Choosing Stories

By Julie Della Torre and Paula Davidoff

illustration by Arthur Rackham

The Oasis project we wrote about in our previous post was successful, in great part, because of the girls: their deep, active listening, their thoughtful discussion and their eagerness to write and share with each other. The staff was also a big part of the success of the project. They always participated, listening and contributing to the conversation. We believe the success of the project was also, in part, due to the stories we chose and the order we presented them. Choosing stories can be a tricky business. There are so many stories to choose from. What follows is a list of the stories we chose to tell the Oasis teen girls and the reasoning behind the choices. 

These girls had never heard a storyteller before, and we wanted to give them stories that would speak to the issues they might be working through. We decided to start with stories of being imprisoned in some way, locked up, not free. Our first stories were Rapunzel and Old Rinkrank, both Grimms.

The girls understood the prison metaphors in the stories and, right away, started talking about how they can be imprisoned in more ways than just physical. Some felt trapped in a body which didn’t please them. Others felt trapped by their family or trapped in the routine of school.

The poem, “Rapunzel Explains the Tower” by Gailey, opened even more discussion and thoughts were being bandied about as the girls eagerly started writing. We simply asked for reflection, maybe writing about ways they might feel trapped.

Here are some of the girls’ responses to our request:

One time I felt trapped was when I was at my family’s house for the first time and I didn’t know anyone there. Everyone was talking and I was lonely. 

Ican feel trapped sometimes buy only really at school since I can’t leave. I always have something to worry about, like if I did good on the test or if I have anything that’s due. I also have to worry about my grades and that really traps me since, if I don’t keep them up, my mom will take away my phone and will say no to any fun activities so that makes me feel even more trapped since my phone is how I escape. So school is kinda like a prison for me, but I know it’s for my own good.

Sometimes I feel trapped in my own mind. 

Rapunzel and Old Rinkrank were good stories but, in retrospect, we would rethink using a story that has been inspiration for a Disney movie. The girls had a hard time getting the movie out of their heads. The poem helped dispelled those visions and this was not a recurring issue.

As we transcribed their writing and began to plan for the next workshop, we noticed recurring themes. We decided to tell stories of being trapped emotionally or spiritually. We told Tayzanne (Wolkstein) and Tom Tit Tot (Jacobs). Great discussion of being trapped by parents’ expectations and prejudices followed.  After a poem, “Mirror Mirror” by Wendy A. Bartko, we invited the girls to write a mirror piece, maybe a dialogue between the girl they see and the girl they “long 2 B.” We didn’t get any dialogues, but “mirror” prompted revealing reflections.

“Let me become the person I long 2 b.” I really relate to this quote because I really don’t like my body right now. I’m a little overweight and I just want to be skinny because I want to be happy with my body... I also don’t let it get to me. But sometimes when I look in the mirror I don’t like what I see, and I want to improve. I feel that I would be more outgoing with a body I feel happy in...

Sometimes I look in the mirror and I don’t like who I see at all. Sometimes I’m so insecure about myself, I don’t want to be myself. 

Dear me, who are you when there’s no one around? Are you just a façade with multiple personalities to mask your true self, to hide the pain, to put up a wall, to see who’d tear it down. Strange to think that you are a different version in everyone’s head. Are you loud?

Are you reserved? Are you courageous or are you afraid? Let me become the person I’m meant to be. Sincerely, Your Soul.

We noticed that a lot of the writing was about self-image, perception of physical self, so we chose to tell Tatterhood (Norwegian), a story with an unconventional heroine who is confident in herself and whose confidence forces others to see beyond her unconventional appearance. We told the story in tandem and, though there was deep discussion, the girls were disappointed there was only one story. Again, we asked the girls to write a dialogue, script-like, and, although this time we provided them with a model of the form, the writing was still hard for them. 

In her “mirror” piece from the week before, Angel had introduced the idea of her free-spirited younger self confronting her insecure present self. 

I stand in front of the mirror looking at myself every morning, and I say “Why does my hair look so puffy? I wish it was straight…and why do my eyebrows look so bushy, and my face ugly? I continue to bring myself down saying every flaw that I could find in my body. And so suddenly I see a younger me, staring at me with tears down her eyes. 

And she said, “What else is wrong about me, Angel?” 

I stay quiet, looking at her. 

