Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell is a Canadian documentary that features a varied range of personal accounts from members of the Polley family and those around them. These stories center on Sarah’s late mother, Diane. In short, spliced interviews, Sarah interviews her siblings, her father, and various other people who knew Diane in an intriguing attempt to reconstruct the past; Sarah asks her interviewees to tell the “whole story” from the beginning to end, in their own words. Video footage, both real and recreated, accompanies these accounts. Stories We Tell is at once a personal family history and a highly relatable depiction of how the past is subjective and how our stories and “truths” are often contradictory.

While I enjoyed the film, I found myself a little stumped about what to say in response to it. So, I turned to my trusty companion IMDB to see what other people have said. Stories We Tell is arguably an unconventional documentary that combines ‘fact’ with ‘fiction’ and reveals its own creative process; Sarah utilizes two cameras, one to film the interviewees and the other to film the behind-the-scenes (e.g. Sarah’s direction, putting on the actors’ makeup etc.). It is also an intensely intimate account of Diane Polley, as revealed through others’ stories. As such, I was curious to see how viewers reacted.

Now, for some stats. Overall, the documentary received a 7.7/10 from 5,250 users. Thirty-eight reviews were posted. Of these reviews, I noticed some intriguing trends, the most prominent one being that several users criticized the film for showing too narrow, and too personal a story. Asc85 called the film “self-indulgent” and cinematic_aficionado deemed it too “self-centered.” At least eight out of thirty-eight reviews followed in the same vein. Eddie_baggins wrote: “To get the most out of Stories one must be wholly invested in the concerns of Polly’s [sic] family and the eventual revelations that come forth from her questioning and investigating of the past but if your investment is minimal as I found mine was any emotional impact the film clearly has for many is dulled.” He then contrasted Stories with other documentaries like Searching for Sugarman and Dear Zachary, which he deemed “great” because they are “relatable in more large scale and universal ways.” Upon reading these reviews, I thought, yes, Stories is very much a family story, but does this mean it’s not one worth telling?

These comments reminded me of one particular moment in the film, when Sarah is beginning to interview her siblings. When asked what she thought of this documentary, one of Sarah’s sisters (I couldn’t catch her name) replies, “Who f—ing cares? Who would want to know our story anyways?” This comment stuck out for me as it speaks to what kinds of stories should be told, and what kinds of stories people want to hear. Unlike eddie_baggins, I think Stories is very relatable. Its depiction of a family history, one that is not particularly extraordinary, underscored the importance of all stories, even small ones, in being told.

Art Spiegelman’s widely acclaimed graphic novels, Maus I & II, depict a father’s retelling of his experiences in the Holocaust to his son. Art’s father Vladek, a Polish Jew, begins his story with how he met Art’s mother, Anja, shortly before the outbreak of WWII. Vladek’s story spans two volumes, more than ten years, and ends with his and Anja’s reunion after the war. Simultaneously, Maus visually depicts Vladek’s recounting of his Holocaust experience in the late 1970s, as Art documents his father’s story in graphic form. Many critical responses to Spiegelman’s chosen genre (or some would argue medium) of Maus have examined the productive connection between the visual and the verbal aspects of the text, as readers are confronted with and are forced to negotiate both dimensions. The connections and disjoints between the comic and textual forms provide ample opportunities to mine Spiegelman’s work. However, Marianne Hirsch explores Spiegelman’s use of three black-and-white photographs that mark the only visual departure from the comic form in Maus.

In “Family Pictures: Maus, Mourning and Post-Memory,” Hirsch examines how photographs function within Spiegelman’s text and the ways in which documentary (photos) differ from aesthetic (comic form) in the context of Maus. She explores these visual representations as documenting both memory and “post-memory,” which belongs to a survivor’s child “whose life is dominated by memories of what preceded his/her birth” (Hirsch 8). To illuminate the power of photographs, Hirsch draws on Susan Sontag’s assertion that photographs “state the innocence, the vulnerability of lives heading toward their own destruction” (Sontag qtd. in Hirsch 5). As photographs capture the visual essence of living, in the most realistic detail possible, they also serve to remind viewers of what will be, or has been, lost. Hirsch argues that this ability of photographs to capture life in a moment, and then remind us of loss and death, is particularly haunting.

