…the slow, tender, dangerous art of storytelling…*
I worked last weekend with seven courageous women writers. They wrote about dark terrain and radiant knowledge; about mothers and fathers; about impossible love; about home-sewn polyester pants and sixtieth birthday gifts; and women and men who labored with their hands. They were willing to enter into the slow, tender, dangerous art of story-telling. I drove home to Flagstaff on pine-shadowed Lake Mary Road to the sacred mountains with more hope than I have felt in a long time.
It is near impossible to slowly tell the tender and dangerous stories when we move at the speed of the internet. It is fully impossible to text or tweet a slow, tender, dangerous story. Those rebel stories are told face to face; they are written in those moments when we want to do anything but write. They do not serve us. We serve them.
You know how to receive your own slow, tender, dangerous stories. Do what is necessary. Write for 30 minutes and go further into the danger zone by sharing your writing with the readers of this website. Send me what you have written in a Word doc to bstarr67@gmail.com When we share our dangerous stories, we create a community of safety and tenderness.
* Kara Walker’s review of Toni Morrison’s God Bless the Child here
*—Kara Walker, in NY Times review of Toni Morrison’s God Bless the Child
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