Fabulaphobia - The Fear of Hiring a Storyteller

I have been a storyteller for thirty-two years. This is the only job I've had as a grown-up person. I get to travel the world and share stories with audiences of all ages. I love it.

One of the things that I have had to deal with over the course of my career is the fact that lots of people have no idea what a storyteller is or what one does. Sometimes I get quite frustrated by that.



If you've followed my blog for any period of time, you know I lose my cool every now and then.

If not, here are some links to some of my more colorful rants.


When Is A Storyteller Not A Storyteller?

When Administrators Attack!

They'll Never Sit That Long!


At the beginning of my career, I would go into high schools or middle schools and the principal would freak out.

Principal:  "Where is your stuff?"

Me: "What do you mean?"

source

Principal: "Don't you have music or drums or something?"

Me: "No."

Principal: "No?"

Me: "No."

Principal: "What are you going to do?"

Me: "I am going to stand in front of your students and talk for forty-five minutes."

You could see the steel trap closing around their brain. All they are thinking is, "When I find out who invited this person to our school, I am going to skin them alive."

When the show was over, they would walk up to me dumbfounded and ask that question many an artist has gotten, "How did you do that?"

I suppose I thought that a day would come when that would not happen. A day would come when people understood what storytelling was, and understood why it connects with audiences.

Alas, it is not to be.

Last week I was in a number of schools. A few of them were K-2 schools. I had a principal sit right at the edge of the stage facing the kids because she thought she was going to have to jump on the stage and save me after about ten minutes. She was amazed k-2 students would sit for forty-five minutes.

Last week, I had a middle school administrator inform me that if she didn't like my content, or I started to lose the audience, she had no compunction about jumping onto the stage and stopping the show. I did three. She didn't have to stop any of them. She was amazed.

In honor of this nonsense, I have decided to coin a new term.


Fabulaphobia - (n) (fAb-yew-la-foe-be-ya) - the fear of hiring storytellers.

source

There are still many schools and venues that are convinced storytelling will never work with an audience.

I fight this by sending schools in-depth information about how storytelling affects literacy, language acquisition, and vocabulary. I stress the fact that it improves language skills, communication both verbal and non-verbal, and it boosts confidence.

Still, people are worried that kids won't like it.

I am in residence for a second grade this week. The teachers are amazed at how much fun the kids are having working on kinetic writing and visualizations skills.

The teachers tell me that their curriculum no longer allows for the kinds of crafts kids used to do. Their imaginations are suffering because they don't spend enough time in unstructured play.

As I was leaving school today, the arts council board representative who sat in on my class said she was amazed at the way I was tying storytelling in with higher-level brain function as it relates to literacy.

I explained how the exercises worked and why I was doing them.

She said: "Somebody should do studies on how arts interact with the brain."

I replied: "We have lots of studies."

I left it there. sigh.

I have been in a number of schools over the last few weeks that were frustrating, but it hasn't been all annoyance. One school in particular sticks out for me.

It is a school with a heavy immigrant population. The ESL teacher deals with twenty-one languages. The kids sat in front of me in all of their multi-hued glory. They looked like America to me. Some girls had hijabs, some wore unicorn horns, some had cornrows, others had multihued thatch. The boys had everything from afros to shaved heads and much of their hair was multicolored and multi-length. They were every possible shade of brown from dark to light.

I turned to the administrator and said, "This gives me hope. At some point, these children will be in charge. They will grow up knowing what it is to have to become a polyglot to speak to their friends. They will grow up with kids from across the world. They will grow up understanding that everybody is "us" and that there is no single skin color or religion that makes a person "other".

The teacher smiled. "That's the most hopeful thing I've heard in a long time."

"Good," I said.

source

Then, I told them stories and we rocked the house.

For schools that do not suffer from fabulaphobia, the world is an amazing place.

Happy Telling!

Cultural Misappropriation is a Continuous, Evolving Battlefield: Being An Ally

source

There are no easy answers here. That should be obvious.

There isn't any easy way to talk about this subject.

Over the last five weeks, I've realized that covering cultural appropriation in five posts is pretty foolish.

Still, you work with what you've got.

I've tried to start this post for several days, and each time it has gotten too long and I didn't get to the point.

So, I'm going to put the point of the post at the beginning. I know, that's backward. That way if the post gets long, I'll just cut the rambling nonsense.

How To Be An Ally In Your Own Work!

1. Do the research. Find out what you can about a story.

2. If your story comes out of a marginalized culture, find storytellers - you notice I have suggested going to more than one person - and find out whether or not it is okay for you to tell that story. They might be fine with it so long as you give proper context or credit. They might not.

