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How To Become A Ghost
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From: Norma Jean Sawicki <nsawicki_at_nyc.rr.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2014 23:43:01 -0500
That would be painful to learn on the page , let alone a first public storytelling performance. A story about people wins out every time…The Chieftains…such good company! Norma Jean
How did you come to decide to tell How I Became a Ghost in first person, rather than third person? Norma Jean
Twenty powerful teachers gave me a lesson I will never forget. They walked out on my first public storytelling performance of “Trail of Tears.” Told in third person, the story opened with “stump-standing” Tim sharing uncomfortable truths. I am forever grateful to those walkers. I retreated from the story for two years, and when I emerged from the cave of creativity, I carried the knowledge that if the audience cares for the characters, they care what happens to them.
I opened the story with the line, “I remember my mother.” The thirty-minute tale is now performed as a first-person narrative, and only ten minutes into the story do listeners realize the story is not about Tim Tingle, but rather a ten-year old Choctaw boy watching his town destroyed, followed by the journey.
This story was included in “Walking the Choctaw Road,” and over ten years, redreamed, expanded, and reborn as the novel, “How I Became A Ghost.” Every year since 1993, I have returned to Choctaw Nation, Mississippi. I drive through the countryside without an agenda, other than getting to know the land, the plants, the swamps, the rivers, and the Choctaws who have become my friends. The boy who walked comes alive, and when I return home, I carry his story––their story––with me.
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2014 23:43:01 -0500
That would be painful to learn on the page , let alone a first public storytelling performance. A story about people wins out every time…The Chieftains…such good company! Norma Jean
How did you come to decide to tell How I Became a Ghost in first person, rather than third person? Norma Jean
Twenty powerful teachers gave me a lesson I will never forget. They walked out on my first public storytelling performance of “Trail of Tears.” Told in third person, the story opened with “stump-standing” Tim sharing uncomfortable truths. I am forever grateful to those walkers. I retreated from the story for two years, and when I emerged from the cave of creativity, I carried the knowledge that if the audience cares for the characters, they care what happens to them.
I opened the story with the line, “I remember my mother.” The thirty-minute tale is now performed as a first-person narrative, and only ten minutes into the story do listeners realize the story is not about Tim Tingle, but rather a ten-year old Choctaw boy watching his town destroyed, followed by the journey.
This story was included in “Walking the Choctaw Road,” and over ten years, redreamed, expanded, and reborn as the novel, “How I Became A Ghost.” Every year since 1993, I have returned to Choctaw Nation, Mississippi. I drive through the countryside without an agenda, other than getting to know the land, the plants, the swamps, the rivers, and the Choctaws who have become my friends. The boy who walked comes alive, and when I return home, I carry his story––their story––with me.
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Received on Wed 19 Feb 2014 10:43:40 PM CST
