NEW
Library Project
Volume 1, Number 3 - Winter 2003
Using Stories to
Bridge Boundaries
by Patricia Andres
People
and Stories - Gente y Cuentos is a program without walls. Working along
the lines of Zora Neale Hurston's insight, "You gotta go there to
know there" (Their Eyes Were Watching God), coordinators meet people
where they're at, in shelters, rehabs, prisons, or learning centers.
This movement outside the walls of traditional academic space fosters our
intention to loosen the restrictions of usual classroom talk. Along with
bell hooks, we encourage learners to enter critical thought
"whole" and not as "disembodied spirit" since
responses might then be more "wholehearted." (Teaching to
Transgress). Yet our aim to expand the boundaries of how literary study
proceeds and what it includes may bring us up against some less visible
boundaries that would block contact with the text or connection with
others in the group. What do we do when a story brings forth a
participant's visceral emotion, raw anger? What kind of dynamic chips away
at internal walls without denying that they exist?
I remember a challenging session at a women's residence in Trenton when we
read Chinua Achebe's "Marriage Is a Private Affair." This story
traces tribal alliances and how they impact a Nigerian family when a young
man seeks to marry outside the tribe, going against a core belief of his
father's life. One participant, Beverly, related the theme of
ethnic/racial allegiance to patterns of gentrification she'd seen emerging
in her neighborhood. She pointed at me and at the visitor who had come
with me, saying in loud, angry tones, "You're taking over our
neighborhoods." Emotions within me began to rail against the
"negative" energy. I was stunned and also worried since I
wanted to impress the visitor, a prospective People and Stories board
member. Slowly I began to reflect internally: "We're here to nurture
confidence, encourage empowerment, promote growth. The foundation is an
atmosphere of trust. How do I respond? Doesn't the story represent the
pain of divisive separation?"
While I was mentally racing through the story to find the place within it
that would move the discussion forward without eliding the space Beverly
was in, members of the group began gently to do just that, pointing out
that it wasn't me or my companion who were trying to displace her, but
that the story provided a way to examine resentments that divide. We
looked at how the father's prejudices were worn away by the patient
responses of his daughter-in-law, the "outsider" he forbade his
son to marry years earlier. We talked about race and about class, about
what puts us at odds with one another, with ourselves. We shared stories
of being alienated by conventions, even within our own families. We turned
to the story's close, "Very soon it began to rain, the first
rain in the year. It came down in large sharp drops and was accompanied by
the lightning and thunder which mark a change of season." We talked
about how the imagery signaled a change of heart, which like moistened
earth, softened, expanded, as genuine connection seeped through hard and
fast opinions. Without erasing or repressing anger we worked through an
emotional response using the story as a frame. The story had become a
bridge across difference, one that brought us together without glossing
over pain.
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