is the Web, I stumbled onto the draft of his paper, “The Power of Story in Social Movements”.

Cesar Chavez understood the power of storytelling (photo courtesy of Wikimedia)

The title stopped my quick clicking from one site to the next. Intended for an audience of peers, the paper satisfies the need for academic language to make the text believable. But it also tells a story.

The bulk of Ganz’s lecture is the story of La Causa and the role of stories in framing the movement, as well as inspiring and energizing supporters. From the beginning, the leaders of the National Farm Workers Association wove the elements of their struggle into a narrative line. Weekly meetings were not just serious discussions of burning issues. They were celebrations, relating the week’s events through theater and music.

The 300-mile march to Sacramento, to pressure Governor Brown to intervene on behalf of the farm workers, became one of the movement’s defining stories. Ganz writes, “The march was story telling in action, words and symbols. It enacted an individual and collective journey from slavery to freedom.…This cultural dynamic infused the NFWA with significance for farm workers, Mexican-Americans, students, religious activists, and liberal Americans far beyond its political reach or economic influence as a community organization.”

And that’s the key, isn’t it? We can be serious and sincere and committed to social justice. We can march, sign petitions, serve meals in soup kitchens, raise money to educate African children, and volunteer in shelters. As important and satisfying as our actions may be, they will not lead to change without a compelling story.

The march became one of La Causa’s compelling stories. What stories will transform the cause you care about from interest group to social movement?

Marshall Ganz is Lecturer in Public Policy at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard). He cut his social-justice teeth working with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. It was only after many years as a community organizer that he returned to Harvard and earned a PhD in sociology.