The Root of it All is the Story

“Story. Please”

I remember my nightly entreaties to my father, my mother, and even my younger brother, asking them to soothe me to sleep with a story when I was young and afraid to sleep in my room alone. I was already fraught with worries; I kept myself awake wondering how I would warn everyone if there were a fire in the middle of the night. I worried I hadn’t finished my math homework for Mrs. Brawner, the legendary first grade teacher about whom I had been warned by my older sister and my older cousins. They relished seeing my eyes pop open big as pies when they recounted the harsh punishments she liked to bestow on innocent, unsuspecting first graders. Every time I’d close my eyes, I was met with Mrs. Brawner’s jowl heavy, fleshy face shaking with fury that a first grader would dare to defy her by coming into class without homework. Visions of her fiercely pursed lips, painted an unnaturally bright pink, chased me far away from slumber. The only solution was to fight stories with stories. My brother, two years younger than I but already an avid sports fan with a steel trap for sports trivia, would lull me into sleep with countless statistics for football and baseball players whose names and numbers I had no hope of remembering later. It wasn’t the point of the story that was important to me, it was the tone of voice, the constant sound leading me away from my fears and anxieties.

“Oh, did y’all hear this one?”

My family was always big on stories. At every family gathering, and they were many throughout my childhood, my aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents, and even my cousins would take turns telling stories. Inevitably, the point of each story was to kindly humiliate someone else in the room. You had to come to these family gatherings armed not only with an empty stomach, but also armed with a sense of humor. Because my cousins were a few years older than my siblings and I, we took our cues from them. We learned when the show could begin; never before the blessing, never while my grandfather, Governor (sounds like Guv’nah), was speaking, and certainly NEVER when the object of derision was out of the room getting a second helping of my grandmother’s famous fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Half the fun was served up in seeing your cousin’s or aunt’s or sister’s face turn red as he or she eventually broke into a “Alright, you got me” congratulatory smile.

I remember these times fondly now, from this safe distance padded by time and I might even romanticize these experiences with this cushion of geographical distance (my entire family is still in Kentucky, while I have lived in Idaho for fourteen years now); I often ache for the comfort of a good old fashioned Sunday dinner at Munny and Governor’s (both, years dead) house (long ago sold). But when I was a thirteen year-old girl, I did not always like being the object of my family’s twisted sort of affection. And I certainly didn’t know that wearing my heart on my sleeve was the quickest way to volunteer for that esteemed position of the ridiculed. My older sister was much more astute than I, learning years before to keep her weaknesses and passions to herself. She always inhabited a much more private world than I; her world was one of quiet reason and determination, while mine was colored with passions I couldn’t quite understand and never had any hope to control. Whereas Whitney was deliberate, I was haphazard. And admire as I did her subdued way, I could never discipline myself enough to emulate it. So object of ridicule I often was.

Now that I’ve lived away from my family for fourteen years, going home is always a relief. And even though at every big family gathering, everyone is intent on making up for lost time taunting me, I wrap their laughter around me knowing that their love, their attention, and their support makes me feel close to them even though I live far away. I know that these stories that I once thought were meant to torment the subject, were actually a celebration of our differences, our idiosyncrasies, our quirks. Also, I’ve learned something from my sister over the years, now I give them less to tease me about – granted I live across the country from them, so they witness fewer episodes to mock but I’ve also become more of an observer, studying the ritual of the telling.

“Tell me a story.”

I say this to my students who are in my raft as we paddle down the Salmon River and there are no rapids in sight to claim our attention. If there is a respite in the conversation, I give them an audience for their stories. At first, telling a story on demand makes these shy 9th graders quite nervous. Many respond by saying that they don’t have a story. To which I usually respond by asking them to tell me how their parents met, or something along the ordinary-business–of-life line encouraging them to focus outside of themselves (which is difficult but vital for a 9th grader!). Over the course of this week long trip down the Salmon with my 9th grade, I get to know them quite well because of those placid moments when I put each of them on the spot. Some need no prodding and might require some encouragement to conclude after some time, while others struggle to offer up any stories. By the end of the week, after listening to their stories, I answer back with my predictions for them – predictions that range from the outrageous to the possible – a tradition for the past six years. One year, a student gifted with particular penchant for rascality, asked me for his prediction and I offered him a narrative about his future working for a demolitions crew, getting to work with explosives, spending hours devising and planning and then executing destruction. The smile on his face was a mile wide.

