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. 

Stops Along the Way

by Paula Davidoff

In a castle by the sea, there lived an old lord who had no wife or children living, only one granddaughter whose face he had sworn he would never look at for as long as he lived because on the day she was born, his favorite daughter had died.

Illustration by John D. Batten

That is the beginning of Tattercoats, a persecuted heroine-type tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in More English Fairytales. I love to use this story when I’m teaching because that first sentence implies three generations of family history and, therefore, leads to many questions. When did the Old Lord’s wife die? How many children did she leave behind? What happened to those who weren’t the father’s favorite? Who was the granddaughter’s father? Was he the husband of the favorite? If so, why isn’t he mentioned; if not, what is the story of the child’s conception?

The list of questions becomes longer as the story goes on to introduce an “Old Nurse” (Did she also nurse the Old Lord’s children? What happened to her children?), a gooseboy who plays a magic flute (Is he really a boy or does that title simply establish his role as a servant? If he is a man, could he be the father of the heroine? a child of the Old Nurse?), and geese who, eventually, turn into page boys (Were they always enchanted boys? Or, in their boy form, are they enchanted geese? In either case, who is responsible for the enchantment?).

Everyone with whom I discuss this story, from fourth graders to people old enough to be the great-grandparents of fourth graders, talks about the hidden stories they infer from the text as if they were talking about real people, people they know and care about. And, of course, on some level they are, because the characters in folktales represent us and the people in our lives, and serious conversation about these characters helps us understand ourselves and guide our behavior.

In the story, when the Old Lord learns of his favorite daughter’s death, presumably, from childbirth,

He vowed never to set eyes upon his granddaughter for as long as he lived. Then he sat down in a chair by a window overlooking the sea and began to cry great tears for the daughter he had lost. He sat there crying for so long that his tears wore through the stone window sill and ran down in a little channel to the sea, and his hair and beard grew long, into his lap and over his knees, until it wrapped around the rungs of the chair and grew into the chinks in the floor.

It was this description of grief that made me decide to learn to tell Tattercoats. The old man’s anger and despair wrung my heart, and the fanciful description of his hair and his tears, metaphors for his emotions, bound me to the tale as firmly as the grieving father was bound to his chair.

Long ago I learned that there are moments in every story that cause some listener to think, Wait, what just happened? That makes no sense. These moments are usually not the ones that we think of as demanding suspension of disbelief; they are not about flying carpets or talking animals or singing bones. They are about the listener and they are the story’s way of saying, Yes, look here; here there is something for you.

One of the first times I recognized this phenomenon was early in my storytelling career when, during a workshop for teenage mothers, we were discussing the Grimm tale, Fitcher’s Bird. The women had listened closely, punctuating the telling with gestures and remarks: shakes of the head, groans when the first sister decides to peek into the forbidden chamber, gasps at her fate, and so on. By the end of the story, dead girls had been brought back to life, the heroine had evaded capture by dressing herself in honey and feathers, and the sorcerer had unwittingly carried his captives back to their home in a basket on his back, but the first question I got from my audience was,

Wait a minute. I don’t get it. Didn’t that room full of dead bodies stink?

The question floored me. I didn’t articulate the first thought that came to mind: This is a story, not a scientific treatise. In fact, I didn’t offer any answer. Instead, I fell back on that old teacher trick for gaining time to think and asked, Anyone have an idea about that? Answers varied from It’s just a story, to The chamber was magic, to Maybe the room was refrigerated or the door was airtight, while I wondered, Why did that detail break this woman’s suspension of disbelief?

I didn’t get an answer, although, in the weeks that followed, as I got to know the women, I was able to speculate on possibilities that helped lead me to the conviction I stated above, namely that when something in a story breaks one’s ability to stay in the tale, it’s the story’s way of saying, You need to look closely at this moment.

When I first read Tattercoats, I recognized the Old Lord’s reaction to the latest chapter of his family tragedy, but I think that what stopped me at that moment was the, as yet unconscious, realization that the image held a lesson I needed to learn. At the time, my own family happiness and security was being challenged by events out of our control, and there were many days that I wavered between anger at the fates who had visited us with misfortune and despair at my inability to change the course of events. As I worked in the story, telling and retelling, writing and thinking about its characters, visualizing places and events, my feelings shifted. The change was subtle and influenced by life events that had nothing to do with my story work, but I think that the story was also there, beneath the surface, working its spell.

Years later, when I revisited Tattercoats, it surprised me. The moment that had originally captured my attention no longer seemed central. This time it was the heroine’s story. My focus was on her ability to find her way aided only by the joy she found in the gooseboy’s music. And that’s how story works. The answers are there, but they shift with time and changing circumstance. We often don’t hear them if we don’t need them, sailing through a tale from Once upon a time to happily ever after without a pause. It’s when we stumble that we need to stop and examine the path.

Paula Davidoff