Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (Summer 2011)

This study examined storytelling practices among young male adults from the Sudan and how it shaped their literacy practices. Their displacement as a result of the horrific civil war in the region morphed their traditional storytelling to reflect their new communities and literacies in the United States.

Significantly, Perry considers the importance of “What individuals and communities do with stories and how they talk about storytelling” what she distinguished as talking about storytelling and enacted storytelling. (p.333).

It was clear that Chol, Ezra and Francis attached great importance to storytelling and to literacy. In their native Sudan they had experienced literacy practices that focused more on individuals and elders. These orphans had heard and told traditional stories covering histories in the community. Their storytelling practices did not involve any print literacies. Ezra explained the reasoning for this: a lack of schooling and a means to keep the community alive ensuring “customs and culture were passed from one generation to the next” (p. 334). They had engaged in oral literature at school that focused primarily on traditional African tribe stories and dialects, which was also important to their learning community. Here storytelling also provided “a meaningful context for literacy learning” (p.335) and a clear sense of identity for the young men.

The metamorphosis that took place in the orphans’ storytelling was two fold. In a new community in the United States they all continued to talk about and enact stories but also engaged in print form. Some of the stories were “hypothetical, generic” but carried meaning for them and their culture. However, many of the stories that they told were true and were based on their experiences in the refugee camps. Therefore, the purpose of the storytelling changed. There was a different audience, different issues and different “media of communication” (p338). It became “transformed storytelling”.

Whilst the need to maintain a sense of identity through storytelling was important to the boys, they were also now actively using their storytelling “to push for change” and were critiques, advocates and persuaders in their need to share life experiences. This then became a powerful motivator for the young men to engage in print literacies: Chol writes about his experiences and wants to publish his autobiography whilst Ezra writes for a newspaper. These new literacies enabled the group to not only develop their English language abilities but to share their storytelling beyond communities and out into the wider world. As Perry revealed “literacy was the key to improving their lives and the future of Sudan…. being literate meant having access to power”(p.320)

It was interesting to read about Ezra’s concerns about the consequences of no long experiencing traditional storytelling: new people would not know how to ‘behave’ and would be lost. As we have discussed in our previous readings, the importance of a balance of where you are from and what you are transitioning to are of equal importance to our sense of culture and identity. The young men offset this disconnect of feeling that they would not ‘learn’ from traditional story anymore by using transformed storytelling to continue to communicate history and culture and utilize it for political statement. In effect they constructed new identities encompassing aspects of both their native and new communities using new literacies to do so.

As educators, this study and the poetry of Lamont Carey convey the importance of the power of literacy and providing authentic opportunities to share stories in our classrooms, to engage not only refugees but all students who have a story to tell. Storytelling is a necessary and powerful tool that teachers are in a unique position to give to student ‘voice’. It can counteract those students who say they ‘can’t read, can’t write, can’t spell’ and succeed in developing a strong sense of self.