Theme Essay by Cynthia Staples
Why Words Sometimes Reveal More
Storytelling is in my blood.
I grew up in a Southern household where stories were told quite often. My mother encouraged my brothers and me to tell her in great detail what we experienced at school, at work, and during our travels. As she grew older, she didn’t leave the house much, and so we brought the world to her. By her reactions, she shaped our perspectives and views. Standing with her on our back porch, I learned to delight in the dawn and to recognize the beauty of stars sparkling in the night.
I told her I wanted to be a storyteller. But while I was a little chatterbox at home, in public I was shy. For a long time, I believed the only way I could tell stories was through writing.
That philosophy felt especially true after my mother passed away in 1998. With her death, I lost my voice for a while. I still spoke, and I still interacted with people, but I didn’t say much. In a journal that I began that year, a journal where I could still tell my mom stories of my day, I wrote to her, “‘Talk to me! Talk to me! Talk to me!’ That’s what people keep saying. But what is it that they want me to say?”
I sought the peace of silence, but I couldn’t submerge the storyteller forever. I began to write stories and to share them publicly. These were not stories I would have told to my mother. Well, I might have shared the ones involving fields of blue butterflies and sassy young ladies taking on Death in a chess game. But the ones involving sex…not so much. All the stories, whether rated G or X, were full of color. I was painting with words. And it was freeing.
In time, I let go of fantasy worlds and began to focus on nonfiction. I loved my dragons and vampires, but many people wrote of such characters. Few could write of my mother. And no one but me could write of my visit to Thailand as an African American woman and how my brown skin evoked such different responses in my travels.
My mother’s ear is gone, but I can share with others what I see and feel through my writing and through photography, which I see as a complement to my writing. Since childhood, I’ve marveled at the beautiful images to be found in the world, many of which are so fleeting. With camera in hand, I try to capture them.
Sometimes a series of photographs forms a story of its own. They are the shortest of stories, capturing a few seconds or minutes of quiet—ice melting along a riverbank, sunlight striking herbs on the kitchen table, rain falling on a clump of grass. As with my writing, I want to show that no matter how dark, light penetrates and reveals certain glories. In the contrasts, the shadows created, the silhouettes that emerge, unique beauty is revealed.
I choose words over images when I believe they’ll best convey what I wish to share. This is especially true when I’m writing about family and childhood. When I wrote “The Blackest Sheep” about my second-oldest brother, an alcoholic, I did so because words could depict better than pictures the boy I grew up with, the man who taught me how to make a fist.
With words, I can express how my mother’s touch made me feel, how her voice on the phone could buoy my spirits no matter how bad my day had been. In one of my first published stories, “Wait Until Morning,” I describe how she used her bedroom as sanctuary, thereby teaching me that sometimes everyone needs a bit of solitude.
With words, I can sort through and explore the complexities of the world I see before me now, several decades removed from my childhood. I can write about the homeless man who tells me how he uses the sun and moon to guide him through his day. I can write about the young girl who likes to touch my short curly hair and press her pale flesh to mine as she remarks, “Your skin is darker than mine.” And about our discussion of how beautiful all the colors in the world can be.
If my mother were here, I’d tell her that I’m still shy, but I’ve succeeded in becoming a storyteller. Using writing, photography, and any other art form that calls to me, I tell stories in hopes that they will have meaning to others—and that the people they reach might be inspired to share stories of their own.
Publication Information
- “The Blackest Sheep,” by Cynthia Staples, flashquake, Summer 2002.
Art Information
- “Virginia Rain 3,” “Virginia Rain 1,” and “Virginia Rain 2″ © Cynthia Staples; used by permission
Cynthia Staples is a freelance writer and photographer and a member of the Talking Writing Advisory Board.
“As much as I complain about the cold, I love winter’s light coming through the windows each morning.” — Winter's Light
