This post is written by member Molly Sutton Kiefer.
I grew up in community theaters鈥攔unning up and down the aisles, playing pioneers or detectives with my little sister, my father rehearsing on stage. This professor-by-day was a Pep Boy, his costume a gas station attendant鈥檚 jumpsuit. His claim to fame was the line, 鈥淢y name is Jackson / and I pump with great speed / and I鈥檒l get you an-y-thing you need,鈥� followed by a lick on the guitar. Not great poetry, I鈥檒l admit, but delightful for a ten-year-old whose father was singing spotlit.
This act of looking, sometimes the only people in the seats, our eye contact bashful and fluttering, was a big part of my childhood. I was receptive to stories told through ballad and on stages; because my father was passionate, we wound up in see-the-singer鈥檚-spittle seats at productions of big-budget musicals. On the weekends, my sister and I snapped a camcorder into a tripod and danced with blankets to soundtracks warbling from my parents鈥� ancient tape deck. We learned to tell stories with our bodies, making awkward leaps onto wingback chairs. Sometimes the mic picked up our directives:聽You go there, and what if you were singing alone, and then I came out鈥攜es and then you come and I start looking at you鈥攜es and I am crying鈥�.
There are so many ways we learn to tell stories. This past month, just before Halloween and its spooky campfire glory, my students and I started telling stories, and we made big lists of what could constitute a story: we talked about the stories we can tell through our bodies with dancing, we talked about the paintings we鈥檇 been studying and the graphic novels I could not wrest from their hands if I wanted to (I don鈥檛), about the stories we tell in panels of storyboards and behind the lens in film, stories we tell at lunch and the stories we tell our parents at report card time.
Part of that multimodal story experience for my students included a visit from the Israeli group . Our local theater has received a grant to participate in , and over the next two years, four international musical groups will come and share their stories with classes throughout these river communities.
is breathtaking: 鈥淭he commentary Sofi provides . . . tells the story of the Samaritan Tsedaka family, a moving and powerful story of that family’s鈥攁nd Sofi’s鈥攕earch for balance, understanding, faith, and belonging as they navigate the pathway between their Jewish and Arab identities.鈥� This group came to my small classroom this October and told stories to my class using their voices, . As Sofi introduced her bandmates, they leaned toward their audience of students and said, 鈥淲e鈥檙e going to make up a song for you, right now,鈥� and their fingers fairly flew as they built that thread, the connection, between audience and teller. They improvised, their internal narratives giving directive, and afterward, one of my more boisterous students, bouncing on her heels, proclaimed, 鈥淚 feel like I鈥檝e heard this song before! I don鈥檛 know the words, but I know it.鈥�
Sofi Tsedaka told us, in stories that were bridges between songs, of her life in Israel: her family鈥檚 membership in the Samaritan tradition; her sister who fell in love with a Jewish man and how her father said, 鈥淚f you leave, you destroy us all鈥�; how the community鈥檚 response was to give the family a choice between denouncing their daughter or their faith, and how by not choosing, the family was banned from the community. Sofi gave us songs as prayer, celebrations sung at weddings, traditions from her homeland.
鈥淲hat does she mean?鈥� a student whispered to me, her breath hot in my ear. 鈥淲here did she go?鈥� The idea that one鈥檚 community would turn one鈥檚 entire family out was confounding.
After the close of one song, Sofi said, 鈥淚t was hard to live in banishment,鈥� picking up on the thread of the last story and moving on smoothly. She told us of how she decided to convert to Judaism, and how, after her exam, the rabbis conferred and told her, 鈥淭he problem is your name. Sofi is not a Jewish name. You can pick Sarah or Ruth.鈥� Sofi paused and looked into the room, 鈥淣ice to meet you again. My name is Sarah. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.鈥�
Sofi told the students of how people converging in her community鈥攖he Samaritan, the Jew, the Muslim鈥攚ere arguing over land: 鈥淭hey decided to ask the land. The Earth was quiet and then said, 鈥業 am not sure to whom I belong, but I know the three of you, you belong to me.鈥欌�� And in that moment, I saw how many of my students belonged to the storyteller. I saw their rapt faces, their brows furrowed as they tried to figure out the instruments鈥� magic. I knew the next day, they would reach for what noise they could make, what rhythms they could find in pencils and tables, the ripple of paper, their collective voice.
I thought of the stories they might tell now, of their families, their culture, what they hold in their hands as true representation of their selves and their songs. The truth is, we need to provide these opportunities for our students. We can鈥檛 let them keep thinking the story belongs strictly to the page.
Molly Sutton Kiefer聽is the author of the full-length lyric essay Nestuary聽and three poetry chapbooks. She is publisher at Tinderbox Editions, and her work appears in Orion, The Rumpus, and Women鈥檚 Studies Quarterly, among others. She lives and teaches in Minnesota.