Tell Me Something Good

We Are History by Myranette Robinson

Lizzo says in her song, “Juice", "that I’m out here making news." The fact of the matter here is that all of us are.  It was hard for me to believe that my little every day existence is going to be a part of history until I took Creating and Telling Fact-based and Historical Stories this semester. The people I met in the stories were trying to live their best lives during the time period that they lived.

I met a woman who caught my attention in a “Google Doodle”. She was interested in showing African American women in beautiful and smart as well as seeking fair treatment for all people.  I can say with a great deal of certainty that having her likeness drawn as a “Google Doodle” for being the first African American cartoonist in syndication was not her motivation.  My next story was about a Grateful Dead fan who is Black. He does not listen to their music with that in his mind. He, like the rest of us simply listen to music that he enjoys. In my assignments I met a woman who lived the life that she was supposed to live for her time. She even kept secret that she had about not being happy shortly after childbirth because feeling that way was wrong.  Twenty years later, she found that she was not the only woman that had those feelings and that she could get help without shame.

Historical stories also show what life was like in a certain time period through a specific event.  I learned about the lives and working conditions through an event Mary Gay Ducey tells about a fire in a shirtwaist factory in New York. We also learn about what New York was like at that time.

Yes, one day someone will tell about this time period. Don’t be surprised if part or all of your life is being told while you were just living the best that you could.

A Trip to the Zoo, by Kaden Sheffield

        To get into the Phoenix Zoo you must cross a bridge over a long lake. Pigeons walk along the bridge, strutting out of your way as you cross, while turtles bask on half-submerged logs many feet below.

         Whenever I used to visit the zoo, I would notice the pigeons and turtles, but only in passing. I was on my way to the entrance, taking out my wallet to buy my ticket, thinking about what I’d like to see, planning my route around the park.

         Once inside, I’d start out briskly in the direction I’d planned. But as I walked I began to feel my pace slacken. I became aware of the sounds of the many animals around me, and of children’s voices on the breeze.  The colors of the merry-go-round blended with the colors of people’s clothes as they passed by. The smells of popcorn and cotton candy slowed my steps as I passed by the concession stands. As I continued on my tour, I found myself stopping at cages and enclosures I hadn’t remembered seeing before, captivated by an exotic bird or curious about some small mammal scurrying around.

         As I slowed from a stride to a stroll I began to feel the freedom of choosing not only where I went, but how I’d get there, and at what speed. I could even stop if I chose, and just gaze at the life in front of me. There was always something surprising to see—a free-roaming peacock sitting in a tree preening its feathers, a group of lemurs hiding under a bush, staring at me as if I were the exhibit. Over the span of an hour or two, the world seemed changed, brighter somehow, richer and fuller of wonder.

         But the biggest change came as I exited the zoo and re-crossed the bridge. Suddenly those pigeons walking near me on the bridge were exotic, exquisite things. I was transfixed by the iridescent flashes of purple and teal as they strutted in the sun, the muted metallic sound of their cooing. And the turtles, oh the turtles! I could now see how each had a unique pattern on its shell, could see how there were tiny silver and sable fish swimming near them in the water. I realized that it wasn’t the world that had changed. It was me. I thought I’d come to the zoo to see the animals, but I’d really come to have my senses sharpened, to have my life intensified.

         Storytelling is like going to the zoo. Whether you’re perusing your own mind for ideas, searching for the images and forms to craft your bit of life into a story, or listening deeply to the story of another and entering into their crafted world, you think you’re engaging in looking at something outside yourself and how it changes. But it’s really you that’s changed.

Folktales: Skirting on the Edge of Reality by Diana Dinshaw

Recently I created a list of stories I had crafted and told and stories I would like to tell and roughly categorized these by type: personal stories, fact based stories, myths and legends, wisdom stories and folktales. I wasn’t surprised to see that the highest number of stories were listed under the personal stories category. However, what was surprising was the joy I felt when reading the titles of the stories listed under folktales (including wisdom tales). This was completely unexpected   

As a budding storyteller the first folktale I told was from Pakistan, “Diamond Cut Diamond” as part of the requirement in the Art of Storytelling class. And while I enjoyed telling the story as a story, I didn't fully understand what a folktale was. Of course, I had read the chapter on “How to Tell a Folktale” from Liz Warren’s The Oral Tradition Today: An Introduction to the Art of Storytelling. but I was missing a key experience, the delight in telling a story.

