As I think through what kind of storyteller I want to be and how I want to craft, tell and share my stories, I’m revisiting one of my early inspirations: Trinh T. Minh-ha’s “Grandma’s Story” from Woman Native Other. In the second farm film, The Farm, part 2: The Puotinen Women, I matched four different quotations from this chapter with Puotinen storytellers: the farm, Ines Puotinen, Judy Puotinen and me (Sara Puotinen). This morning I looked over some notes for the film and discovered another quotation:
In this chain and continuum, I am but one link. The story is me, neither me nor mine. It does not really belong to me, and while I feel greatly responsible for it, I also enjoy the irresponsibility of the pleasure in the reproduction. No repetition can ever be identical, but my story carries with it their stories, their history, and our story repeats itself endlessly despite our persistence in denying it.
Trinh T. Minh-ha
I want to play with this idea of being responsible and irresponsible. I feel a responsibility to pass on the stories of past generations, but I feel (in bad and good ways) that my passing on of those stories is irresponsible. On one hand, I worry that I don’t know enough, haven’t experienced enough, am not old enough, to tell the stories. On the other hand, I feel exhilarated and inspired by the process of sifting through the accounts, interviews and photos and crafting them into new stories to share with others. I want to tell these stories. In fact, I need to tell these stories.
In thinking about how to incorporate (and hopefully) maintain the tension between being responsible and irresponsible, I want to feature some clips of my sister Anne and my mom discussing the farm and how they could take responsibility for it when it was “their time.” I wonder, is it my time? What does “my time” mean when the farm is no longer in the family and my mom is dead?