One of my favorite stories is ‘I’m Tipingee’ from her
collection, The Magic Orange Tree.(
You can hear this story on the SAI YouTube Channel ) It is a story of community, among
other things, and it has brought community to me through the telling of it.
‘Tipingee’ became a favorite of an elementary school in Glen
Rock, New Jersey. For 12 years I told stories in this K-5 school. I taught
students and teachers how to tell stories. The school year of stories
culminated with a school wide storytelling festival. Everyone, students and
teachers, told stories for an afternoon. Before splitting up into small mixed
age groups, the school population would gather to start the afternoon with an
annual telling of Tipingee. Everyone
knew the story; everyone chanted and sang as one. Imagine 350 kids and teachers
listening so quietly and then bursting into “I’m Tipingee. She’s Tipingee.
We’re Tipingee, too.” We all delighted in the experience together. Diane writes
of this extraordinary community in the introduction to the 20th
anniversary edition of The Magic Orange
Tree.Professionally Tipingee has broadened my community as well. I tell ‘Tipingee’ in tandem with other tellers. With Elizabeth Nordell (SAI) I tell an English/Creole version. With Julie Pasqual (SAI) I tell an English/Sign Language version. In this way we spread the story to others.
‘I’m Tipingee’ will always have a special place in my heart.
I thank Diane for bringing it to our storytelling community that we may pass it
on.
--Julie Della Torre
_______________________
Diane Wolkstein grew up one town over from where I live, so
when I first started appearing in local storytelling events, audience members
often asked if I knew her. I didn't at first, but when the opportunity
availed itself to take a series of workshops with her I signed up. I
trekked in and out of a bitterly cold New York City to her apartment on Patchin
Place in Greenwich Village. There I was warmed by the stories shared and
by her welcoming smile. Her collection of Haitian stories, The
Magic Orange Tree, is a legacy Diane Wolkstein gifted not only to the
storytelling community, but story lovers everywhere.
--Ellen Musikant
_____________________
There is a photo somewhere in my parents’ house of me, as
a little girl, climbing on the statue of Hans Christian Anderson in Central
Park. One of the many advantages of growing up in NYC is that Central
Park, and all of its marvels, were available to me anytime I wanted. I
did not attend any of Diane's storytelling there, but years later, when I heard
about it, I could imagine my younger self, sitting listening to her, with the
background of that beloved statue. And, the year she asked if I - me,
Julie Pasqual - would actually tell a story there, well, my heart about burst
in pride. It was an "I made it moment," just the fact that she
knew my name floored me, but that she also thought that I was good enough to
stand before that statue and tell to audiences that had cut their storytelling
teeth on her, and Laura Simms, and other great and wondrous tellers, well - I
was stunned. It was another couple of years before I felt like Diane and
I really talked, and that was about one of her passions - the people of
Haiti, I had recently returned from working with a community there, and I could
see the love she bore the brilliant, joyful residents of that troubled region.
We sat on a subway one day - I literally almost running into her, and
swapped stories of the many smiles, and bright eyes we had seen on our visits.
Though she hadn't been in years, Haiti - as Haiti does - had not left her
soul. Some people just tell stories, some just write them, some just
collect them. But, Diane did this and more - she lived them with a full-hearted
passion that set the bar high for all of us that have come after her, because
of her. If I ever get to stand before that statue and tell stories again,
I hope her light will feel my soul, and guide my telling.
--Julie Pasqual
____________________
When I was first starting out as a storyteller, I found in
the library a copy of Diane’s The Red
Lion. The tale is from Persia, and recounts a prince’s journey to face his
greatest fear, which he must do to succeed his father on the kingdom’s throne.
The prince runs away several times before summoning the courage to meet the red
lion. And, of course, he is triumphant – but in a surprising way. I always
enjoy telling this hero’s journey tale, especially to those on the cusp of
adolescence preparing to face their own red lions. It has helped me face red
lions of my own. I never had the pleasure of hearing Diane tell this story
and I wish I had. The times I did hear her tell I could sense the passion she
felt for storytelling and her intense desire to share it. She will be missed.
--Maria LoBiondo
_____________________
I was in Diane’s
physical presence only 5 or 6 times, yet her work has had a deep influence on
me as a storyteller. She was a model of
grace and power in her telling and a model of dedication and scholarship. As have other SAI tellers, I’ve found
stories from The Magic Orange Tree
especially compelling. My favorites are
“The Name” and “One, My Darling, Come to
Mama.” The first for its sauciness and
the second for much more.
“One, My Darling”
has sparked profound conversations among students. How is it, many wonder, that Philamandre, despised and neglected by
her mother as a child, does not hesitate to lovingly care for her mother when
the woman appears years later.
Although I rarely
tell this powerful story to young children, I did tell it for a second grade
class I had grown to know well. At the
close of the story, a hand shot up.
“Why,” demanded the
boy, “is she so kind to her mother when her mother was mean to her?”
Before I could
respond, another hand flew up. It was
Allora. “I know.”
“Tell us,” I
said. Allora stood to explain.
“Philamandre was
kind to her mother because she did not want to be like her mother.”
Students have also
responded deeply to “White Wave,” a Chinese folktale that Diane published with
beautiful illustrations by Ed Young. I
tell the story in my own words, but frame it by telling the children how Diane
found the story and include, as well, the way she ends the story:
Many years
pass. Finally nothing remains of the
young man, the shrine he built for a goddess and the moon shell in which she
once lived.
Nothing remains
except the story. That is how it is with
all of us; eventually what remains of our lives are our stories.
--Luray Gross
___________________
My story has something in common
with the experience Julie Della Torre recalls. It includes a tale from Diana’s The Magic Orange Tree and there is
community singing, too. However, the community in my story is one that feels
far away from a Glen Rock elementary school.
Almost fifteen years ago, I began
telling stories in the Morris County Youth Detention Center. When I introduced
myself to my first audience of about twenty teenage boys, they scoffed at the
idea that I had anything to offer them, but as any storyteller would expect,
most of them changed their minds somewhere during the first five minutes of the
first story. After that, I taught storytelling workshops at the detention
center every week and, although residents came and went, there remained a
consensus that Storytelling was, ‘okay.’ That is, it was okay to listen to,
discuss and, sometimes, retell stories, but most kids drew the line at active
participation as tellers or listeners.
One day, maybe five months into
the program, I invited my friend and colleague, Mary Rachel Platt, to be a
guest artist at the facility. The boys who were in residence that day had been
there for a long time and most of them were frustrated and worried. They walked
into the classroom and slumped into their seats, each one wearing the sullen
expression that only teenagers can achieve. Mary began her telling with “Cric,
Crac,” the ritual we all learned from Diana to introduce a Haitian story. Her
friendly ‘cric’ was greeting with a rolling of eyes, so she just started the
tale of Tayzanne, a magical fish.
There is a song that recurs
throughout this story. Its words are simple, but the melody is haunting. By the
first time Mary sang it, the boys were engaged in the story. When the song was
repeated for a second time, I thought I heard it softly echoed by someone else
in the room. I truly didn’t believe my ears, but at the third repetition, the
echoing voice was stronger. More voices joined in until, when Mary finished the
story by singing the refrain one last time, she was just one voice in a choir
made up of every boy in the room.
Tayzanne is not a happy story, but
it was the story those boys needed that day, a tale to take them away from
their own worries, if only for the time it took Mary to tell it. There is a lot
of Diana in this memory. She truly understood the power of story to describe
and mold cultures, preserve rituals, and change lives. From her I learned to
forget myself, the teller, and trust the story to catch and hold its listeners.
--Paula Davidoff
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