Black Women & The Power of Storytelling

Photo Credit: Emmanuel Phaeton

Back to school season always gives me the most bittersweet feeling of nostalgia. I can recall my first week of college and how I sat all alone in the dining hall, beginning to understand that I would be eating a lot of bland food for the next four years. I felt as if my parents had abandoned me in a foreign land. Then a Black female student came up to me and pointed at a crowded table across the room.

“Come sit with us,” she said. “Bring a chair.”

I would soon learn that the table she gestured towards was unofficially called “The Black Table”, a collection of Black students from all corners of the country and the world, from freshman to seniors, from athletes to actors, all sitting together to eat. It was a place where you could share hair tips, confide in others about micro-aggressions, talk all the AAVE your heart desired, and laugh at common cultural references. Ultimately, college life would show me a range of experiences, people, and tables to sit with, but being able to sit with other Black students and hear what wisdom others had gleaned from their time in that foreign land of a PWI would always be incredibly valuable to me.

These memories reminded me of one of my favorite things about being a Black woman –  the strong sense of community. In any room you step into, you can sit down next to a fellow Black woman and become default friends. Black women have a way of checking on each other. Whether it’s family, a close group of friends or the ladies at the hair salon, we have a collective need to take care of each other, and one of the most powerful ways we do this is through storytelling.

Depending on the woman, the stories can vary wildly. My grandmother likes to tell stories about living in Ghana over 60 years ago, my mother likes to reminisce about her first days in America coming from Guyana. These stories are more than just the life experiences of these two individual women. To me, they have been essential in confirming my sense of self. It has been important for me to know that my twenty-something-year-old mother felt loneliness, homesickness, and isolation. When I feel those same emotions, I can reflect back on her experiences and they act as a kind of healing salve – an extra layer between me and hopelessness, between me and complete darkness. It’s like she has passed down her strength as if it lives in my blood. Storytelling can be healing.

One thing is for sure, our history is inexplicably linked to the present. In Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, she traces the lineage of two sisters, one of whom is sold into slavery while the other lives in the luxurious castle that acts as headquarters for an English outpost in Ghana. The sisters’ descendants have two very different experiences, but both lines find themselves at odds with imperialism and white supremacy during every historical era.

Reading this book reminded me of how rare, and yet how important it is for the modern day Black woman to know the stories of her ancestors as well as the stories of her contemporaries. If there’s anything that the book proves, it is that storytelling is a powerful agent that can shape us. It’s so important to continue building collections of stories as diverse as Black womanhood – stories that prove that no matter where you’re from, or what struggles face, your life is part of a much bigger experience that matters.

Passing stories down from generation to generation is particularly important for Black women because there are so many competing outside voices telling us how to be a Black woman – leaving us feeling confused and insecure, never quite sure that we are “doing it right”. What could be more inspiring than hearing about how women that came before you made it through the same mire of confusion? Or even where they faltered and the obstacles that they have encountered along the way? Storytelling heals the part of the soul that languishes, believing that it is not enough and that our experiences are singular incidents that prove our personal inadequacies.

So I want to encourage you all to tell your stories. Tell them to young girls, tell them to your friends, tell them to whoever you think really needs to hear them. Tell someone about your pain and don’t forget to share your victories. Share other  Black women’s stories through the art that we make, whether it be in the form of a book, a blog, a tv show or a painting. Be the person who goes to meet the lonely Black girl across the room. Your experiences mean something to her.

In a world that seems to be turned against us, let them know that someone has felt what they are feeling. Your story can be that healing salve, a barrier against hopelessness.