Hirsch also highlights the specific characteristics of Holocaust photographs, emphasizing that their context is equally important to our reception of them as their content. She claims that our knowledge of their place within the Holocaust experience “increases the horror, as we add to the bodies, or the hair, or the shoes depicted the millions which remain unrepresented” (Hirsch 7). Examining family pictures within this context, Hirsch argues that the viewer “fills in what the picture leaves out: The horror of looking is not necessarily in the image but in the story we provide to fill in what’s left out of the image” (7). As viewers encounter family photos of Holocaust victims, those who were lost during and after, they encounter a disjoint between a perhaps ‘happy’ image and the knowledge they possess about the trauma of the Holocaust. Hirsch analyzes the photo of Anja and Art in smiles and swimsuits on page 100 of Maus I. As Hirsch observes, this photo is directly opposite a panel showing a desolate Art; his speech bubble reads, “In 1968 my mother killed herself…She left no note!” (Spiegelman 100). Here we can see how Spiegelman draws out the potential of photographs to unsettle the viewer, as a full-of-life image is paired with a textual death.

Hirsch’s claim that Holocaust photographs invite, or rather force, viewers to visually ‘fill in the blanks’ is an intriguing one. I would like to extend this analysis to encompass the medium of the graphic novel more generally. As the comic form is visually rudimentary, in that it lacks colour and intricate detail, (a conscious choice, no doubt), I wonder if viewers encounter this same disjoint between comic renderings of the Holocaust and their knowledge of the horrific trauma that occurred. For example, on page 72 of Maus II, Spiegelman has drawn the burning of prisoner mice – some alive among the already dead. The visual in somewhat abstract and not-intricate, the large flames engulf most of the picture, obscuring the piled bodies. The faces of the mice which we can see are obviously in agony, though they are still the faces of mice. In this particular example, viewers encounter an abstract, unfocused, very unreal representation of one horror of the concentration camps. This abstraction and departure from reality may be Spiegelman’s attempt to emphasize the inability to capture, and for readers to interpret, such an unspeakable trauma. It may also be Spiegelman’s attempt to evoke the imaginations of viewers as they “fill in” the realistic details that the image lacks. Perhaps this is one way in which the medium of the graphic novel is so effective in communicating horror; it forces viewers to imagine the unimaginable.

Works Cited

Hirsch, Marianne. “Family Pictures: “Maus”, Mourning, and Post-Memory.” Discourse 15.2 (1992): 3. Print.

Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. Print.

Carl Beam, on his art: “I play a game with humanity and with creativity. I ask viewers to play the participatory game of dreaming ourselves as each other. In this we find out that we’re all basically human” (Witnesses 34)

Walking in to MOA’s current exhibit “Speaking to Memory: Images and Voices from St. Michael’s Residential School,” I was struck by the enormous present-day photographs of the school that covered the museum’s walls. They were huge, life-size, tinted yellow, and grim. Inviting, ushering, confronting. They are the first objects an observer encounters upon entering the gallery, providing a powerful framework in which to view the rest of the exhibit. Words by the Indian Residential School Commission and the Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs overlay these images, and both excerpts speak on policies of aggressive assimilation. Dr. Duncan Campbell Scott, Deputy Minister, is quoted: “Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic.” I then wondered how these gripping images, in conjunction with words of assimilation, worked together to elicit a reaction from witnesses: are we, for a moment, absorbed in these visual spaces as well? What are the implications of such an absorption? How do they change our reception of testimony? I found the prominent use of visual and physical mediums in “Speaking to Memory” to be a powerful method of collapsing barriers between listeners and speakers/witnesses and the witnessed, essential to the successful reception of testimony.

One critique of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) is that it privileges a “talking cure,” and emphasizes a verbal re-telling of traumatic experience as the most effective method of healing (Whitlock 79). A large part of the TRC is the collection and sharing of survivor testimony. While many survivors have found this process to be beneficial, critiques of the TRC highlight how this emphasis on talking and listening can also work to reinforce the divides between those who divulge their experiences of trauma and those who bear witness. In her article, Naomi Angel draws on Paulette Regan’s scholarship regarding the relationship between settler-listener and Indigenous survivor-speaker. Regan asserts that empathetic reactions to survivor testimony can be “colonial in nature” (qtd. in Angel 13). A deconstruction of this problematic relationship can be achieved by “unsettling the settler within” (Regan qtd. in Angel 13). This includes the settler’s recognition of their involvement in causing the trauma. After viewing the “Speaking to Memory” exhibit, I wondered how visual mediums, like the images of St. Michael’s, could serve to unsettle viewers, and thus open them up to receiving testimonies in a more effective way.

