Empowering Voices: Exploring Self through Others' Stories

Written by Camille Morris

“We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society. “

-Angela Davis

When was the last time you were absorbed by a story? Truly had a whole new world unfold in your mind where you learned how to love, how to live, and how to be a better person. Stories act as a powerful vessel for reimagining what life could become while also giving valuable insight into what it was before which is why it’s so important to explore and integrate receiving these stories as a practice.

Storytelling is a powerful vehicle for education and lesson learning especially in Black American cultures. For many Black Americans literature was, and still is, a privilege. Slaves were beaten and murdered for wanting to learn how to read, and there were anti-literacy laws to reinforce white control over Black people. Reading was seen as a tool of resistance and an avenue for freedom which is why the access to reading was such a threat. With reading comprehension for kids in elementary school declining from pre-pandemic rates and a general decline in reading interest, we are seeing a decline in the ability to engage with stories even as access to them is at an all time high. There’s also been recent, persistent attack on adolescents’ ability to access certain literature5 that holds an important piece of history and truth. It’s important now more than ever to start a practice of engaging these stories both as a way of growth but also as a means of preservation for the learnings and truth that is being attacked.

“I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else’s whim or to someone else’s ignorance.” - Bell Hooks

So whether it be on your own or in community, I encourage you to explore the breadth of Black writing including new genres and narratives. Grab a notebook (and a couple of friends) and start delving into all the stories this world has to offer. The stories I have outlined below are simply a start, a tease of the expansive base of Black stories - some are undeniable classics while others are more experimental. All of them have had an influence on my reading habits and the way I see the world, and I hope they provide you with the same. If nothing else, let this be a place to come back to when you can’t think of what to read or what to ask.

Genre: Classical Science Fiction

Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler.

I don’t have all of it yet. I don’t even know how to pass on what I do have. I’ve got to learn to do that. It scares me how many things I’ve got to learn.

The tale of Lauren Olamina is one that is becoming terrifyingly relevant to our reality. She is living in a post-apocalyptic America shaped by climate disaster, lack of equitable resource distribution, and a terrifying amount of tribalistic radicalization (sound familiar?). And, as if it couldn’t get any worse, her mother’s addiction to Paracetco has left Lauren with hyperempathy syndrome where she is able to physically feel others’ real or imagined pain. After the destruction of her home base, Lauren is forced to survive in the rubbles of what used to be her country.

I often return to Parable of the Talents as a source of radical joy and a testimony of humanity’s ability to survive. Octavia Butler finished this novel in the early 1990s yet the themes and details follow the trajectory of the world I see today. This book is a reminder of the possibility to live despite it all, to build anew even in the midst of the deterioration of everything that was once taken for granted.

Questions for Consideration:

● How can you build a practice around embracing change?

● What is the importance of community to survival?

● What does it mean to have true empathy?

● What did you think of the relationship between Lauren and Taylor? How does context change relationship dynamics?

Genre: Dark Comedy Thriller

My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite.

He asks me if he could have done anything differently. “You could have seen her for what she was.”

Family is…complicated. I can’t think of many people who would disagree with that statement. As Thomas, Liu, and Umberson reflect “the quality of family relationships, including social support (e.g., providing love, advice, and care) and strain (e.g., arguments, being critical, making too many demands), can influence well-being through psychosocial, behavioral, and physiological pathways” and it has been shown that the relationship between siblings may be more influential than previously considered. Our familial relationships, including that of siblings, can shape our lives.

Braithwaite does wonderful work to depict this in the relationship dynamic between Korede and Ayoola, two sisters who lead very different lives. Korede, the older sister, is a single nurse with an unrequited crush on one of the doctors at her hospital while Ayoola is depicted as a breathtaking woman with many suitors and a successful fashion line. Ayoola has an aloof yet flirtatious nature while Korede has a tendency towards hostility. Ayoola murders people while Korede often gets stuck cleaning up the mess in the aftermath. My Sister, The Serial Killer traces the complications of love and the bias of beauty. Through Korede’s eyes we see the ways in which people, blinded by shallow beauty, make excuses for poor behavior.

Questions for Consideration

● What makes someone beautiful? If you took a minute to be truly honest with yourself, what attracts you to people?

● How do family dynamics continue through generations? Are there similarities between the sisters and their parents?

● What isn’t being told in this narrative because of Korede’s perspective? How do you imagine the story would be different if the narrative followed Ayoola or Tade?

● What did you think of the relationship Korede had with Muhtar? What was Muhtar for Korede?

Genre: Contemporary Anthology

Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems by Danez Smith.

I did not come here to sing you blues.

lately, i open my mouth

& out comes marigolds, yellow plums.

