Why Tell Stories? Oasis Teen Girls Respond

by Julie Della Torre and Paula Davidoff

After eight weeks of telling stories to the teen girls at Oasis (though for some this was a second year of story listening), we were interested in their thoughts about storytelling. 

As a group, we read the poem, "Why We Tell Stories" by Liesel Mueller https://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/lisel-mueller/why-we-tell-stories/. 

Then we asked the girls to respond to the poem and to their own experiences with storytelling to answer the question, why do we tell stories?

Here are their responses:

Guadalupe's prose poem

Yadary: I think storytelling helps me escape reality. Reality can be so stressing and tiring. But when I hear stories, it makes me forget about it all. Hearing stories of women with powers or who are smarter gives me inspiration. It makes me think: if they can fool someone and escape before they get killed, then I can escape a test before it starts. I was just joking (my mom would kill me), but their intelligence inspires me and makes me believe that I could be like them. The men’s courage to climb up a glass castle while knowing their fate, it’s like riding your bike for the first time. You want to ride it – like wanting to reach the top of the glass mountain – to feel that feeling of accomplishment, but you know you’re going to scrape your knee once, twice, maybe even three times. But it’s all about taking a risk to get what you want. 

Claudia: Why do people tell stories? They listen to stories to imagine a world unlike their own. To escape a reality they will eventually have to return to. So that they can experience their dreams even if it’s only for a little while. Or maybe to go through drama that will make them feel a part of something bigger than themselves. People of all ages have all kinds of reasons to listen to stories, whether they know it or not. 

Yokary: I like to listen to stories or poems because when I listen to it, instead of reading it, it kind of makes me feel like relaxed or calmed, even though sometimes I get sleepy. When someone tells a story, they put like tone and show actions. I think it is more interesting because you actually put more attention to it, or even memorize it and like keep telling it. Also, so you can develop your imagination.

Erica: Why do people tell stories? Most people tell stories to get kids to sleep or to entertain children, but in my opinion, I think some people tell stories so that children, when they get older, will have a big imagination and that would possibly allow them to be more positive and they won’t grow up being negative a lot. 

Ajeyne: I think people like listening to stories because, while they’re listening, they feel like they’re in the story and enjoy the feeling. 

Guadalupe: Whey we listen to stories. We listen to stories to wish upon a star. To dream of the happy endings and to believe in the never-ending love. We listen to stories to get lost in our imaginations. To fantasize the unexpected. We listen to stories to make our own stories. When our lives are boring and black and white, we listen to stories. The best thing about listening to stories is that nobody can stop our minds from wandering abroad. 

Ava: We tell stories to pass down previous experiences we had, whether they were chaotic or mind-blowing. Also, stories are entertaining, and they are shared so our peers can share the same experience with us and live in the moment. I listen to stories because I want to hear what people go though in their daily lives, how they lived and ate. I listen to stories so I can be aware of what happened in that time frame and how they overcame it, whether it was funny or serous. Stories teach us life lessons and encourage us to be great and try new things / invent new things like they did. 

Laney (director of the Oasis teen girls group): 

Why I feel good listening to stories

 (you = stories from my childhood)

Because when I’m feeling blue, you act like a color wheel and allow me to feel shade on a hot summer’s day.

Because you remind me of a simpler time, when I “never” felt sick and didn’t feel alone. 

Because sometimes I need an escape, whether I’m leaving work to fight a fire-breathing dragon, or dress pretty for the ball.

Because when I hear your voice, I feel soothed. Because you are told by my mother. 

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.