Friday, November 13, 2009

Telling Stories

Could there be a more delicious time of year for lovers of stories?  When I was a kid, the return of cold weather meant happily slouching near the heat register of my bedroom, rereading fat classics like Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, and puzzling over the one line that never rang true to me – Meg March’s lament that November is “the most disagreeable month in the whole year.” For me, and maybe for you, November holds all the pleasure of holiday conviviality without any of the angst of gift-giving.  November is about drawing our chairs close to the fire, tucking into pie, and sharing the quiet pleasures of story-swapping.

Of course, “everyone has a story to tell,” but that worn chestnut has broken open freshly for me in the past few weeks.  My college students and I have been conducting writing workshops for women in our community, as we gear up for the February production of the “Michiana Monologues” on the IU South Bend campus.  The “Michiana Monologues” is a community writing project that raises funds for local organizations working to stop violence against women. The audience gets the chance to hear remarkable true stories written - and submitted anonymously—by local women.  To encourage writers, over the past months we have held workshops in campus classrooms, in public libraries, in agencies for women in need, and at the adorable Red Purl knitting shop in Niles. And while we offered hot tips for telling big stories briefly, mostly those workshops were about listening – the lost art of shutting up … so others can open up.

This point struck home recently, when I got to hear journalist Alex Kotlowitz speak in town to a standing-room-only crowd.  His subject was his bestselling book, There Are No Children Here, for which he recorded dozens of stories of families living in the Henry Horner housing projects in Chicago in the early 90s.  As an earnest journalist who wanted to reveal the visceral hardships of everyday life for the urban poor, Kotlowitz confessed that on occasion he accidentally shut down the stories that his young interviewees, brothers Pharoah and Lafeyette, really wanted to tell.  Kotlowitz recalled one time in particular, when, over pizza he’d bought for the boys, he kept asking them about the latest neighborhood gang fights, about stray bullets … when the boys were bursting with news about the spelling bee at school.  The more telling story – the truest and often least-expected one—is always the one we have to really listen for.

Lots of spiritual traditions include the idea of “listening others into speech,” a practice of active listening meant to foster a deeply respectful I-thou relationship with others.  And we all know, sure, that listening is important.  But often we find ourselves just shuttling between the two states of being that comic Fran Lebowitz described as: “There’s talking … and there’s waiting to talk.”

In our many Monologue-writing workshops, I had to work hard to stay in that different space of just … listening.  And, yes, stories poured out.  Most of us, after all, share a lot with the pomegranates now piling up in grocery stores – we’ve developed tough, but smoothly presentable outer skins that hold us together through life’s daily indignities. But if you break us open – what glistening jewels we contain! Sweet, bitter, tart, luminous. So, mild-looking matrons, if offered an ear, reveal terrifying stories of family violence, or bravery, or loss.  A carefree-seeming teenager offers the story of a prom-night rape that turned her into an advocate for other women.  A tweedy grandmother, with a sly smile, describes outrageous acts of feminist liberation – involving no burning bras, but instead spray paint and biting wit.  That’s just a start.

During November’s cozy weeks, when we might have more than the usual chance to sit with beloveds or acquaintances, let’s remember that the most compelling stories – the stories that might transform our understanding of our families, our communities, and ourselves—are often hidden.  Let’s hold out our hands to them.  Like Max in the fantastic modern fairy tale, Where the Wild Things Are, what we’ll find is what we suspect: That we are, all of us, wild things—more monstrous, tender, terrifying, more sorry, and more loving than we often remember.

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on November 13, 2009 • WVPE's Audio Archive
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