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Writing to Create Change:
“The Stories We Tell” debuts at the Chicago
Cultural Center.
We believe that every woman's story has power and purpose, which is why The Voices and Faces Project recently launched "The Stories We Tell," the country's first testimonial writing workshop for survivors of sexual violence, domestic violence and trafficking. The workshop was co-created by R. Clifton Spargo, an award-winning fiction writer and Arts Fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and our Voices and Faces Project creative initiatives team.
Over the course of our two-day workshop, which debuted at the Chicago Cultural Center in March, workshop
participants considered testimonial writing by Sandra Cisneros, Charlotte Pierce-Baker, Primo Levi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Adrienne Rich, among others, and took part in a series of innovative writing exercises. "I am still reeling from what an incredible experience this workshop was for me," noted one of our participants in the post-workshop evaluation. "The instructors created an atmosphere of intellectual challenge and engaged and inspired learning, and a connection to a greater purpose. Most striking was how balanced the educational component was with the emotionally supportive environment."
Why testimonial writing matters.
According to the World Health Organization, over one billion women worldwide have been victims of some form of gender-based violence. Language too often becomes a tool for avoiding this painful truth. So the devastation that is childhood sexual abuse becomes simply "a family affair," the international trafficking of women and girls merely "the world's oldest profession," and rape and torture during armed conflict part of the inevitable, regrettable "messiness of war." The stories that come out of our Voices and Faces Project testimonial writing workshop do something very different with language. They take us close — at times, painfully close — to the experiences of women who have lived through violence. They show us that behind every social injustice there is a deeply personal story.
Read work created during our two-day
writing workshop.
We are grateful to Verizon Wireless, Art Works for Change and Joyful Heart Foundation for their support of the pilot run of our two-day workshop.
To find out more about bringing “The Stories We Tell” to your city or region, or to support this first-of-its-kind program, email us.
