Everyone likes a good story. They captivate us. They inform us. They inspire us.
Lately in my ASTU class, we’ve been discussing lots of stories. In this blog post, I want to delve deeper and examine the difference between telling your own, personal story, and telling someone else’s. Furthermore, I’d like to try to respond to this question: To what extent are our stories ours?
ME
One story we looked at in my ASTU class is Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. It is clear from the beginning of Persepolis that Satrapi is telling her story. She shows the reader throughout this graphic narrative her experience growing up in Iran during the 1979 revolution and what followed suite. However, to give the reader a better understanding of young Satrapi’s experience, she gives the reader other citizens’ experiences and Iran’s history. By providing this outside information, and context, Satrapi goes beyond her story. It’s necessary, though, for the continuity and accurate expression of her story. This begs the question: Is it possible to tell one’s own story without referring to outside context and others’ experiences?
In my opinion, no. It’s essential that outside information be given. This brings to mind a documentary directed by Sarah Polley Stories We Tell. In this film, Polley traces her late mother’s past through the use of interviews, storytelling, photographs, emails, and staged scenes. Polley uses her mother’s experiences to tell her own story, Polley’s story. Polley wouldn’t have been able to tell her story without bringing in other people and context.
In fact, none of us can tell our stories without other people. Other people’s experiences are so entangled in our own that we can’t detach ourselves from them. Unless, maybe, you live alone in the middle of nowhere with no human contact.
My own story is mine. It is unique to me. However, my story would not have been possible without other people’s stories intersecting mine. These intersections are what made my story mine.
SOMEONE ELSE
We all tell stories, whether sharing our own or the stories of other people. What happens when we tell someone else’s story?
One interesting example to look at is Anne Frank’s story in Diary of a Young Girl. For those unfamiliar with this memoir, it is a diary that was written by Anne Frank while her Jewish family was in hiding during the Second World War in the Netherlands. Anne Frank died in a concentration camp in 1945 and her dad, Otto Frank, was the only one in their family that survived. After the war, it was Otto Frank that shared Anne’s story with the world. Throughout the diary, we hear Anne’s voice, as that is the nature of personal diaries. We, the readers, are led to believe that it is Anne telling the story. It is Anne but…. It also isn’t Anne. Does the impact of her story change when we find out that Anne never chose to share it?
Perhaps the narrative seems more real, more raw, more sincere because it was essentially Anne’s “un-edited” thoughts. Or, perhaps not. Perhaps we feel that since Anne was never alive for the distribution of it, her story can be (and was?) changed and even unintentionally falsified. Diary of a Young Girl has actually been edited. In some (most) editions, Anne’s innermost thoughts around sexuality are cut-out. In one particular Dutch edition in 1947, Otto Frank co-authors it and this results in a very edited edition. Despite Otto being her father and sharing many experiences with Anne, his perspective and release of her story is not her story. If Anne had survived the war, her story might have never been told or if it had, it would have been shared and expressed quite differently.
There is value in sharing other people’s stories. It sometimes, as was the case with Anne Frank’s, allows us to share stories that the world needs to hear that would otherwise have stayed unshared.
We also tell stories of large groups of individuals. When a storyteller represents a large group of people, it can be powerful.
One narrative my ASTU class learned about was I, Rigoberta Menchú. In this narrative, Rigoberta Menchú explores the oppression of Indigenous people in Guatemala through her own experiences. Menchú makes it clear from the beginning that “it’s not only [her] life, it’s also the testimony of [her] people.” (Menchú 1) Is it a dangerous statement for Menchú to claim that her story is her people’s story? Well, yes and no.
On one hand, Menchú can’t guarantee that every individual felt the same way about experiences as she did. From reading Menchú’s story, many assumptions can be made of how the rest of Indigenous people lived. These assumptions might be false.
On the other hand, Menchú does not say that everyone had the same experience as her. She describes it as a testimony. This use of the word “testimony” implies that she is making their case, and she is defending and speaking their voices.
By telling her story, Menchú becomes the storyteller her people needs. She shares it to the world and the world responds. More people know about the oppression of Indigenous people in Latin America because of Rigoberta Menchú sharing their story. My ASTU class reading excerpts from her narrative and discussing them is proof of that.
Conclusion
My story is my story. Your story is your story. Our story is our story.
Stories need to be told, no matter who tells them. The impact stories like Persepolis, I, Rigoberta Menchú, and Diary of a Young Girl had on the world was and still is, extensive. Stories like Sarah Polley’s help us see the formation of a story, and give us a better understanding of what a story is.
Sure, stories might change depending on who’s telling them. Sure, different storytellers might not always portray a story as accurately as the subject of the story might.
And that’s okay.
The world needs to hear them.
Go out there and tell a story!
Works Cited
- Menchú, Rigoberta. I, Rigoberta Menchú. Verso Books. 1983.
