I’ve had the pleasure not only of reading your stories but also of hearing some of them as well. I believe you are truly gifted. I must say that for a moment, while reading or listening, I felt the wonderful fascination that we usually relate to childhood, when words have the ability to entrance us, like a powerful spell, and take us somewhere different. I guess I am, too, like the girl from the Butterfly story, always wishing for adventure, always a little bit bored with my life. Stories are hard to resist. Do you believe stories can be like those dangerous butterflies, beautiful and filled with colors, calling us with music beyond our imagination? Can stories be dangerous too, even the ones that seem most innocent? If they are, perhaps we need the elders and the storytellers, to guide us safely through them?
We live in times when people, especially children, do not seem to have the patience to sit down and listen to a story. I worked with a group of children not too long ago, and tried to tell them stories several times. I looked for funny and adventurous tales, tried to tell them in the most dynamical way, but in the matter of minutes the children were all fidgeting on their seats, looking out the window. I was thinking about all this while reading that story about the origin of legends, wondering if we have forgotten to show our children the importance of stories in our lives. And I would like to ask you: have you ever had the problem of an impatient or uncooperative audience? If so, what did you do? As a storyteller, what is the most important thing one should have to make a story come to life?
The tales you’ve written and recorded are about love, about respect, about the origins of things, about who the Cherokee people were and are. They are all about life and what means to be people. But I would like to ask you one last UNFAIR question: If you had to save one and just one story of the Cherokee people, which one would it be?
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