I first learned to love poetry by watching Danez Smith perform ‘Dinosaurs in the Hood’. Their storytelling capabilities are amazing; such a powerful impact with all the lyricism of music. In this collection, Smith captures the tragedy of the United States’ treatment of the Black body while also embracing the resilience of joy despite it all. There are also poems on the endurance Morris 6 of love even as the HIV epidemic impacted the livelihood of so many. Don’t Call Us Dead is a collection that looks at the worst of the world while still maintaining a refusal to be destroyed.

Poetry is a powerful tool for processing trauma and alleviating heavy emotions. It is an avenue for my personal reimagining of the world and I have seen the way community can be built for marginalized people in open mic nights and poetry slams. The creativity and flexibility afforded in poetry opens the mind to innovate on what the world could be and offers a blank canvas for people who may not feel heard traditionally to make their voice known.

Questions for Consideration

● How do we maintain a sense of joy and optimism in the face of times that contradict hope?

● What is radical love?

● What do you think of Smith’s use of space in their poems? What can be expressed in how a poem is written?

Genre: LGBT Young Adult Contemporary

Rise to the Sun by Leah Johnson

You’re not a character in a movie, okay? You’re a real girl. You don’t get a montage where you buy a new wardrobe and suddenly everything changes. This is your life. You are who you are.

Olivia is not okay. But how many of us were okay at seventeen years old? How many of us, at one point or another, have wanted to run away from it all? Olivia did - at least for a weekend. She escapes to Farmland - a fictional music festival - with her best friend Imani. She goals with a focus on their friendship and wanting to give up bad habits that include falling in love quickly. The pinky promise (a sacred swear for the two) is broken quickly when Olivia meets Toni in a tale of the typical YA meet-cute, love-quick. But Rise to the Sun also incorporates difficult topics such as self-advocacy, grief, mental health, gun violence, and sexual assault.

While I wasn’t immediately pulled into the romance aspect of the book (I must confess I am skeptical of romance in anything), the way the characters navigated the world and tackled their own personal issues as girls taking the first steps into the murky independence and bizarre responsibility of early adulthood was compelling. Growing up I was inundated with narratives of the most extreme forms of self-destruction: cutting, drinking to excess, sleeping with people who only hurt them, and acting out publicly (shout out to Degrassi, Teen Wolf, Dance Academy, and The Fosters amongst so many others). This novel provided a new perspective on how the thoughts, behaviors, and habits we accept are a form of self-destruction and what it means to take steps to break patterns.

Questions for Consideration

● Like Olivia, what narratives placed onto you lead you to live an unfulfilling life?

● What does it take to love someone else?

● When have you been the Imani in a friendship? The Olivia? How did you navigate finding more balance in your relationship(s)?

● Like Toni, have you ever battled between the safe, predictable path versus the more daring one? What choice did you make? What sacrifices would have been required for either path?

Genre: Coming-of-age Historical Fiction

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it.

Nothing more classic than Ms. Morrison, a Nobel Prize winning author who acts as one of the staples for Black classical literature. Morrison manages to capture the reality of Black Americans in the post-Civil War age with a rawness that does not take away from the beauty of her prose. The Bluest Eye tells the story of Pecola, an impoverished foster kid who grows up at the end of the Great Depression. Pecola is obsessed with whiteness and sees it as the ideal of beauty. Her pursuit for blue eyes pushes her through extremely traumatic experiences and is what ultimately breaks her. While all of these books deal with difficult themes, I feel called to give a heads up that this novel, in particular, can be triggering. It deals with themes of domestic violence, rape, incest, and nonconsensual pregnancy.

When I first read The Bluest Eye I remember thinking how it felt like a more relevant coming of age book for me than any of the whitewashed, syrupy stories I was inundated with as a kid. Growing up a Black girl in white spaces there is a sense of jealousy, exclusion, and self-hatred that I had to overcome to realize my worth and I’ve heard the sentiment echoed by others who grew up similarly to me. This book is a reminder of how people can become trapped in their traumas and the ways in which self-hatred harms so much more than oneself.

Questions for Consideration

● What prevents us from loving, both ourselves and others?

● How did the MacTeer girls (Claudia and Freida) act as foils for Pecola? What did you think was learned in the difference between the trajectory of their lives?

● What are your thoughts on the metaphor behind blue eyes? Have you created external ideas and/or materials that you think will definitely change your life?

There are hundreds of thousands of stories that hold pieces of history, of truth, and the many futures we could live. While these five books barely graze the surface, I hope they act as a starting point. A beginning to a lifelong journey of learning and growing through literature