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Exploratory Writing #3
Danticat and Silko
A Silko explains that in Laguna Pueblo culture, “many individual words have their own stories. So that when one is telling a story, and one is using words to tell the story, each word that one is speaking has a story of its own too.” Try telling a word story of your own. Look back at the first exploratory writings you did, and choose a word from your list. Then, explain, through narrative and specific memories of its use, its significance. Feel free to expand on a word you’ve already begun to analyze, or to choose a new word to create a “word story.”
B Danticat and Silko both highlight the importance of oral literacy in their cultures. Danticat describes “kitchen poets,” who, rather than writing their stories, “slip phrases into their stew and wrap meaning around their pork before frying it,” because for women in Haitian culture, “writing was as forbidden as dark rouge on the cheeks or a first date before age 18.” Silko, in turn, explains that for Pueblo people, “a written speech or statement is highly suspect because the true feelings of the speaker remain hidden as she reads words that are detached from the occasion and the audience.” As in many cultures, stories told aloud connect people to past generations—to women ancestors for Danticat, and to people past and present for Silko—and the transition from oral to written form is difficult. Both authors, however, do write the stories they are told, and in this telling, the stories change the narrative form of the essay to create an interesting blend of oral and written form.
Begin this exploratory writing by making a list of stories your family tells, and has never written down. Then, choose one story, and tell, or write it in the voice and form of the person who tells it most often. After this exercise in translating from oral to written form, explain the significance of this story to your home literacy and beliefs.