3. Pay attention to how you introduce the story. Are there elements of the story that seem odd or unusual. Find out more about them.

4. Find variants of the story. Compare them.

5. Be aware of the language. How are you talking about the story? How are you describing the people? Are you offering context by the people who told the story or the people who told about the people who told the story?

6. If you are working with a story from history, find the story's origin. There are historical anecdotes and references that were made up by the "victors" but do not come out of the cultures about which they are told. Don't spread colonializing, degrading nonsense in the guise of history.

Pocahantas?

For instance: How many people actually know who Pocahantas was? How much of what we were taught about her is accurate and how much of it comes out of John Smith's complete misunderstanding of what was going on around him?



I was trying to find images of this young woman. She died at the age of twenty or twenty-one. This is supposedly a good likeness of her. I don't know.


As for the other images I've seen, they are either romanticized images of her or images of other women who people thought were her.

How do you tell this story? What exactly do you tell?





Are there more rules of thumb for dealing with this difficult subject?

I have no doubt.

Do I have any idea what they might be?

Not a bit. I suppose I could keep coming up with them, but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be helpful to anyone. Myself included.

Was I an idiot to try to tackle this huge topic in five blog posts?

Yes, most assuredly.

As I talk to people do I realize that there is so much more to say, learn, and do??

Yes. Definitely.

Could I write posts about this for the next couple of months and expand on the topic in never-ending spirals?

Yes.

Do I have any interest in doing that?

Absolutely not.

You might ask:

If this is such a difficult subject, you didn't want to write it, and it involves a never-ending conversation, why did you do this?

Good question.

I've had some conversations with other people from marginalized cultures and discovered many of us have the same thought about this subject:

We Are Tired!

We feel like we keep coming up against people who get upset when we don't tell them what they want to hear about cultural appropriation. What they want to hear seems to be, "Do what you want."
If you don't say that, they argue you blue trying to tell you why they can do whatever they want.

We need allies. We need people to care enough to do the work themselves. We need people to understand why it is important.

All of us, whether or not we are from marginalized cultures, can learn to be better in the way we use language and images to share thoughts and stories.

My blinders are as debilitating as yours. I am as unable to see what I can't see as you are unable to see what you can't see. In so many ways we are the semi-blind leading the semi-blind. If we work at this together, all of us will see better.

This gets into another topic that could take months: Privilege.

I'm not even going to touch that.

source

To everyone who is an ally out there, thank you! 
To everyone who wants to be an ally, thank you!
Let us keep on keeping on.

Talk to me.
I'll talk to you.
Let's learn this as a community.



Happy Telling!



Part 1 - Cultural Misapproriationis A Better Term: Some Thoughts
Part 2 The Cost of Cultural Misappropriation: Invisibility
Part 3 - Cultural Misappropriation Is Easy To Do: The Accidental Appropriator
Part 4 - How Do You Know If You Don't Know Enough?
Part 5 - What Does It Look Like to be an Ally in Your Own Work?

Cultural Misappropriation Is A Better Term: Some Thoughts Part 1

Understanding People Means Understanding How They Live

The question of cultural appropriation regularly roils the storytelling community.

I had planned to do one post about this, but it got long. This will be a series.





What is cultural appropriation?

cul·tur·al ap·pro·pri·a·tion

noun

noun: cultural appropriation; plural noun: cultural appropriations

1. the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.

   
   

   
   

To begin with, let us acknowledge the elephant in the room for the United States...

We appropriated the architecture of the Greeks

MUCH OF OUR CULTURE IS MADE UP OF APPROPRIATED PRACTICES, IDEAS, FESTIVALS, HOLIDAYS, AND CELEBRATIONS.

American Christmas? 

 Christmas has gone through some serious changes over the course of American history!  Click on this link to find some fun facts about Christmas                                   

That thing we call Christmas in America today? We stole lots of it from German immigrants.  How much did we steal? Check it out.

source

Even when we are celebrating lovely American things we tend to have culturally diverse elements like fireworks. The world has China to thank for those.

Most of our cuisine is Americanized food from other parts of the world. Our language is a compilation of grammatical structures and words that we have taken wholesale from other languages.

What could be less American than pizza?
source

Culture is fluid. It moves and changes. Ideas that apply across large swaths of people get incorporated into the main culture. We see something we like that someone else is doing and we start doing it. Influencers make a living getting the people of the world to follow them around and behave as they behave.

influencer

/ˈinflo͝oənsər/

Learn to pronounce

noun

1. a person or thing that influences another.

   
   

   
   

   • MARKETING

     a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media.
   • 
     

That is just how it works. That is how it has always worked. There is no other way to explain this outfit.

