I fundamentally believe that marginalized folx are the best and the original storytellers.

Women, queer and trans folx, poor folx, elders, disabled folx:

We are the originators of gossip, gather rounds, and healing circles. Telling stories has always been about survival, intellectual transmission, and love for us.

We tell stories when we are denied access to one another.

We tell stories to leave an archive for those who come after us.

Whether we are organizers, teachers, service workers, nurses, or computer programmers, we tell stories.

I always think about the Combahee River Collective literally having to write into their feminist statement that they were writing the statement as a means of entering the archive, of telling their own story.

Audre Lorde taught us that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" by showing how Black queer women are frequently unable to write their own stories. It is white queer women who dominate the narrative.

Having a story and having the power to be the one who tells it are very different things.

Storytelling is our first tradition. Our stories are a source of power.

I want to emphasize that support of marginalized storytelling means seeking out voices of folx who are non-normative and non-mainstream. It means seeing those experiences as valid and legitimate.

How have you supported a Black, Brown, Indigenous, queer, trans, disabled, poor, fat, undocumented, and/or woman storyteller today?