The Power of Stories: Weaving a Quilt
“Tell your story. People want to hear your story.” My friend, Al Baccari
Stories are the thread that weaves between generations: A mother’s tale, a father’s anecdote; a family’s saga. We each bear a story, guardians of our past. History reminds us that we are accountable now and later; it is in the looking back that we can plan forward. Each story is a thread, and the threads weave together to create the patchwork quilt blanketing our community, nurturing our young, asking them each to one day add their particular stitch to the story. The story-tellers, sages of the ages, the historians who protect our glorious and sometimes sorted pasts, live in each of us.
The Bible, arguably the first physical document, is a book of stories written down after hundreds of years of oral tradition. What was lost and what was gained over the many years those stories wandered the desert? We can only know what was recorded. Stories are what define us as people. New technologies have given us the ability to tell more stories in more ways. We use the phone, the TV, the campfire, small corners of coffee shops, and large boardrooms to convey our truth.There need not be formalities: just record and post. Tell your truth. Maybe it will be corroborated, and maybe it will be refuted. But the story of you is yours to tell.
Until recently, the stories of everyday people haven’t been a focus. With the advent of social media stories became easy to share and their value is immeasurable. Storytelling is now, once again, our oral tradition. Created for libraries, the StoryCorps app allows people to record their stories their way and upload directly to the Library of Congress for archiving. The story you tell can be relevant only to you, or to your community, but they are a contribution of our common past and therefore a document worth preserving.
Another impressive new storytelling method is the Danish Human Library: this program is often a face-to-face encounter between community members with the express purpose of learning from each other and breaking down the barriers that seemingly divide them. People from the same town but different backgrounds may sit and ask respectful questions of each other. They are experts on their own lives and their stories. Sooner than later, the principles that divide two people are hundreds of tiny commonalities. In telling our stories, we bridge the divide.
In a world where we are asked to continually distinguish ourselves, continually differentiate, and continually dig a deeper divide between “me,” “us,” and “them,” StoryCorp and the Human Library project prove it is easy to traverse over that division, forever canceling it out. I would argue that every library should have a space for story telling. It gives warmth to the lonely, it teaches the young and curious, it records and remembers. It bears witness to our personal truth. A small telephone booth could be the perfect place: pick up the receiver and record your tale, weaving it into the quilt of life.
American Library Association. (2018, Feb 10). Sharing People’s Stories. ALA.com. https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/blogs/the-scoop/sharing-peoples-stories/
Versaggi, C. (2021, July 30). On remembering Alessandro Baccari, jr.- ‘Mr. North Beach.’ The Bold Italic. https://thebolditalic.com/on-remembering-alessandro-baccari-jr-mr-north-beach-ba3058a5d2b7
Wentz, E. (2013, April 26). The human library: sharing the community with itself. Public Libraries Online. https://publiclibrariesonline.org/2013/04/human_librar/