While reading the early Native American creation tales this week, I was reminded of what every culture, every country, every family has in common. Their stories.
Personally, I believe stories are one of the most important aspects of our lives, because really, that is what history is, at its very heart. What is a history textbook but a collection of stories? Some may be true, some may be embellished or downright fabricated, but they make one long narrative nonetheless.
People usually think of the past as this archaic, unknowable era, when life was just so different and foreign. And while there is some truth to this belief, what I find consistently enthralling is discovering just how similar the human experience has remained throughout the generations. For example, I still recall vividly a certain visit to my grandparents house when I was very small, probably around five or six years old. On this visit, my grandmother took me and my sister aside to tell us the story of the day my grandfather returned from Europe after World War II. Now despite this having occurred probably close to fifteen years ago, details of that story are still perfectly clear in my memory, along with the inflection of my grandmother's voice, the secret smile on her face as she told the story, the rythmic tick of the clock on the wall, and the wonderful smell of her house. This memory is not just a story in my mind, it was a physical experience. And this kind of storytelling was and still is extremely widespread within the Native American community. Sure, my story may not be the explanation of how the entire world was created, which are common in the legends of many tribes, but the way I see it, family history is family history. And neither narrative should be forgotten.
I think a common misconception when it comes to these oral histories, including contemporary ones but more specifically regarding ancient, historic tales, is that because they are spoken, not written, they cannot or just are not literature. This does bring up a very interesting question of what exactly is literature? While I myself do not pretend to know enough to feel confident in one answer, I recently stumbled across one answer to his from a current favority author of mine. In a blog post from June 2008, John Green (author of Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns and other novels) said on this subject, "The only answer I can think of is that you make a book literary (or not). You are ultimately the person who engages with a novel’s symbols and themes as well as its characters and story. If this happens, the book is literary. If it doesn’t, it isn’t." I believe this relates to Native American oral histories incredibly well, because for the entire duration of the story, the listeners were almost a part of the narrative, and a connection was made between the history and the spectator that is almost unique to spoken stories. Listening to a family member or a mentor tell you a story is such a personal event, what is taken from it is so much more than was given. And when a narrative changes you, makes you smarter or better, how can it not be literature?
So whether they be family stories exchanged at the dinner table, or ancient tales relayed over a fire, I believe it is as Leslie Marmon Silko said, "You don't have anything if you don't have the stories." (page 33)
I found very interesting your characterization of storytelling (and story listening) as visceral, that you have a body feeling memory of listening to your grandmother's story. I suspect that in oral cultures, people enjoyed the physical feeling of paying rapt attention to the story teller.
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