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The article is subjective and expresses the personal opinion of the author.
And why you should keep telling yours
Stories are fascinating and often powerful. I think about this frequently, even more so now that I am writing on Medium and reading the work of other writers. I have seen a version of the question Why are we writing anyway? posed in a few different posts, and I consider that question myself when I sit down to write. It’s more than just getting words on the page — if we just wanted to put words down, we would write in private journals. It’s about getting stories out to readers.
In the end, isn’t it about giving readers a different perspective? About sharing a sliver of your experience that might give your readers insight?
As a kid, I always had a book in hand. I lounged on the wicker love seat on my grandparent’s side porch and breezed through entire book series, hid my novel behind my science book during science class, and read under the covers with a flashlight after bedtime. The places and experiences that stories revealed were fascinating — I got lost in them.
My fascination with stories followed me into college. I decided to major in English. As an undergraduate and later a graduate student, I learned more about the history behind the stories I read and the social movements that influenced writers. I learned about Chinua Achebe “writing back” to colonizers in Nigeria, about Langston Hughes writing poetry that portrayed everyday life in black communities during the Harlem Renaissance and into the Civil Rights Movement, about Alice Walker challenging our ideas of feminism and advocating for “womanism,” about Joyce Carol Oates commenting on gender and the American family, about Jhumpa Lahiri uncovering the experiences and identities of second generation immigrants, about Tim O’Brien showing us the physical and emotional impact of war. Their stories were — and still are — powerful. They gave me access to parts of the world I had never been and showed me experiences I was not aware of. They changed the way I thought and felt about life.
After college, I started teaching ninth grade. Though I lost sight of my passion for stories a few times in the stress of my first few years of teaching, I found my way home. A few years ago, I started teaching adult learners for the first time. All learners — but especially adult learners — learn and absorb more when they understand how the content they study is relevant to everyday life. Teaching literature was a tough sell, and it made me reconsider why we teach stories.
How was reading stories going to help them? That’s what my students wanted to know and what I needed to understand from a practical standpoint. I moved beyond the stories themselves to investigate why stories have the power they do and how stories influence human behavior.
I wanted to see what other people curious about this question had found. What I discovered during my research was a wealth of experience and research from writers, speakers, and psychologists, as well as validation that stories really do have the power to change what we think and how we feel.
Over the last ten years or so, researchers have branched out and started to conduct in-depth studies on the connection between neuroscience and stories. Paul Zak, a neuroeconomist, found that a well-told story with a clear narrative arc causes the brain to produce cortisol and oxytocin and triggers our theory of mind, or ability to feel empathy.
During one study, Zak showed participants a story about a father and his son, who is dying from cancer. The participants whose brains released more cortisone and oxytocin while watching this story play out on screen were much more likely to donate money to a charity that works with ill children. And the more cortisol and oxytocin their brains produced, the more money they donated. Based on these findings, Zak argues that stories affect our brain chemistry, which in turn affects our feelings and behavior.
A different study conducted by Keith Oatley, a psychologist and novelist, in 2006 revealed that reading a story led to measurable changes in the personality traits of study participants.
For the study, Oatley and his colleagues used the story “The Lady with the Little Dog” by Anton Chekhov. The story is about a man and a woman, both of whom are married to other people, who meet at an oceanside resort and begin having an affair. Oatley and his colleagues presented two versions of this story to study participants. Some of the participants read the original short story by Chekhov; the rest of the participants read a version of the story that had been reformatted and written as a nonfiction courtroom report. Before and after reading, all participants took a standard personality test. Those who read the short story, rather than the version formatted as nonfiction, showed more changes on their personality tests. Oatley and his colleagues concluded that people who read the original story identified and empathized with the characters, which shaped those participants’ personality traits.
Perhaps the most powerful find during my research was Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk “The Danger of a Single Story.” (If you haven’t seen it, watch it — right now.)
Adichie is a writer from Nigeria. Her talk is based on personal experience rather than science, and she points out how stories can shape our perceptions of entire groups of people, cultures, countries, and continents.
Throughout the talk, Adichie draws from her personal experience. One experience she shares is coming to America for the first time to attend college. When she arrived in the U.S., her college roommate was surprised that Adichie listened to Mariah Carey instead of tribal music, spoke English, and knew how to use a stove. Adichie points out that her roommate had a “single story” of Africa — one of poverty and catastrophe — and that single story influenced her roommate’s perception of Adichie before they had even met. Adichie closes the talk with a call to action — to diverge from the single story and break the stereotypes created by the single story.
These are just a few examples of people out there studying, examining, and sharing the power of stories. There are many others who have published similar ideas. In his book The Storytelling Animal, Jonathan Gottschall argues that storytelling is what makes us human. In his NY Times article “The Stories That Bind Us”, Bruce Feiler explains that people who know their family stories are more resilient and able to cope with adversity more effectively. In her TED talk “The Shared Wonder of Film”, Beeban Kidron shares the story of how films transformed students across the UK when their schools participated in a film club.
The power of stories is real.
We have seen the power of stories in the weeks since the inauguration of Donald Trump, as sales of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, George Orwell’s 1984, and other dystopian novels continue to spike. Although fictional, these stories contain grains of truth. Our humanity and human plight is reflected in the characters and events of those stories.
And then there are the nonfiction stories about individual experiences, which are published through countless news outlets and posted on websites like Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York. The stories told through these articles, photographs, and conversations emphasize the human element of the issues we face.
Over the last few weeks, I have read incredibly well written and deeply stirring stories on Medium about race, sexual assault, motherhood, debt, writing, living through a stroke, and so many other facets of the human experience. Each of these stories helps me understand the writer’s experience and makes me think about the world in different ways. These stories are powerful. These stories reveal the humans behind the screens. These stories have the potential to incite change.
If we don’t have stories — if we don’t find each other, relate to each other, and understand each other through our varied experiences — how will we make it through these divisive times and work towards progress? I tend to agree with the late Mr. Rogers:
“Frankly, there isn’t anyone you couldn’t learn to love once you’ve heard their story.”
So keep reading, keep writing, keep changing the way that you and your readers think. Your story is powerful and necessary now more than ever.
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