[SPEAKING IN LAKOTA]
I'm greeting you using traditional kinship terms
in my native language, Oglala Lakota,
and I'm saying hello, how are you.
How's everybody doing?
I want to talk a little bit about storytelling
in general first, before I read from these two novels.
I believe in the power of storytelling to change worlds,
to create worlds, to destroy worlds, because words
have power beyond imagining.
Any of you in this audience could name several stories
that have changed the world.
I have no doubt that the world would be a very different place
if Adolf Hitler had not written "Mein Kampf,"
or if Marx and Engels had not written
the "Communist Manifesto," or Harriet Beecher Stowe
had not written "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"
or if Martin Luther King had not stood
on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August day in 1963,
and addressed the millions of people
standing before him with these words, "I Have a Dream."
These are a few of the big stories and many narratives
that change national perspectives and world
history in major ways.
These are stories that told people
who they were as citizens of countries,
as members of ethnic groups, as privileged people
or as the children of lesser gods.
Some stories argued for inclusion, some for exclusion.
And there are smaller stories, regional stories,
community stories to serve the same purpose.
There are news stories about the loss of auto jobs,
industry jobs in Michigan, and Illinois, and Ohio,
and Indiana, and thousands of connected stories
about that regional event.
There are people who will always remember what they did
and how they managed when they were laid off
from Chrysler Corporation after 17 years of faithful service.
How they lost the retirement, their house, and how they
patch their lives together.
And with the help of their family and their community,
went on.
There are stories about a tornado that
hit a small town in Nebraska, and to cut the Presbyterian
Church and the little strip mall.
And for the rest of their lives, the people of that town
will remember exactly where they were when it hit.
And years later, when that vacant lot is still there,
all we'd grown, people in that community
would drive by and say things to each other
like, I remember when Alice's quilt shop used to be there
before the tornado struck.
And then they might talk about Alice now.
Everyone thought she was a crabby old bat.
But they might also remember and tell
stories about how she always gave fair value for the goods
she sold, and how every night, she
left a pile of Green-a-cat chow on the concrete
behind the store for the torn-eared old stray cat that
lived in the neighborhood.
There are smaller stories too, like the stories
of the local high school basketball
team that made it to the state playoffs,
and won in the final two seconds from the shortest
guy on the team, made an unbelievable lucky shot.
And never mind that after that, he
went to college on a scholarship and flunked out,
and now he sells insurance for a living.
He will always be the community hero
for what he did in that two seconds of his entire life.
His story is part of the glue that
binds the community together, that tells them who they are,
what's important and what makes them who they are.
Then there are smaller stories yet, family stories.
To establish our personal identity,
to tell us who we are as individuals,
how we fit into a family, and of what stuff we are made.
These stories began almost before we
began to speak ourselves.
Our parents tell us stories, and I
don't mean the "Bedtime Stories of Dr. Seuss," or the "Green
Eggs and Ham" of Sam-I-Am, but the stories about us.
Your mother probably told you stories
about some of the cute things you did when you were a kid.
And mothers love to tell those stories because they're proof
that you were thinking person.
Now even immature then, but thinking.
You were clever.
And that story that she tells you may subconsciously make you
believe that you are an intelligent person,
and that knowledge is what helps determine
how you meet the challenges of life
with confidence in your intellectual strength in family
stories.
Everyone has family stories that get repeated among siblings,
and parents, and aunts, and uncles, and cousins,
and grandparents.
There may be a story about the ne'er
do well uncle Vincent, who always shows up drunk
at grandma's family Christmas dinner, and says mean things,
and falls into the pumpkin pies.
And everyone dreads his presence but no one throws him
out because he's grandma's son, and she loves him.
And she believes that one day, he's
going to join AA and get sober and become
president of the United States.
[LAUGHTER]
I think everybody's got some of these family members.
If you don't, I got some I can give you, if you just
speak to me after the reading.
I think they grow him on Mars or something,
and then they bring down spaceships, and kind of
sprinkle them around.
[LAUGHS]
And there's a story about cousin Jack, who's
uglier than a movie theater carpet,
spindly legged, crooked nose, not
pleasing to look upon at all.
But somehow, cousin Jack managed to attract
and married a local beauty queen.
It's a thing of wonder, a topic of family discussions,
and those discussions about cousin Jack
and his beautiful wife are really discussions about us.
Excuse me, I have a lozenge in my mouth
because I have a dry throat.
So if I go [COUGHS],, will somebody please run up here
and Heimlich me.
[LAUGHTER]
I would appreciate that.
Thank you.
[LAUGHTER]
These stories about cousin Jack and about Uncle Vincent,
they have messages and themes that go beyond family gossip
to deeper stories.
They might tell you that you come from a family,
where being beautiful may not be necessary for happiness,
or that you shouldn't give up hope,
or that you should never discount the element of luck.
We are created by stories, all of the stories.
The men and narratives of whole world
or national consciousness, the regional stories,
and the local community stories, and the personal childhood
stories, and the family stories, all
go into creating our individual and collective identities
and making us human beings.
You may be remembered for good or for ill,
long after our passage.
A person is not someone who simply
struts and frets his hour up on the stage,
and then is heard no more.
As long as there are stories about us,
even gossip, even if we are only remembered
as the ugly duckling who captured a swan,
or the drunkard who fell into the pumpkin pies,
the grandma's Christmas dinner.
Those are the stories and we were the storytellers.
All of us, everyone tells stories every day.
Even the question, how was school today
is an invitation from a parent to a child to tell a tale.
Most of the stories we tell are about mundane events
that are meant to carry information
or to serve a social function by demonstrating interest
in another person's life.
But all storytellers are not created equal.
Two people can tell the same story,
and the first storyteller, may he like you,
enchant you, and educate you, and elicit tears of sorrow
or tears of joy or laughter.
And another person might tell the same story
and in the back of your head, you're thinking,
Oh god, I wish they'd just stop, and I'd rather
be home sorting my sock drawer.
If it's a written work, the first author
invites you into the story and set you
on a bench like "Forrest Gump" and let you participate.
In the words of Stephen King, you fall through the pages.
Another author may bore you or make
you feel excluded or bar the door to your entrance,
and that isn't always the case of a bad storyteller.
Often, it depends upon who the reader is as a person.
With your own personal canon of literature might be,
what your personal experience might be, and yes, the stories
you read and we're told that make you a unique human being.
Of course, there are some people who couldn't tell a good story
if their life depended on it.
And unfortunately someday, it might.
Of course, there are people who may not even be writers,
but they're great storytellers, and what's the difference?
Why can some people charm you, and others bore you
or even repel or disgust you?
What you needed to be a good writer.
Well, I think there are six things that
are needed to be a good writer, you have to be curious,
you have to be observant about what's going on around you,
you have to have a work ethic, you
have to have attention to craft, you
have to have talent and luck.
And of all the six attributes of a writer than one
that is indispensable, this talent,
if you just look at what gets published
and what's on the "New York Times" bestseller's list,
you can see that's true.
The one that you can't do without is luck.
Willie Nelson was once asked about how much talent
it took for him to write all of the songs that he wrote.
And he said, it takes very little talent.
He said, I'd rather have a little luck than all
of the talent in the world.
And what do I intend with my writing?
Well, first of all, I'm a storyteller.
So I want to entertain first, and of course, there
are always layers of meanings to the stories that I tell,
but if a reader only gets him likes the main story, that's
fine.
If some reader sees something deeper, then I'm glad.
If I have given someone insights into another world,
then I'm happy.
And I am the luckiest person in the world because I
get to do what I love for a living, I get to teach,
and I get to write.