This week of sharing stories (along with countless water wars aboard the rafts) serves as an invaluable tool for learning about my new “crop” of 9th graders. This trip occurs within the first month of school and it is my first chance to get to know many of them. When I encounter them in class after the trip, they are much more open to me because they know I will listen to them; I encourage them to tell stories because I can hear authenticity growing with each story they tell. They begin to believe in their ability to tell stories and their voices shine through. The difference in their confidence level before they begin to “talk story” and after they “talk story” is measurable only through their comfort with their own voice as a storyteller; they begin to value their own experiences as the “stuff” of stories.

***

I began to notice the effect that storytelling had on individuals and groups in the first few years of my teaching career. I guess I had always known somewhere in the recesses of my mind that storytelling had purposes other than soothing me to sleep and teasing loved ones. Recently, for thesis work towards my Master’s degree, I’ve dedicated myself to a more thorough study of the role storytelling can play in a culture plagued by enforced silences: South Africa. Njabulo Ndebele, a South African writer, argues for the power of narrative in the healing of his country in his collection of essays investigating the role of the writer, the storyteller, in a country of institutionalized oppression. He criticizes the tendency of South African writers to concentrate on the “spectacle” of violence and injustice, encouraging them to return to the narrative of the “ordinary”. He sees these stories as a means of empowering his people whereas the tyrannical concentration on “spectacle” keeps black South Africans from seeing themselves as the “makers of culture” because reactionary art can never concentrate on the “interiority” of the players. Ndebele argues that the heavy concentration on “political” writing prohibits an understanding of the complexity of the situation. The oppressors become purely evil and the victims become purely good. He sees a danger in witnessing the world, his world, this overly-simplified. He asks whether there are other ways of presenting the characters in this very complex social play saying, “The point is attempting to understand the villain in all his complexity” and ends by proffering that a complex examination of the villain and his interior does not imply a social acceptance of his deeds. “On the contrary, it may intensify political opposition even more. Artistic compassion only situates the villain within the domain of tragic acceptance, which, in practice, translates itself into moral or political rejection. We cannot wish away evil; but genuine art makes us understand it. Only then can we purposefully deal with it.”

Ironically, and sadly, this lens has also been turned to my own country in the wake of the September 11th attacks. An article by Robert Stone in the New York Sunday Times Magazine (11.23.01 ) entitled “The Villains” focused on increasing our understanding of the conspirator’s commitment behind the acts. He offers that the narratives with which the “villains” grew up, the ancient narratives that birthed gods, are “glorified” again for the perpetrators through acts such as these. He recounts the story in the Koran of the people of Ad, people whose “sin was arrogance”, people who relied on material wealth to conquer and shelter themselves from the world. September 11th is the result of clashing narratives. Americans are being punished for our history, or more accurately, for our acceptance of the stories that we tell ourselves about the past; Stone says, “We are steeped in relativism, as confined by our narrative as the murderers are confined by theirs. History is a story we have accepted; our lives are the stories we tell ourselves about the experience of life.” In an effort to understand the events of the past decade and the way September 11th has changed the face of the world, we must listen to both narratives. It is dangerous to offer up our own reactionary narratives that discount the reality behind the narratives that inspired such ghastly violence.

Storytelling is such an integral part of life. Stories are one way we impose order on perceived chaos: stories offer reason, stories offer explanation, stories offer comfort, but stories also plant the seeds of conflict as we know from the current war of narratives now facing us. From the stories fathers and brothers tell daughters and sisters, from the stories we use to tease those we love, from the stories that help us grow into ourselves, to the stories the help us determine our places in the world and the effect that world can have on us and us on it, we must understand the role of stories. In South Africa, Ndebele lights the way for the voice of the ordinary as a way of healing. In America, Lady Liberty stands in the harbor telling us a bedtime story of freedom and acceptance. It has been too easy to be lulled into a senseless dream by her steadfast light.

I have grown up with stories, but the stories I have lived in are not a matter of life and death as they often are in other cultures, particularly a place like South Africa or in the clash of cultures in which we are currently living. The stories I was reared on helped me understand my place and my possibilities. In teaching literature I have always hoped that the encounter with a story will give my students a type of double vision: the ability to see outside of themselves and empathize with people of different backgrounds while simultaneously looking inside and crafting an understanding of their place and possibilities. I am compelled to wrestle with my own understanding of what plants the kernel of story and how that story grows. The root of it all is the story.