They command attention. Unlike small text on a page, these images visually confront observers; as they walk into the gallery, viewers not only see these life-size images, but are taken in to them, and the space of St. Michael’s. In the small enclosure featuring the bread mixer, this visual and spatial transportation is most evident. Here, observers can literally step inside the physical space of testifiers as they read survivors’ stories about this mixer on the wall. There is something disturbing about tangible evidence and in this small space, the mixer’s presence, and all of its connotations, cannot be ignored.

Our class discussion on Tuesday touched on how testimony is received differently in varying contexts. How reading a history of Indian Residential Schools at home in one’s pajamas is a vastly different experience from walking through a gallery exhibit of survivor testimony, in MOA, at UBC. I think the use of visual and physical materials in “Speaking To Memory” effectively unsettled viewers as we were taken out of our familiar, comfortable classrooms and placed in the classrooms of St. Michael’s. As students, we were confronted by a school very different from our own. And it is anything but comfortable. For those of us who come from backgrounds of privilege, such images may have made us uncomfortable with our pasts and even our present – we attend class on unceded Musqueam territory everyday. Even if this unsettling only lasts for a moment, a brief glance through a survivor’s eyes, it is enough to cross that divide between speaker and witness.

While I do not mean to trivialize the trauma experienced by those who attended residential schools, the phrase “To walk a mile in someone else’s shoes” comes to mind. It is often said that to best understand someone else, one must see from their perspective. This attempted understanding is crucial in the production and reception of testimony. Whitlock asserts that in order for testimony to be successfully received, and hopefully acted on, it must generate “the affective response of witnesses who will respond empathetically and intersubjectively” (80). Through visual mediums, observers can glimpse through a survivor’s/artist’s/speaker’s perspective, thus opening the possibility for a productive dialogue. Overall, I found the multi-media format of “Speaking To Memory” particularly effective in presenting new ways of seeing/hearing/witnessing and understanding survivor testimony.

Maggie de Vries’ Missing Sarah is a sensitively realized auto/biographical account of her sister’s life that traces both of their narratives from a shared childhood in West Point Grey to Sarah’s experience of the downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Maggie’s work is a memoir, a series of stories embedded in text, which serve to commemorate Sarah’s life narrative, at once humanizing and criticizing. Maggie states her motivations for writing Missing Sarah in her Prologue:

“I am writing this book to make it real for myself, to gather all that has passed in the last four years and pin it to the page. I am getting to know Sarah better now that she is dead than I did when she was alive” (xv).

Here, we can see some exigencies for Maggie to write out Sarah’s story – catharsis and a desire to get to know Sarah, even after her death. I see Missing Sarah as Maggie’s written recreation of the past, a textual memory. While this format serves to educate readers of Sarah’s life, especially her life before her experiences in the DTES, a narrative rarely told, it still remains on the page, unable to transcend the physical boundaries of text. Readers must invite themselves into Maggie and Sarah’s story.

In contrast, the Women’s Memorial March that occurred today can be seen as a type of living memory that is publicly seen and heard, able to present a human face in remembrance of missing ones. In an article from the Georgia Straight, Maggie de Vries elaborates on the importance of the March for remembering and what it may have meant for those who were lost (and families who have experienced loss):

“A lot of them didn’t think they’d be remembered… I don’t think any of them thought they would be remembered at all.”

Maggie’s statement highlights the absolute need to continue actively remembering, and living through memory, as many of the missing women were not/are not seen in society’s eyes as worthy of such remembrance. Marlene George, an organizer of the March states, “we’re speaking for the women that cannot speak, that are missing and murdered, the ones that have no voice now.” Through the physical act of marching, these women participate in an act of living memory, visibly showing their continuing search for answers. On the March, as was mentioned in class, participants leave roses, medicine and say prayers at the various locations each missing woman was last seen. Through this process, memory is kept alive, as is the momentum and motivation to keep pursuing, pushing for and demanding answers. And change. Both Maggie’s Missing Sarah and the March participate in this crucial process and form a living, breathing space to remember and ask.

