The more
power you have,
the more people will listen respectfully
to your story.
Consequently,
listening to someone’s story is a way
of empowering them, of validating
their intrinsic worth
as a human being.
~ Kay Pranis
I spent last weekend – Friday through Sunday, three full days – at the Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco with my 14-year-old, Aaron. At the beginning of day two, we found ourselves amongst a small crowd in front of the largest of four festival stages. Aaron had brought me to see an underground rapper named Macklemore. Little did I know, his stories would stay with me more than any other of the big name performers that weekend.
His energy, personality and smile were infectious. But more than that, he offered raw honesty. Not puffed up, but powerfully humble. A few songs into his set he shared that he had just reached three years sober. I was stunned and taken in by his openness and his integrity.
~~~
Many of the most important stories are difficult to tell. Among a hip hop culture that belligerently celebrates excess and substance abuse, Macklemore keeps his cool while telling how he learned to save his own life. In my work, I am continuously seeking to convey stories that are hard for people to grasp.
The table below is one of my proud recent accomplishments in storytelling. For many years I have worked very closely with My Sister’s House, a Sacramento non-profit that supports Asian and Pacific Islander women who are survivors of domestic violence. Last spring, we were in a position to be awarded valuable annual funding, but only if we could make our case to the State of California. We needed to convince the Emergency Management Agency that there are women across the Central Valley – Asian and Pacific Islanders who are recent immigrants, to be specific – who are not receiving critical services when they are victims of domestic violence.
When you hear any of these women’s stories, the need becomes clear. They don’t have citizenship and fear deportation…they are deeply bound to a cultural group that believes that a man has the right to do as he chooses with his wife….they speak a language, like Lao, or Urdu or Tongan that no one in authority can understand or even translate….they have no family in the U.S. beyond their husband’s family, where can they go?
But when the State has already designated and committed to fund one primary DV service agency within each county, how can we convey that those services are not enough? Like any other government agency, the Emergency Management Agency is a bureaucracy, and bureaucracies do not speak in personal anecdotes. Government agencies like Cal EMA speak in terms of statistics, policies and politic pressures. In response, we generated the table below to demonstrate the complex fabric of cultures and languages we serve.
Just to be clear, this table does not represent domestic violence survivors, or even adults for that matter. Rather, every number represented here is a child – a student enrolled in public school who is far more fluent in the language listed than in English. There is no way that I could access data about women, the languages they speak and the degree of violence that they experience. But with this table, we could demonstrate the prevalence and diversity of Asian and Pacific Islander language and ethnic groups across the Sacramento Valley. And with only a tiny bit of imagination, we can ask Cal EMA, “Who will help Assyrian speaking survivors in Stanislaus County? Who knows how to deliver culturally sensitive support services for a Hindi woman in Placer County?” Even to a bureaucracy, the story begins to come across.
~~~
The truth is there are many important stories that remain untold, many crucial conversations that have yet to take place. As a lover of story, I particularly appreciate those stories that convey hard truths. As the opening quote says, “Listening to someone’s story is a way of empowering them, of validating their intrinsic worth as a human being.” As they say in the world of hip hop, we’ve just gotta keep it real.
Take all ugly s___ inside and try to make it beautiful
Use the cement from rock bottom and make it musical
So the people can relate to where I've been,
Where I'm going, what I've seen, what I've heard
From the guts, f___ the glory
Just a person on a porch putting it all into recording
Many in my past and many that came before me
I just keep walkin' my path and blessed to share my story
~Macklemore, from “Vipassana”