“You said my hair is too puffy, my eyebrows too bushy, my body has many flaws, so tell me, what else is wrong about me?” she continued. 

“Nothing is wrong with you. You look perfect just the way you are.” I tell her with a sad look in my eyes. 

“So I’m the same person, why not look at me the same way? I’m you but younger, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” I tell her. “But the world could be cruel and mess up the meaning of beauty. But let me tell you something; don’t doubt yourself, you’re beautiful in your ways and don’t let anyone change that opinion.” 

In our fourth workshop, we re-read Angel’s piece and built on this idea of two girls in dialogue, one younger than the other. We noticed the girls writing and talking about how when they were little they felt so confident and pretty and joyous. We chose two stories with strong, young heroines, Baba Yaga’s Black Geese (Russian) and Seven Ravens (Grimm) We asked them to think about how the heroine’s deeds when young would help her in her later years. This led to more dialogue writing of younger self to older self, and this time the girls seemed comfortable with the playwriting format.

The girls really took to remembering their younger selves. Being tellers of folk and fairy tales, we wanted to explore the possibility of having the girls write in a fairy-tale style. We both read many short stories, poems and novels based on fairy tales. This form allows personal stories to be framed in the metaphorical language of folklore. We told Molly Whuppie (Jacobs) and 12 Dancing Princesses(Grimm) to prompt this writing. We continued the discussion of how deeds performed when younger can influence later life. Here are a couple responses to our prompt:

Inspired by Twelve Dancing Princesses

(Many important things have happened in the span of 2 years.)

Princess

(to the lady) I have been through a lot and I only wish to find peace within myself and be genuinely happy.  What would you advise me to do in order to find happiness? 

Old Lady

Whatever it is that happened to you couldn’t have been that bad! 

Princess

Does that mean that you can’t advise me, huh?

Old Lady

That’s not what I said. Just share with me what has happened so I can help you.

Princess

Forget it!

(Goes home and writes for her future self.)

Princess

Hi, as you know things have happened… I only hope for you to be in a better place by now. I tried to help myself, but that didn’t work out. I tried to ask someone else for help and that didn’t work out, either. Maybe that was not enough, but hopefully you’ve got things figured out by now.

Inspired by Rapunzel / Old Rinkrank

There was a princess once. She was stuck in a tower where no one but her family could find her. She didn’t have long hair, she wasn’t taken away from her parents, and no prince could come to her rescue. She was stuck there because of the tower that her head made up. She was stuck within her own emotions, that she could not escape. It wasn’t her fault. Mental illness is not a choice, it just chooses its victims on its own.

She would lock herself in her room, crying herself to sleep… not being able to escape the voices inside her head or the figures that would appear in the room. Sometimes, she would tell herself, “it’s magic”, just to be less scared. But inside her mind that was crowded with demons, she knew it wasn’t. Something was wrong with her.

She would try to tell her mother something was wrong with her, but no one would listen. It was like she was invisible to everyone but the figures that seemed to follow her around.

“Who are you?” she would ask… sometimes… but they never answered back. They always just stared at her with sorrow and fear in their eyes.

For the first time in her life, she wanted to be alone. She wanted her mother to stop being the Queen and to just pay attention to her, to talk to her. But she was alone while having these monsters by her side. 

While she slept, they would come on to her bed with her, whispering in her ears how horrible her life was and point out all her flaws, driving her deeper into those feelings that kept her in that tower. 

At the end of the day, all she wanted to do was end all the pain and get rid of the demons once and for all. No one would care, anyways. 

But she didn’t. She kept fighting with the monsters until they were gone… until they no longer kept her inside the tower trapped. She was able to escape her emotion, all just because she didn’t give up. 

.

We ended this project telling The Magic Orange Tree (Wolkstein) and Persephone (Greek). We selected these stories for our last workshop because we wanted to leave the girls with metaphors for how our experiences can shape the course of our future. The stepmother in Orange Treecould symbolize any painful experience or obstacle in the girls’ lives. And Persephone’s endless, ongoing future was determined by the consumption of a few seeds.

At the end of this, our final, workshop, we asked the girls to write about their experience in the Storytelling program. We’ll post some of their responses next week. 

Discovering A Key

by Paula Davidoff and Julie Della Torre

The workshop was nearly over when we began to tell the last story. For almost two hours, fourteen teen girls had talked about the first folktale of the evening, shared and discussed writing from the previous week, and done some more writing. Now they had reassembled, back in the circle we created to begin every workshop, to listen to one more story, Seven Ravens, from the Grimm collection.

