Parable of the Storytellers By Jawanza Barial-Lumumba There’s a power to our parables – in all we’ve ever heard plenty and told many that are instilled into our essence. Some stories you keep for yourself, those with pains and pangs, scarce of touch. Tales held within negate many truths for many reasons, but you should be the only storyteller to declare your own tale: this mustn’t change. So often we peel apart parallel parables – not all were in the same room as Giovanni’s, and yet, knew that duality sustains its visceral relevance; the isolation you witness from the witless in The Bluest Eye demand change to see the broken pieces of youth; and Beloved changes of loss undoing all you know to be true; and you see you in both Orxy and Crake, while The Giver gifts you the reflection of a muted, diluted society, where you find only those unlike you are left alive. Stories are forever lasting. Though they can be freeing, parental parables sell us “truth”— an unquestionable truth, fused with values, their law is your reality, denouncing our own evolving world. Change is infused throughout our stories, but, my God what others see and believe about you without knowing you, is the death of your true story. The ink of a storyteller is always change. [Author's Note: This golden shovel poem originates from a prayer in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower: “All that you touch / You Change. / All that you Change / Changes you. / The only lasting truth / Is Change. / God Is Change.”]
Parable of the Storytellers
A golden shovel poem around parables