In Diamond Grill, Fred Wah explores two seemingly opposing themes: fragmentation and connection. In his illustration of what Julie McGonegal terms the “racially mixed subject” (n.p.), Wah depicts himself and his family as fragmented individuals, “chipped up into quarters and thirds and eighths” (84). Simultaneously, Wah engages with the hyphen as a space of connection, linkage, and travel between cultural, linguistic and genetic divides.

I have been intrigued by the hyphen for some time. As part of my name, it is something I engage with on a daily basis. Like Wah, I have mixed ‘racial origins,’ if that’s what we’re calling them these days. My mother is half-English, half-Irish and my father is ‘pure’ Chinese. Therefore, I = 25% English, 25% Irish and 50% Chinese. And yet, the story becomes more complicated. While my mother hails from Toronto, my father was born and grew up in Trinidad. When he speaks to his parents over the phone, I marvel at the Trinidadian-Chinese accent that unfolds from his mouth, seemingly out of nowhere. My mom said that when my father came to Canada for university, he learned to hide it well. He speaks good Canadian now. Needless to say, I have some experience living on the hyphen. If only you could see the family reunions.

In his afterword, Wah highlights the negative aspect of hyphenated identities, calling the hyphen “a real problem for multiculturalism; it’s usually a sign of impurity and it’s frequently erased as a reminder that the parts, in this case, are not equal to the whole” (178). He draws on the colonial language of “dilution” (125) to illustrate the historical (and presently experienced) racism that racially mixed individuals endure. The following passage exemplifies Wah’s use of this language:

“Better watch out for the craw, better watch out for the goat. That’s the mix, the breed, the half-breed, metis, quarter-breed, trace-of-a-breed true demi-semi-ethnic polluted rootless living technicolour snarl to complicate the underbelly Panavision of racism and bigotry across this country” (53).

While in some passages Wah resists the hyphen as an oppressive tool that segregates, he also explores it as a space of negotiation, the in-between. His use of the door as the hyphen, separating the kitchen (“The Orient”) from the café (“The Occident”), is a tenuous, fluid boundary between his cultural/linguistic/ethnic identities.

Curious about the uses of the hyphen, its limits and possibilities, I searched some of the additional references Wah gives at the end of Diamond Grill. Julie McGonegal, in “Hyphenating the Hybrid ‘I’: (Re)Visions of Racial Mixedness in Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill,” discusses Wah’s use of the hyphen as “a powerful paradigm of liberation” (n.p.). This hyphen operates in contrast to the concept of ‘hybridity,’ which is steeped in colonial connotation. Wah’s hyphen

“let[‘s] us know know that racially mixed people aren’t forever trapped in an unending psychic cycle of perplexity and uncertainty, but that they are often engaged in the counter hegemonic activity of transgressing boundaries between races, cultures, and languages and of transforming different practices and meanings in the process of translating them” (n.p.).

In this hyphen, Wah can resist the fragmentation inherent in his ethnic origins. Here, he can traverse the boundaries between his “Orient” and “Occident,” perhaps finding not a comfortable, but flexible space to exist between the two. In her conclusion, McGonegal explores the hyphenation as a way to connect communities, and for racially mixed subjects, a way to bridge separated communities. These “small connecting links” may allow those who exist in the in-between to feel whole, not fragmented; connected, not alone (OED definition of “hyphens” qtd. in McGonegal).

For me, there are some hyphens that I do and don’t like. I despise the term ‘Asian-Canadian.’ I think it’s racist and serves to segregate Canadians who are marked as different by physical features – who therefore require hyphenation. If we’re going by these standards, why isn’t the term English-Canadian thrown around too? However, I do like my last name. I see it as an acknowledgement not only of my mother’s feminism but as a visual marker of my uniquely combined heritages. When others see my name, they cannot reduce me to one racial category; it refuses exclusion and essentialization.

– Anna Butler (hyphen) Koo