ABSTRACT
As an African American feminist, I come from a verbal, storytelling culture with deep roots. For me, storytelling is about survival. Storytelling is how we passed on knowledge and culture, values and behaviors. The storyteller might be the griot or the grandmother. Both told us stories of our past, our present, and our future. Storytelling is how we saved our lives when reading was forbidden, knowledge was hidden, and cultural continuity was shattered. We weaved together the threads of our collective experiences to create quilts of iconic stories of triumphs, of failures, of dreams, and of realities. But most of all, the stories were about possibilities. Through stories we could imagine, arguably the most powerful word in any language. Through our imaginations, our stories defied our oppressions and offered both spiritual solace and practical advice to survive a hostile world and build communities in which we could thrive. Through stories and storytelling we could examine and explore the meanings in our lives.
