I grew up in a small, predominantly white town in Texas called Flower Mound. Yes, that’s real the name of the town. There’s actually a mound of flowers that supposedly inspired the name that’s gated off with a giant plaque in front of it commemorating the mound’s greatness. So that should paint a pretty clear picture my life was growing up.
The same kids I went to elementary school with were the ones who followed me to high school, and a few even to college. I read books with characters who looked like me and led typical, suburban lives; Junie B. Jones, The Bailey School Kids, Judy Bloom books. They all featured young, white kids going to first or second grade exactly like me.
It was only when I grew older and started reading books with other perspectives that changed my entire view of the world. In middle school, I read The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Of course I knew what slavery was, but reading Douglass’s account of the horrors, and documenting tales from not only his life, but other slaves, led me to realize that reading other people’s stories allows us to grow.
And we can’t read these stories if nobody tells them.
In Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie’s TED Talk, she expresses the dangers of telling a single story.
Many times, cultures, groups of people, and world events are subject to false stereotypes. The media controls the narrative, so people often don’t have the opportunity to gain more than one perspective.
This is why we need to tell people’s stories.
In a six-part feature entitled Enrique’s Journey, Sonia Nazario tells the story of a young boy who risks his life to travel from Hondurus to find his mother in the U.S. The reader hears a story of a scared, determined child who endures countless trials to reach his working mother. This contradicts multiple news stories which feature illegal immigrants as drug dealers and rapists who cross the border solely to cause destruction.
This is why we need to tell people’s stories.
In her feature piece, An Innocent Man, Pamela Colloff dives into the heart-wrenching story of a man falsely accused of murder and sentenced behind bars, who is kept from his son for thirty years. The story follows the shortcomings of the criminal justice system, and the struggle for a family to reconnect after years apart. It reminds the reader that these were real people, not just a headline in the news.
This is why we need to tell people’s stories.
Telling this diverse stories helps connect people who, without the art of storytelling, may not find a way to connect or coexist.
Katie Kelton 