Nobody just had this look in the closet. Someone purposely did this.

What, you might wonder, does any of that have to do with cultural misappropriation?

Why, if we live in a world where we are constantly bumping up against ideas, cultures, images, and thoughts are some of them not up for grabs?

Easy. It has to do with how those images or ideas interact with our history.

There are two different stories of The United States of America. One is patriotic, it makes your heart swell, and it is the tale of a scrappy nation that built itself on the foundations of liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness!

George Washington

Those are the stories in the history books. Those are the stories that we have mythologized. Our founding president was so honest that he chopped down a cherry tree and when confronted, uttered those well-known words, "I cannot tell a lie!" You know that never happened, right? Good story, though. Larger than life making story. 

Then there is the other story of America. The history that makes some people upset if you start trying to tell it. The history that gets people accused of being unAmerican if they want to learn about it or share it. 

America is a country founded by people who came from other places, dispossessed the people who were already here, butchered them, and appropriated whatever they wanted.

America is a country founded by people who imported people from other lands, enslaved them, reaped the benefit and wealth from them for generations without any compensation, and then systematically oppressed them for generations after the practice of enslavement ended. BTW, this is still an ongoing problem.

America is a country that is built off of the blood, sweat, and tears of immigrants with the promise that if they work really hard and struggle, they too can become part of the American collective. In the process of letting them work really hard, some of the richest families in our country exploited them to a criminal degree. BTW, this is still an ongoing problem.

The history of the practical effects of what the country has done to minority cultures has had a profound effect on how we think about, treat, and represent images in the mainstream of our culture.

Because we are a multi-colored, multi-cultural nation we tend to have a very privileged view of other people's stuff.

In other words, we don't have a good idea about what constitutes "not mine". This translates into all sorts of really inappropriate things.

Americans be like:

How come we can do this?

Oktoberfest America!

But not this.

Really Victoria Secret? Really?

This is perfectly fine.

St. Patrick's Day Fun!

This? Absolutely not!

This image comes from an interesting post worth the read: The Al Jolson Story Click here
What is wrong with Blackface? Click the link.

To me, the answer to why some of these images are perfectly fine and some are not is obvious.

What I have discovered is that for some folks it is not.

Ask yourself some simple questions.

Is the image honoring the culture in question or completely divorced from the culture out of which it comes?

Is the image in question celebrating the culture or mocking it?

What significance does the image have to the culture out of which it comes?

Are there any ramifications about this particular image in our culture? Why or why not?

What does the person who is in the image know about the culture they are presenting?

What is the purpose of using the cultural elements in this image? Why was it picked?

Cultural Misappropriation? Storytelling questions:

Where did I get this story?

What do I know about the culture out of which this story came?

What is the significance of this story in that culture?

What other sources for this story do I have?

Is this story sacred to someone?

Is this story so culturally specific that it will lose meaning if it is taken out of its cultural context?

First Rule Of Thumb:

If you are using an item or portraying a cultural image, and you are completely divorced from the actual people for whom that item or image means something such that you might very well be presenting that item or image in a way that is not only inappropriate but bone shakingly insulting to the people for whom it does have meaning...stop. Do not pass go. Do not collect 100$. Stop.

You don't get to decide what another culture finds offensive. You get to learn what is offensive and adjust yourself accordingly. That is your job as a storyteller.

Next:

The Cost of Cultural Misappropriation:

Yeah, it might hurt someone's feelings, but it doesn't actually hurt anyone right! That is absolutely wrong.

Happy Telling!

Part 1 Cultural Misappropriation is A Better Term: Some Thoughts

Part 2 The Cost of Cultural Misappropriation: Invisibility
Part 3 - Cultural Misappropriation Is Easy To Do: The Accidental Appropriator
Part 4 - How Do You Know If You Don't Know Enough?
Part 5 - What Does It Look Like to be an Ally in Your Own Work?

What Does It Mean To Be A Successful Storyteller?

Storytellers tend to feel it when we hit it out of the park. When we leave a stage or a classroom after having been incredibly successful, we can feel it all through our body. There is the energy, the excitement, the lavish praise, the joyful expressions and the contentment 

Alas, not all events are that successful.

Sometimes we leave and we feel like we did a good job, but something was missing. Maybe things didn't land the way we hoped they would. Maybe we feel like it was good, but didn't rise to great.

Sometimes we leave and it seems we did an adequate job, but there was nothing that made the experience stand out.

Then, there are those shows where we feel like a train hit us on the way out the door. What happened? Why didn't the story or stories connect? What went wrong?

