Our Stories Become Our Culture
What Stories Do You Tell?
The tag line of the original production of the musical HAMILTON was, “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”
I was reminded of this as we enter a major holiday period. Which holidays that you celebrate tell your story?
This is why there are Thanksgiving decorations all over the place, and the day itself is a national holiday. This is a function of numerical superiority: the more people there are to tell the story, the more entrenched in the culture the story becomes.
Let’s Share More Diverse Stories
In the United States this means that Thanksgiving is celebrated with Pilgrims having a higher pride of place than indigenous peoples. It means that Christmas is celebrated rather than Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or the Winter Solstice – and our New Year begins on January first, not in February.(like Chinese New Year).
This will continue to happen unless some of us who are in the majority insist that other people’s stories be told alongside our own.
The reason Rhymes Over Beats exists is to help tell the stories for communities that do not have a numerical superiority in the culture.
We are here to help tell those stories.
Please join with us. Bring us your stories, and on #GivingTuesday (or any day) support our work whenever and however you can
