Writing Our Own Grand Stories
July 9, 2018
New York City
As a young child, I loved stories. My mother would take my sister and me to the public
library on Saturday mornings, and I would pull books down off the tall shelves like choosing
candy bars in the check-out lane—arms already almost too full, twitching fingers eager to caress
the smooth plastic wrappers, mouth practically watering. When we got back home, I would lie
flat on the couch in the front sitting room, away from all distractions, like my parents or my baby
sister or the murmur of the television, and read all afternoon, barely stopping to eat dinner when
called. I was usually ready to return to the library by Tuesday, but my mom was firm: library
visits were only for Saturday mornings. So I waited the next four days, famished, craving stories
until the next time I could glut myself on a feast of words.
I recognize now that I consumed these stories so voraciously because I had a deep
desire in my soul to be part of a Grand Story. The adventures I read in my books were full of
magic and adventure, quests and dragons and heroines who saved the day with their wit and
strength. My uneventful suburban life seemed incredibly boring in comparison. I was not an
orphan sent to live with a spinster and her brother in the countryside or an intrepid young private
detective with a blue roadster or even a bad-tempered tomboy with the soul of a writer, waiting
with my three sisters for my father to come home from war. I was just a quiet, bookish Chinese
American girl living in Arizona. Nothing of note ever happened to girls like me in places like
mine. And while I could see bits of Anne, Nancy, and Jo in myself, none of my favorite heroines
quite seemed enough like me for me to believe that I could be part of my own Grand Story one
day.
As a young teacher, I was told that what matters most when teaching is to focus on
skills. Students didn’t need to write their own narratives and poems; they needed to learn to
analyze and parse, to communicate clearly and effectively, not beautifully or creatively. I was
warned to stay away from personal narratives or poems: “There are some things about your
students that you don’t want to know,” they said. “What if they told you something you had to
report?” It was safer to keep a professional distance. “Really, by high school, they should be
past writing little stories about themselves, anyway.” I could maybe do some narrative at the
beginning of the year as a warm up to more complex writing assignments if I had to, but really, it
wasn’t worth my time. And poetry? Sure, they could write a sonnet or something if it would help
them to appreciate how difficult it is, but would the state test ever ask them to write a poem?
Never. It barely even asked them to analyze one. Better to spend my time on informational
texts. Besides, it would be unfair to grade a student on their “creativity”, anyway. Some people
just aren’t creative. That’s not what English class is about.
But I’m learning more every day about how stories, especially personal ones, inform my
life, whether or not I write them down. The stories I tell myself about my own life shape how I
understand my personal memories, my family history, and my cultural identities. The written and
unwritten narratives that the world tells about me as a woman, as an Asian American, as a
daughter of immigrants, as a teacher, as a person of faith—those all impact how I am perceived
by others and how I interact with the world. I need to listen to and comprehend those narratives
so that I can learn to navigate them well. And, perhaps, if there aren’t enough stories about
people like me, it may be my job to write them.
What is true for me, in this case, is also true for my students.
The stories they tell themselves about their own lives absolutely affect how they perceive
their own human worth, their place in the world, their relationships with their friends and families,
and their goals for their own present and future. Although many of them have significant social,
academic, financial, and emotional challenges, I am regularly inspired by the goals, dreams,
and ambitions of my students as they navigate school and work and family and friendship and
life.
The stories the world tells about them are more problematic: immigrants, children of
immigrants, Hispanic, Black, Native American, multiracial, Generation Z, female, male, foster
children, residents of low income neighborhoods, non-native English speakers, first generation
college students—often it feels as though the stories the world tells about my students can be
unrelentingly negative, or at least disconcertingly monolithic. While literature for young adults
has come a long way in recent years, it is still difficult for many of them to find stories they can
see themselves in, to help them believe that they, too, are part of a Grand Story.
Since those early years of teaching, I have come to recognize the necessity for making
space inside and outside of our classroom for my students to tell their own stories and to take
back their narratives. I’m not absolved from this responsibility when I find small pockets of time
in my overpacked curriculum to do a “fun project”; my work as a teacher for social justice is to
find a way to make it the center of our work together. I want my students to believe that their
stories about their lives are valid and meaningful, that their experiences may be personal and
individual, but they also have much in common with others. Because the stories we tell about
ourselves and about others truly do make a difference, not only in how we see ourselves and
our place in the world, but how we see those in the world around us.
Empowering my students to stand up for justice and make positive change in the world
must start with empowering them to tell their own stories and to listen carefully to the stories of
others. Whether these stories take the form of poetry, narrative, survivor testimony,
documentary film, oil painting, expression of faith, or musical performance, stories are the first
step toward connecting us to each other and to the larger narrative of our communities and our
world. When my students and I write and share our own stories, we become part of the
narrative. We write our own Grand Stories together.