Julie, Paula. and the Oasis teen girls

The setting was Oasis, A Haven for Women and Children in Paterson, NJ. We met there with a group of girls, ages 14 to 18,  for six weeks in January and February. On Fridays from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. The last class on the last day of the school week. We met to talk and write about old stories – folk and fairy tales – and to learn how they relate to the stories of our lives. 

In fact, we believe that the stories we told them  arethe stories of their lives. Through metaphor and symbolic language, the old tales make concrete the abstract truths of human existence, and at the center of our work as teachers and storytellers is the core belief that hearing, writing about, and discussing folk and fairy tales help students understand and organize their responses to life experiences. 

On the first week, the girls were a little shy. They didn’t know what to expect and most of them hadn’t ever heard a professional storyteller. We formed our circle of chairs and asked everyone to tell her name and something about herself. We gave a quick description of our workshop plan and then we told stories. One of us told Rapunzel; the other told Old Rinkrank, both tales from the Brothers Grimm. The girls were mesmerized. They listened with great focus and, afterwards, were eager to discuss the stories. We followed the story discussion with a poem, Rapunzel Explains the Tower, by Jeanine Hall Gailey and asked the girls to write – about themselves, the stories, the poem, or whatever was on their mind.

 Some of the girls, like Lisa (we aren’t using the girls’ real names), used a line from the poem to begin. 

“So she came at me with scissors and turned me out into the world. It was blinding. In the desert, I heard her words, that no prince would be my rescue.” When I read this part, it reminds me of the time when my dad left. He told me he was going to Mexico 3 years ago and just like that he turned me out into the world. And it was definitely blinding.

Others, acknowledging the metaphor of Rapunzel’s tower and the glass mountain in Old Rinkrank, wrote about feeling trapped. Angel wrote:

I have a fairy tale story also, though this time it doesn’t have a happy ending. I’m like Rapunzel trapped in a tower. My wicked witch is the emotions I carry within, and this time there is no prince who is willing to end it all.

And Yvonne:

Sometimes I feel trapped in my own mind. As in with feelings. Like you’re not able to express yourself or how you feel because you’re scared on how people will treat you or you’re just scared in general. Sometimes you feel like you can’t show how yourself or express your point of view or opinion to someone cause you can’t know how they might take it.

Candace found her own truth:

First, I like to start off by saying I don’t want to compare myself to the characters or heroines. I just wanna be me. Besides, there is only one me in this world. Sometimes I stare at the wall wondering what life was like on the other side of it. I believe that we humans live by what we were told or what our brains think to do. Not me. Nooo way. I live by what I believe, no matter what.

As the weeks went by, the girls greeted us enthusiastically each day when we arrived. Their eagerness for stories and talk and sharing ideas electrified us. We began to think of those Friday afternoon workshops as the jewel that crowned our busy work-weeks. On the evening described at the opening of this piece, the girls listened intently to Seven Ravens, the story of a little girl who goes in search of her lost brothers. The boys had been turned into ravens on the day their little sister was born, and she felt, somehow, responsible for their fate. The girl travels impossible distances in her search. At last, she is set on the right direction and given a key to the glass mountain that has become her brothers’ prison. When she finally arrives at the mountain, however, she finds that the key has been lost, that she has made her long, hard journey to no avail. In a flash of insight, she realizes that her finger might be a substitute for the key but, to use it, she must cut it from her hand. She makes the sacrifice, the prison is opened, and her brothers are released from their curse. At the end of the story, all eight children return home together. 

The girls’ first words about the story were about the little girl’s sacrifice. 

“She actually cut off her finger?” they exclaimed, “Why?”

We reminded them that objects and events in fairy tales are often metaphorical and turned the question back to the group. The girls began to talk, some of them looking for meaning in the girl’s actions; others still puzzled by the idea. 

Until Angel said, “She was the key.” 

We gave a collective sigh of recognition and appreciation. Then it was six o’clock and time to pack up and go home. 

When we were back in the car, Julie said, “’She was the key’. Why have we never thought of that?” We shrugged and laughed, amazed and delighted that, at this late phase of our careers, we are still meeting students who provide us with a key to the stories we thought we knew by heart.