After a two-year gap, when I returned to storytelling, I took the class on Multicultural Folktales and I went in with a biased attitude that I wouldn't like folktales. Being a very practical person, I had a difficult time connecting to folktales because of the magical transformations and events skirting on the edge of reality. They seemed unbelievable to me. Another part of folktales that was challenging for me was seeing the value of hope instead of oppression in a story like Cinderella. But what was heartening was that I could tell a wisdom story and that would count because wisdom tales are a type of folktales.

Then I read Rabbi Rossel’s words.

“You craft a story by making choices as to what the story should sound like. Stories sound different to a different generation.

“That’s what the old storytellers used to do in order to make the stories their own..”

These words opened up a whole new world of stories for me to tell. It was like I now had permission to craft and tell a version of a folktale that reinforced the values of our time. In my version of the folktale “The Wicked Stepmother” a Cinderella folktale from Kashmir the passive protagonist changed to one who was active in creating her own destiny. In crafting the Brothers Grimm’s “The White Snake” I took the liberty of changing the protagonist from being male to female giving her the role of saving the prince instead of a poor servant boy going through trials to win the hand of a beautiful princess.  Once I found this freedom, I also found the delight in the mystical transformations. My constant reminder, however, to myself when crafting my version of a fairytale is to refrain from overexplaining the departure from reality. I am learning to trust the listeners imagination rather than enforcing my interpretation. While I create the images in the story it is the listener who imagines how the event occurred.

As I evolve as a storyteller I recognise that my responsibility is to continue the oral tradition of not only storytelling but telling folktales because as a Native American storyteller said, “Stories are living things and we keep them alive through telling.”  

Finding New Life in One’s Root System: A discovery through the Crafting and Telling of Personal and Historical Stories by Diane Saunders

“That’s it!” I exclaimed as I was browsing through my pictures of a family trip to Yosemite last summer in celebration of my husband’s 60^th birthday.  My daughter had snapped   this picture of me standing in front of this expansive root system of a Sequoia tree in the Mariposa Grove.  Now the picture here illustrated a new meaning for me.   It mirrored what I had been experiencing in crafting my personal and historical story on my grandfather.  I’ve discovered that I am part of a vastly interconnected system and strength through my Scottish ancestry.   There is a mystery here I felt I was unearthing.  Yes, I am deeply woven into this root system, in the past and most surprisingly, in the now.

 My grandparents emigrated from Scotland soon after they were married.  They grew a small family of two daughters, in a land far away from their own families, Scottish culture, geography and history.  In growing up around my grandparents, I came to know a little bit about Scottish culture by the values and character that lived within them.   They were proud, yet humble people.  It was considered distasteful to talk about one’s self.   An exemplary family value, yet it left us after their passing, with little tangible connection to the family and culture they came from.  And the culture we came from too.

               A whole new world has opened up to me through exploring their stories.  I have discovered that in spite of a lack of information, their culture, values, history, preferences, aptitudes and ethics are vibrantly alive within me and my family members.   Even though the land and people of Scotland are continents and oceans far far away, something lives in us even though we can’t see it, or be surrounded by it.  We are rooted in it.

This image of the massive root system of the Sequoia helped me name what I was experiencing.  It got me to thinking as to the magic in the telling of personal stories.  In class when hearing one another’s stories, we have often reflected on how personal fact based stories hold as much magic, if not more, than folktales, fairytales and myths.  How can this be?  We would ponder this as we would hear over and over again of the incredible synchronicities and happenstances that would emerge through exploring one’s ancestor’s lives, stories and history.  This magical synchronicity seemed be a consistent experience.   Somehow lost pieces of information or connections, found as in a puzzle piece, would bring together reconciliations and offer new insights and understandings.   These ‘providential convergences’, seemed to bring lost parts together again, to make what was once fracture, missing or broken, whole. 

We often create family trees to help us understand the place and people who are part of our family.  There is great value in that.  But maybe, if we thought of our families more as hidden and intertwined root systems, it might enhance the purpose, grace and gift in exploring one’s history.  These root connections run deep, our stories and history are important, complex and intertwined.  It is core to who we are.  This is especially true in our American culture where we have come together from many different cultures and families over the last 200 plus years.  Our stories and histories are present, yet invisible, just like the Sequoia’s.

In discovering this deep inner resource within me it has felt like, “wow my hands and legs are beginning to work together in a new way!”   I am connected to something, to someone, and it’s large, mystical and magical.  I have come to discover this magic isn’t there just for me, but for my living family, children and grandchildren.  It is a magic ‘super’ power, one that is living, active, and transformative.  It is nourishment from the very source of where one comes from, from relationships, and from stories that are all very, very, real.