Essay: The Power of Storytelling
Building bridges across deep divides
Our country is deeply divided, and an election season can reveal how deep those divides truly are — or seem to be. Sometimes the differences that separate us are skin deep; other times they are ideals that define the core of our identities. And we’ve become good at avoiding hard subjects, because talking about them can make the divides seem worse.
At Plymouth State University’s IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access) Center, we’ve discovered that talking about difficult or controversial topics can be healing when done with mutual respect, and when we share and listen to personal stories.
After attending a recent Interfaith Leadership Summit on “Building Bridges in Higher Education” to cultivate pluralism in the classroom, Assistant Director of the IDEA Center Paige Paradise helped to create a new group learning session offered by the center’s Diversity Education program called “Building Bridges Across Deep Divides.” It uses the power of personal storytelling to get beyond opposing opinions, heated debates and ad hominem attacks, and instead focus on the reasons we feel the way we feel and the things that make us all human.
How it works: Participants begin the sessions establishing “shared community values.” Doing this helps keep the conversation from veering too far off course by setting expectations that everyone agrees to respect. These community values often include the importance of creating a welcoming environment, remaining engaged, speaking and listening, confidentiality, curiosity, embracing growth from discomfort, owning your own truth, humility, and self-awareness. The community values can be individualized to suit each group.
After values are set, we engage in a listening activity, which is a test to see how good we all are at effective listening; it typically involves going around the room and asking participants a question regarding a memory, a favorite meal or a reason why participants made a certain life choice. This simple activity allows participants to practice active listening and storytelling. It also usually reveals, when we assess participants’ recall compared to how well they thought they did, that we often overestimate our ability to be effective listeners.
Next, we do an exercise called “Lay it on the Line,” during which the facilitator reads a prompt and participants may agree, disagree or remain neutral. These prompts usually start as something relatively easy and somewhat humorous. like “Dunkin Donuts over Starbucks any day of the week,” and get more challenging and controversial as the session continues. Eventually, we get to prompts such as, “The system is to blame for the cycle of poverty, not individual people in poverty.” To demonstrate their opinions, participants must physically move their bodies to a space in the room that showcases whether they agree, disagree or remain neutral regarding the facilitator’s statement. This way, they can visually identify people who disagree with their position. Participants then partner with two to three other people who represent opposing opinions, and each person shares a story that explains their opinion on the statement. Participants are not allowed to simply share facts or even defend their opinions without first sharing a personal story. Why? Because debating facts and opinions on controversial topics deepens the divide. Storytelling, on the other hand, builds bridges.
The end goal is not to convince other people to agree with your way of thinking (or vice versa) but to better understand other people’s perspectives. We’ve facilitated these sessions with several different groups on our campus, and the overwhelming response has been positive. Folks have been blown away by the power of sharing personal stories that frame their thinking around controversial issues. We often hear that, when stories are shared, people with opposing opinions find they have much more in common than they realized.
We can each take this lesson and apply it, even in small ways, to our daily lives. We can choose to listen, to share our stories, and to build bridges.
Bigotry and hate are behaviors that most would say are unacceptable, and most of us would say that we don’t discriminate, are not bigots and don’t hate others. Yet these behaviors persist. But why? Is it only that “other people” are bad, and we are good? The truth is that categorizing people as bad or good is also unhelpful; we all make bad decisions and good decisions.
As Ibram X. Kendi, Ph.D., author of “How to Be an Antiracist,” says, “No one arrives at being an antiracist. It is a moment-by-moment decision.” I think the same is true for bridge-builders. No one arrives at being a bridge-builder — a lofty title that seems to carry a heavy, overwhelming burden. One moment, we might make a poor decision, and through action or inaction, we create a deeper divide between ourselves and others. The next moment, we may take a brave step and reach out to build bridges, even if it is as simple as listening to someone else’s story. When we think of it this way, it is much less overwhelming and more achievable.
If everyone could be intentional about this approach and take small actions to connect — to share our stories and listen to others’ stories — just think how we might stitch together what has been torn asunder across this country. It won’t happen overnight, it will take many years, but little by little, it can truly make a difference.
This article is featured in the winter 2024 issue of 603 Diversity.
603 Diversity’s mission is to educate readers of all backgrounds about the exciting accomplishments and cultural contributions of the state’s diverse communities, as well as the challenges faced and support needed by those communities to continue to grow and thrive in the Granite State.
