Artivism: Telling Stories
Telling Stories to Change the World:
Global Voices on the Power of Narrative to Build Community and
Make Social Justice Claims
Edited by:
Rickie Solinger, Madeline Fox, and Kayhan Irani
Published by Routledge; May 2008
Telling Stories to Change the World is a powerful collection of essays about community-based and interest-based projects where storytelling is used as a strategy for speaking out for justice. Contributors from locations accross the globe - including Uganda, Darfur, China, Afghanistan, South Africa, New Orleans, and Chicago - describe grassroots projects in which communities use narrative as a way of exploring what a more just society might look like and what civic engagement means.
These compelling accounts of resistance, hope, and vision showcase the power of the storytelling form to generate critique and collective action. Collectively, these projects demonstrate the contemporary power of stories to stimulate engagement, active citizenship, the pride of identity, and the humility of human connectedness.
Some examples of the projects included in the volume are:
Uganda Memory Book Project, prepared by Maddy Fox
Since the 1980's, Uganda has suffered from the HIV/AIDS epidemic sweeping across Africa. Supported by the National Forum of PHA Networks in Uganda, Barnardos, and other community organizations, Ugandan women with HIV have been making Memory Books for their children. These books use stories, photos and important documentation to help a dying mother ensure that her children will have some linkage to their past, most especially the family stories that would otherwise die with the mothers. The books also provide important information about family relations, property, belongings, and other support a child might need. The presentation of this project includes a transcript of conversations about the Memory Books with four participating Ugandan women as well as excerpts and images from a Memory Book.
Smallest Witnesses: The Crisis in Darfur Through Children's Eyes, Dr. Annie Sparrow, with illustrations
In early 2005, two Human Rights Watch researchers, one a pediatrician, the other a lawyer, traveled to camps along the Chad-Sudan border housing refugee men, women, and children from Darfur. The purpose of the mission was to examine the consequences of sexual violence on refugees as part of the conflict, and the services and protection provided. During interviews with refugees, their children were given paper and crayons to draw whatever they wished.
The first child Human Rights Watch encountered, an eight-year-old named Mohammed, had never held a crayon or pencil before. That is not uncommon in a region where education and other services are minimal and children must help with subsistence chores from an early age. While HRW talked to the adults, Mohammed and his brothers drew -- without any instruction -- pictures of Janjaweed on horseback and camel shooting civilians, Antonovs dropping bombs on civilian homes, an army tank firing on fleeing villagers. Looking at the drawings, Mohammed whispered, "I am still scared of the Janjaweed. I remember the guns and the planes." The last thing he said to Human Rights Watch researchers was "Darigi jugi" -- I need to go home."
Over the following weeks of the research mission, these violent scenes were repeated in hundreds of drawings Human Rights Watch was given, depicting the attacks by ground and by air. These children have created their own "visual vocabulary" through which others can virtually see what they have witnessed. The children have become the missing eyewitnesses. This "ethnic cleansing" was always meant to be out of the public view. There are virtually no publicly available photographs and little footage of Janjaweed militias or Sudanese soldiers attacking villagers, making it hard to hold the perpetrators accountable. The drawings corroborate unerringly what we know of the crimes, illustrating a compelling case against the government of Sudan as the architect of this man-made crisis in Darfur.
http://hrworg/english/docs/2005/06/22/sudan11211.htm
Community Development and Storytelling: Young Girls Becoming Teachers in Northern Afghanistan, Wahid Omar.
In a remote area of Afghanistan called Jaghori, located in the high mountains of the Hindukush, is a desolate area populated by the Hazara people. An ethnic minority in Afghanistan Hazaras have historically been oppressed in Afghan society. However, young girls in this area are finding ways to claim power through telling stories. When Wahid Omar arrived in the region while working for a humanitarian organization, he found young girls of 12 and 13 years old serving as teachers to even younger girls of 6 and 7 years old. These young girls were engaged in storytelling as a hobby, and Omar soon initiated a project in which their hobby could be turned into a force for social change. Story and storytelling is now being used as a way to identify problems in the community as well as giving these girls, and the larger community, strength and practice claiming rights and respect in Afghan society. By embracing traditional stories the community is embracing their cultural heritage and is fighting to be included in it.
http://www.afghans4tomorrow.com/
Great Ancestors Project, Aisha Shaheed
The Great Ancestors is a series of 'voices' of women in history, speaking from Muslim contexts. As a presentation, the spectator is offered an hour of monologues, quotations and dialogue, all culled from the pages of history. The voices are accompanied by images, providing an atmospheric backdrop, unusual portrayals of women in Islamic art or photographs of those who lived in the twentieth century. Spanning the globe and running from the eighth century to the 1940s, the presentation tells the stories of women whom standard historical accounts have forgotten, such as women ruling over Muslim lands, fighting for the right to literacy, and joining forces with women in other countries to effect change. Through the use of voice, image and narrativization, the stories of these women are invited to come alive. No longer relegated to the margins of history, the tales of these empowered Muslim women, heard in first-, second- and third-person and given visual accompaniments, serves to remind us of the flesh-and-blood nature of these historical names and faces. Reclaiming our own histories and giving voices to the voiceless, the Great Ancestors is a celebration of the achievements of the ancestors who have walked before us