Arthur W. Frank opens The Wounded Storyteller with the observation that experiencing a serious illness is like discovering “the destination and map [one] had used to navigate before were no longer useful” (1). I skimmed through Frank’s book a couple of weeks ago when Paul recommended it to us as a foundational work in medical humanities, and then proceeded to largely forget about it as our projects took up more of our time. Yet I couldn’t help but think of its opening line, when, yesterday at the last minute before our final shoot, we received some disheartening news—information that forced us to reevaluate the entire vision we had for our film.
I don’t mean to say my experience with this logistical setback is equivalent to the visceral, serious disruptions faced by people with debilitating diseases. Nevertheless, I think Frank’s framing is an interesting lens to think through what happened, given that our film was going to be about, well, telling the story of someone who had TB, which in her case, was a very serious illness. At that moment, the map we thought we were going to use to chart out this person’s story was thrown out the window, along with a clear view of our final destination. In other words, we were caught in what Frank calls a “narrative wreck”: when the “present is not what the past was supposed to lead up to, and the future is scarcely thinkable” (55).
Frank argues that ill (or previously ill) people can restore coherence to their lives by telling “self-stories”: narratives through which people reclaim agency over changing identities and make sense of their experiences on their own terms (55). People thus tell their stories not only to share their experiences with others, but to be witnesses of their own self-becoming—to “reaffirm that [they are] still there, as an audience for [themselves].” (56) This reflexive element adds another ethical dimension to storytelling. The recipients of these stories not only have a responsibility to bear witness to the tellers’ suffering—their listening is what enables the sick to carve out their identities from the narrative wreckage they are left with.
Considering this latter point shed light on what was especially painful about our film’s setback. Over the course of production, our subject repeatedly reaffirmed to us that she wished to share her story of living with TB in order to give others in her position a source of hope. Her focus was on the others she could uplift. Yet, although she never said this to us directly, we also knew how much seeing her story told in the strongest way possible would mean for reaffirming her own sense of self as a young person who had faced immensely difficult circumstances. I don’t mean that we were giving her a chance to reclaim her identity she wouldn’t have otherwise gotten—we simply had a basic responsibility to do justice to her story once she had trusted us with it. In this way, hearing that we would be unable to move forward with our original vision for our film felt like we were letting her down. That was what stung the most.
“The moral genius of storytelling is that each, teller and listener, enters the space of the story for the other” (18). This “moral genius” should be handled with care. Being beset by setback after setback made me realize just how entangled my own story had become with the story we were trying to tell. To be honest, the thought that we could potentially be left with just the narrative wreckage, with no coherent product to show for our time here, threw into question some previously comfortable aspects of my own identity, my ability, and my motivation. Interestingly, this experience of depersonalization made me more attuned to myself on a physical level as I finally came to terms with just how out of sorts my body had been feeling through the stress of the past week. Frank understood this relationship when he wrote that “the moment of witness in the story crystallizes a mutuality of need, when each is for the other” (25). Despite the professional distance we put between our personal narratives and those of our subjects, sometimes the common interdependence that is still inevitably formed between teller and listener breaks through the surface. Our subject was a young person someone trying to figure out who they were, but I shouldn’t have forgotten that so was I.
Recognizing this mutuality can prompt some tough questions. Was I invested in this project because I felt a genuine responsibility to tell our subject’s story, or because I wanted an opportunity to prove something to myself? I’m realizing that resorting to these kinds of all-or-nothing framings is, at the end of the day, just bad storytelling. The real picture is more complicated.
The most powerful moment in The Wounded Storyteller for me is this line: “the stories we tell about our lives are not necessarily those lives as they were lived, but these stories become our experience of those lives” (22). It’s strange to consider how much of my own identity is based on stories I repeatedly tell about my life—stories that have inevitably been embellished and sharpened over the years to fit into existing self-perceptions. Stories that are outgrowths of others’ self-stories. Stories that I may associate more with myself than the actual facts of what happened. I wonder how I will look back on this summer in future years, whether I will tell the story with nostalgia, frustration, or laughter while holding back tears. Then again, perhaps I don’t need to wait that long to find out. The awareness that one is in the midst of an unfolding story gives one the agency to affect it, or at least face the plot beats with a clearer awareness.
Narrative wreckage is profoundly disorienting—it can shake the very foundations of one’s self-story. In these moments, I think we should take a page out of the stories of the people around us. Leaning on my fellow team members and the wonderful individuals we’ve been able to meet over the course of making our film has helped me regain my footing and start to imagine new possibilities for the narrative we will ultimately create. Yes, the map and destination are undoubtedly different from where we started—perhaps with a scope and timeline that is larger than the bounds of this program. Nevertheless, I still have faith in the story—hers and ours. I’m looking forward to sharing it.