Stories We Tell is described as a cine-memoir of Sarah Polley’s family life. The funny thing about this memoir is that one can never pinpoint whose story is really being told and who to focus on, because of the interwoven narratives in the film. In today’s class discussion, someone brought to attention something that Harry Gulkin mentioned in the film, which ran along the lines of: “There is one event, and different versions of remembering it and different ways of telling it. It doesn’t mean that there are different truths. Just different versions of one truth.” Sarah started this project mainly as a way to try and explore what memory is and how it can be expressed. I feel like Harry Gulkin’s words answer Sarah’s questions—that memory and truth are subjective and fragmented.

In an interview with the Guardian, Polley talks about how “her film reveals that everyone has a subtly different story to tell. Memory is not a convenient barn in which truth can be stored through successive winters. It is permeable, unreliable and personal. And it is complicated because, in a family, as Polley points out, everyone is “committed” to their own version of the truth.” I start to think about how apt the film (and the way it was shot and the way it was so layered with different narratives) is as a reflection of the kind of elusiveness and fragmentation of memory.

The film is a combination of different voices—siblings, lovers, husband and friends and they all have different versions, based on what they remember, about Diane Polley, and about the situations that were happening at that time. Though everyone remembers Diane in a similar way–warm, energetic and effusive, there are still parts of her that other people interpreted differently based on their moments with her. (i.e. One of the interviewers felt like she was secretive). After those fragments are filmed, Sarah chooses which to use and curates them almost into a montage for the film. Aside from the fact that there are different people who speak throughout the film, the editing of the film itself is also quite fragmented. There were real and faux super-8 reels, there were interviews, recordings of Michael reading the script, and recreations of past scenes by actors. It’s hard to pinpoint whose memory is the “real” truth and whose is a blurred version. Ultimately, everyone has their own version to tell, which really echoes with what memory is.

As I’m thinking of it now, I do believe that the film itself is quite fragmented and thus, shares the quality of fragmentation that memory has. In that regard, it’s quite the perfect fit in terms of choice of media to represent this experiment on defining memory.

In our last class, we did some close textual reading on Dany Laferriere’s The World is Moving Around Me, a story of one journalist’s perspective about the Haitian earthquake in 2010.

In one passage we read, I noticed the tone of surprise conveyed through the diction of discovery that Laferriere uses, with regards to the Haitian people. He says that we “discovered a proud, yet modest people”, amidst the rubble and clouds of dust. He mentions their resilience and their ability to “stand up to misfortune” (27). By using the word “discovered”, which means to find something unexpectedly, the text ends up conveying a tone of surprise at having found out the kind of resilience the Haitians show. We, the readers get a sense that their reaction to the calamity was something that surprised him and many other people who were watching from around the world. Why is that?

As someone who was born and lived in the Philippines for 18 years, this kind of resilience is something I’ve seen in my own country, especially last year, when Typhoon Haiyan devastated the many lives of the Filipinos. Through it all, the Filipinos were still resilient. They had attitudes that could not be blown away by the storm, and I was, and am still amazed by their ability to cope with something that catastrophic. It got me asking myself: What kind of narratives do I have in mind that have led me to be so surprised to “discover” that they are indeed a strong people?

Is it the way media shows these places as weak, third world countries that need our help? Have these narratives been so ingrained in us that we can’t see these people as anything else than that single story of weakness and charity we have been told?

In this TED talk, Chimamanda Adichie talks about the danger of a single story through a story about their houseboy named Fide, who was described by her mother only as “poor”. She grew up characterizing him only in that category. So much so, that when they visited Fide’s home and saw the beautiful basket his brother had made, she was shocked: “It had not occurred to me that anybody in their family could make anything. All that I knew was that they were poor. It had become impossible for me to see them as anything but poor. Their poverty became my single story of them.”

Though my aim here is not to boil this feat of resilience down to something so simplistic, I think that a reason why we don’t expect too much from both these countries: Haiti and Philippines is because of the story of them as third world countries that we are familiar with. It is why when we witness their strength and resilience as a strong nation, a strong people, we are amazed, stunned and just in wonder at having “discovered” that they are more that what we were led to believe.

As readers and as global citizens, we have the responsibility to test the narratives that we are being fed, there is an exigence to go out and educate ourselves so that our behaviour can better reflect that depth of knowledge and the respect that different cultures, religions, genders warrant.

What kind of narratives have you grown up with and how can you challenge those? What will happen when we do?