When I was at Northwestern, Jay O'Callahan came to visit. He is a remarkable man who danced and told his way through one of my all-time favorite original tales called The Herring Shed. When he was finished, I was exhausted and in love with the images dancing in my head. It was obviously magic. 



My first set watching Jackie Torrence perform Brer Rabbit tales was beyond amazing and I sat there watching Brer Snake tempt that possum while laughing my fool head off and drinking in the sound of her voice. I never could have imagined anything so breathtaking as being part of an audience with her at the helm. I could actually feel the magic. 

 



I wanted to hit the stage someday and be that magic or as close to it as I could get. I wanted my audience to be that spellbound and joyful when they left me. For a long time, I worked to achieve that. Only, in my eyes, when I became a magic person, would I be a successful storyteller.


Unfortunately, there are no manuals about how to create actual magic. There are no books that explain how to actually turn dross into gold or any other useful thing. I suspect that it is this underlying quest for the keys to magic that has forced me to spend so much of my adult life researching storytelling and the human brain.

Many years have passed since those early days of youth and ignorance, and I've seen many storytellers and told many tales. I've worked to refine and challenge myself as I learn and work with audiences. 

I've had magic moments and moments I hope to never relive. 

In the end, I've figured out what success really means to me.

source

Success for me means I look at each audience and give them what I have. I also strive to meet them where they are. I hope they have a good time. I hope they get something fun out of it. I hope I learn something about humans or literature or nature or how people think or how to time something in a story. I hope I get just an ounce better each year. If you are not growing, then you are either atrophying or dying. Learning is the only thing that makes us better.

Sometimes I miss the mark entirely and the stories don't sing. I dissect the choices I made and debate what I might have done differently. If I learn something that helps me in the future, I succeeded.



Sometimes I partially miss the mark, and the stories limp through. I look through the stories to see what worked, what didn't and what I could or didn't do to help. Sometimes the problem is I stand in the way of the story. If I work out some bit of business or figure out a way to make something transition more smoothly, I succeeded.

Sometimes I do a credible job of giving what I've got and we all have a good time, but not a transformational moment in any way shape or form. I look through those shows and see what can be learned from the interactions with the audience and the amount of animation or energy I threw off during the set. If I can find anything at all to work on, I succeeded.

Of course, every now and then, I manage the thing I always strive to do. Every now and then, I am able to apply all of those things, those hopes, those techniques I spent my life practicing, the audience is hungry for the stories, the situation is perfect and I float into that sweet spot and we make magic.

The magic happens, but I was wrong about where it occurs. I thought it came off the storyteller, but the truth is, it comes through the storyteller. We are brilliant when we are conduits. 

Jay O'Callahan is a magic person to me. Jackie Torrence's magic changed my life and instructs me as a storyteller even unto this day. 

As for me, I feel like I've got a handful of magic beans and every now and then, I manage to plant one. 

There are many ways to measure success as a storyteller. I have learned to settle for learning, striving, trying and never getting knocked down for good even when I am discouraged. 

I make my living as a storyteller. 

In that, I am succeeding.

“If you are a dreamer come in
If you are a dreamer a wisher a liar
A hoper a pray-er a magic-bean-buyer
If you're a pretender come sit by my fire
For we have some flax golden tales to spin
Come in!
Come in!”

― Shel Silverstein

Happy Telling.

Part 1: Telling The Hard Story: What Is It?

Part 1: Telling The Hard Story: What Is It?

Part 2: Picking the Hard Story: Why Are You Telling It? 

Part 3: Crafting Intentions into the Hard Story: No Pity Parties Allowed!


The Hard Story: (n) Any story that touches on subjects or themes that are considered socially sensitive, politically divisive, religiously difficult, or fraught with discomfort.

I decided to blog about my experience with a story that I have been workshopping for about two years. My plan was to describe it and then make some comments and post, but as I got into the writing I realized that to really work it, I would need to either write a ridiculously long blog post, or do it in parts.

I don't know how many parts I will end up with at the end. Maybe only three...if I'm lucky.








I am spending the week in beautiful Little Switzerland, NC at the Wildacres Retreat.

I am enjoying a week of relaxation, enjoyment, writing, reflecting, and working with some wonderful storytellers on various pieces. It is lovely to spend a week wallowing in story with other people who live with this art form.

Last night I shared one of the pieces I have been working over the course of the last couple of years. It is called Election Night, and it is about some of the situations in which I found myself after President Obama was elected in our "post racial" world.

It starts with an experience in the week leading up to the election through four very difficult situations in which I found myself over the course of those eight years.

I deal with the following subjects:

A Break From Life At Wildacres

Domestic Terrorism: I was in a community where someone was burning crosses on the lawns of black residents in a small town right before election day.

