The Columbus Arts Council presents its annual Possum Town Storytelling Festival this weekend and every year, the timing seems perfect.
We live in an age where our communications have become almost a form of short-hand and our interactions impersonal and detached. We have never been more connected to the broader world, yet so many of our relationships are superficial. We may have hundreds of friends on social media that we don’t know and aren’t really sure how we met them. We spend a lot of time exchanging information but rarely seem to connect on a meaningful level.
If there is one sure antidote for all that, it may well come from storytelling.
We are a nation of storytellers and Mississippi has an especially impressive tradition, having produced some of the great storytellers in literary history.
The names roll of our tongues easily – William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and Tennessee Williams are world-renowned Mississippi storytellers and there are no shortage of emerging writers whose work has gained national attention and acclaim.
But storytelling is not confined to the ranks of published authors. The truth is, especially in Mississippi, storytellers are found everywhere. Every family, it seems, has one person who is recognized as the family storyteller and it may not always been the best educated, wisest or even the most articulate member of the family. Story-telling can be taught – in fact creative writing classes abound — but what elevates the best story-tellers is some innate, undefinable quality that combines language, inflection, timing, imagination and ideas to make a story.
The power of a story is undeniable. From preachers to politicians to teachers, stories are almost always the most effective way to deliver information, mainly because stories are irresistible. As toddlers, one of our first spoken demand is “tell me a story.” And we are no less hungry for those tales as we grow old.
Stories can entertain, education, inspire and challenge.
The examples are plentiful, so here’s just one:
When Mark Twain wanted to condemn for the ages the brutal, inhumane institution of slavery, he did it not through a lecture or an essay. He did not provide data or any evidence that condemned slavery, although there was plenty of such evidence to be found. He did not make an argument, he made a story and it was the genius of that story that helped moved the conscience of America.
Think about who Twain chose to speak against the brutality of slavery. It was not a person of standing or education of achievement, but rather a ragged, uneducated, ill-mannered child — Huckleberry Finn, now recognized as one of the great heroes in American literature.
Twain’s message was clear: Slavery was so abhorrent that even an ignorant child should see it. And if a child could see it, everyone should.
Stories can shape our views, but they can also provide a respite from the daily ritual, an escape purely for escape’s sake. They can amuse us, entertain us, take us away from our present preoccupations.
We salute the story-tellers, famous or not, and appreciate the Arts Council’s efforts to again give us an opportunity to hear from those who have elevated the simple act of telling a story into an art form.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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