Black Stories

The craft of stortytelling is an art which can be traced back to the earliest humans. Telling stories can inspire change or unity, it can provide a sense of humor or severity, tell tales of struggle or triumph or protest, or simply provide entertainment. All stories have a purpose, whether that is to inspire or entertain. "Storytelling" by Wanda Franklin and Joanne Dowdy analyzes the nature behind telling stories, emphasizing that "the purpose of a story is to describe how people make sense of the events of their lives, experiences, and actions," and stating that "every story that we tell or hear has a purpose and helps keep our lives knitted together" (122). 

 

While reading this passage I became aware of how many instances I have heard or told a story, I noticed the meanings behind the stories I heard and told, and I realized how often we as humans tell stories and how they impact and change opinions, views, and lives. As a child your parents tell you stories, to put you to sleep, to teach you a lesson, to entertain you, and these stories effectively generate a change in most cases.

-Think of the nursery rhyme "The Three Little Pigs", besides a suspensful story, to a child it teaches them to obey. What other nursery rhymes can you think of  and what lessons do they convey?
-Consider how much time you spend a day telling or hearing stories. How much of your life is spent in storytelling?

I also found interest in the way the authors analyzed how most stories past down (black stories in most cases) placed black women. "Women were ususally given supporting roles that included religion and were usually treated with respect" (129). This is interesting because although women were treated with "respect" in the art of storytelling the actual craft itself could be seen as "male dominance" because in Africa only storytellers were men.

                             

The main focus of  "Storytelling" is about the ways tellling stories impacts our lives as people and as black women, it especially focuses on how it is embedded in black people as a part of our culture and how it is used in life. "To acknowledge that stories and storytellers are ways of keeping African culture alive is a step toward better appreciation of the way that Black women are empowered by the form and content of stories" (134).