Racism masquerading as "allowable political speech" - After the second election I was in a community where people were "lynching" chairs in the trees after Clint Eastwood spoke to an empty chair at Mitt Romney's convention pretending President Obama was sitting in it.

Absent Minded Racism: I was in a number of situations where someone made a truly heinous comment without realizing they'd just made a derogatory statement about black people in general...of course they didn't mean Me....

Stereotyping: I had to confront my own bias after spending a week with a family after being told that the husband of my host was a Tea Party Patriot.

Othering: What is it to feel like to feel like you don't belong ?

Writing in beautiful surroundings

Structural Racism: When the narratives we have about racism prevent us from seeing it


Mostly, however, the story is about the stories we tell ourselves about who we are as Americans.


Last night I shared an abridged version of this story with my retreat group. It sparked a great deal of discussion. One of the participants said that my willingness to tell the story was "brave".

I had no way to respond to that last night. I've been cogitating about it all morning.

I didn't vocalize it, but I disagreed with her. People tell stories about things that happen to them all of the time. That's the whole point of personal narrative. Why is my telling this brave?

Perhaps I am brave because there will be blowback from telling this tale and facing it will take bravery.

No, probably not.

I've been talking about race in America all of my life...not by choice. If you are a person of color, you have no choice because people are always starting conversations with -

"Can I ask you a personal question?"

There is no telling where that question is heading, but my response to it is, "Sure, you can always ask."

Wildacres Retreat

The truth, however, is that I have tended to shy away from these types of stories since I make a living working in schools, and I am not looking to have people consider me a "political" storyteller.

I am also not someone who does a great deal of personal telling.

Perhaps I'm brave to put my foot into this hornet's nest?

We'll have to see.



As I sat down to try to explain why I am working on this story and what I hope to accomplish by telling it I realized I needed more space to discuss this.

So, over the next few weeks I will be going into my motivation, my hopes, and why I am sharing this tale.

Some things I want to say up front...

I am not a crusader. I am not advocating everybody in the world tell The Hard Story.
I am not suggesting you use an audience for therapy or sympathy.
I am not suggesting that every hard story is palatable for every audience.

Every Now And Then You Need Some Mountain

I will however, discuss Election Night, the structure of the tale, why I made the decisions I made in presenting it, how I chose the language, and what I am hoping to achieve.

This is going to be an interesting ride.


Happy Cogitating!

My Joy - Teaching by Arthuretta Martin

I wasn’t born to be a grade school teacher.  

Let me rephrase that.  

I wasn’t trained to be a teacher.  

Hmmm that’s not quite right either.  

Wait. Let me explain.

The first 30 years of my life I did something other than teach young people but clearly, I was born and trained to teach.  That sounds better. 

I love teaching children. I love teaching adults.  I believe teaching is my calling. During this second half of my life, I’m finally answering that call. I am excited when my students “get it.”  I love it when they don’t “get it”; when they must stretch their minds to understand new concepts and ideas.  

For about 20 years I taught adults. I taught adults the complex and often contradictory concepts of Federal Acquisition.  What is that you ask?  It is teaching how and why the Federal government buys goods and services.  This field also includes training people how to manage those contracts.  

I’ve found similarities and differences between young people and adults in learning.  I came with a pre-conceived notion that I had to work harder to teach young people.  I don’t.  I must work differently.  

Just like adults, young people take classes because someone told them they had to do it.  Just like adults, young people take classes because they’re interested in the topic.   The student that knows more than the teacher?  I get that with both students and adults.  Both are pliable but there is no question that adults do not stretch like children.  

Adults must sometimes unlearn biases before we have room to open to new ideas.  Young people come with biases too but their biases were usually placed in their precious minds by well-meaning adults.  The joy comes when you can help a young person place those biases in perspective and embrace a different way of seeing the world.  Stories, and helping young people learn to write their story and listen to each other’s stories have given me the opportunity to do just that.

I teach public speaking. One form of public speaking is storytelling. I teach children not only how to tell a story but what makes up the craft of storytelling.  

Their imaginations are as vast as the ocean.  

In the processing of speaking, you must improve listening.  We live in a world where people do a great deal of talking but don’t always listen to each other.  In my class, we not only focus on public speaking best practices but we teach listening and how to give feedback.

 The joy comes at the end of the quarter.  Each student gives a prepared speech which will always include storytelling.  

I have one young man who began taking public speaking with me two years ago.  He had some challenges.  I worked with him.  Today I do believe he’s not only a good speaker he can compete as an orator.  

Some of us go through a lifetime without ever experiencing joy.  I’ve have found joy through children telling stories.

Arthuretta Martin, M.S. DTM