Why Working Folks Need Our Own Stories
My roommates and I clustered around a small TV on the living room floor– we didn’t have any furniture yet. The local public access station was running an hour-long special about the neighborhood in which we had just bought a big, old two-story Victorian house. We popped popcorn for the occasion.
The opening scene showed images from around the neighborhood — run-down houses, garbage in the alleyways, and a sad-looking dog tethered on a porch. Then the voiceover started: “Once a thriving neighborhood, it is now riddled with poverty and crime…” Footage of two men flickered on the screen, they were handcuffed and lay in the grass on their stomachs next to a chain link fence.
“Is that our yard?” asked one of my roommates.
“And are those our neighbors?” asked another.
It was an ominous start, both to the documentary and to my new home. I don’t remember the rest of the documentary, except that it contrasted the neighborhood’s golden years — when there were theaters, shops, and pretty gardens in front lawns — with the crime-ridden, decaying place it is known to be today.
Despite that documentary, I ended up falling in love with the neighborhood — and with my neighbors (the ones who had been arrested in my front yard, admittedly, weren’t my favorites and were a pain to live next to). It was a neighborhood of hard knocks, but I found that most of my neighbors were compassionate, helpful, thoughtful, and overwhelmingly kind.
There was Ernie, the retired coal miner with an oxygen tank dragging behind him, who built an elaborate mirrored angel inside his small bungalow as a tribute to his deceased wife. There was Patrick, Ernie’s son, whose prized truck sat rusting in the backyard because he refused to drive after accidentally hitting a small child chasing a ball. There was Kayla, the scrapping, brawling teenager who would write a letter to her grandmother in rehab every day (I only know this because she once stole stamps from my house).
It wasn’t until after I sold that house and moved 500 miles away that I heard Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warn about the danger of telling a single story; about how all of us, everywhere, hold hundreds of stories and the potential for ten thousand more.
The documentary about my neighborhood always bothered me– not because it was inaccurate, but because it wasn’t complete. The narration had assumed the “objective” voice of an outsider looking in. It used data and statistics and interviewed police officers, social workers, and a city councilwoman. It featured one interview with a man who had grown up there, but moved away. But it didn’t ask Ernie or Patrick or Kayla about our home today; it didn’t inquire about things that weren’t poverty, crime, or hardship.
It was talking about us as if we weren’t even there.
I became interested in storytelling — and a process I call bottom-up storytelling — after living in that neighborhood. If we agree that stories help shape the world around us, then who gets to tell them matters. What I have learned is that poor and working-class people more often have stories told about us than we get to tell about ourselves.
(Check out a story I wrote about my two favorite little kids from the neighborhood here)
Poor and working folks don’t have a lot of chances to articulate our lives or worldview. I remember one young man from that neighborhood telling me the only person who had ever asked him to explain himself was a criminal court judge — and that there were parts of his story he thought were relevant, but she didn’t want to hear.
The stories I’m telling here on Working Class Storytelling are from the inside out, not the outside in. I collaborate with the people I tell these stories with to make sure I’ve got it right. I interview them, ask them what story they think I should tell, and have them direct me on how it should be told. They have full editorial control; we review it, make changes to the language, and adjust the direction together. I’ll never press ‘publish’ without their say-so. Sometimes, this process is quick; other times, it takes weeks of reworking until we get it right. Because of the subject’s deep involvement, this is different from journalism — a trade I respect wholeheartedly but am not cut out for — and it also cannot be considered reporting. It’s certainly not objective but wildly and purposefully subjective.
It’s just a story, their story, our story, where we get to describe our own neighborhood.
If you are poor or working-class and have a story — or stories– to tell reach out to me. I want to help you tell it– either on Working Class Storytelling or in your own words published in a magazine, newspaper, or on a radio show or podcast somewhere. It feels good to get to take up space and be our own narrators, but more than that, I promise you that the story you have is important for someone else to hear.
You can follow my stories about working-class people, places, and organizing here: https://workingclassstories.substack.com/
And you can hit me up here: gfrisbiefulton@additionproject.org
