Dr. Ilaheva Tua’one
I dare say it has been months since you’ve seen my words. My tears stain the cushion upon which my laptop doth perch.
Surely, you’ve heard by now that I am the new Kraemer Family Library Storytelling Professor, and it is true, I will not—nay—shall not deny it. For the next three years, I and the Library will intertwine our interests in decoloniality, indigeneity, orality, aurality, visuality, community and—free food.
Yes, darling reader, I see before me a great series of events centered on Storytelling. I see before me a great center, the Ent, and within the Ent, a black box theater, the Osborne, when on October 20th, at 6pm, storytellers will share a LIBERATION-themed story, 4-6 minutes long, competing for a cash prize. Yes, and the winner of this cash prize will receive $150. Yes, reader, and even the second and the third-place stories will win a cash prize, too. And yes, reader, these stories could be yours and the winner could be you, yes. And this event will be called The Purr Storytelling Hour.
How I long for the Spring!, oh reader! For in the Spring we will have Storytelling ‘round the fireside. Yes, and it will be a great Local Storyteller. And with their stories they will bring and impart knowledge of their own storytelling cultures, to widen the ways of knowing and re-indigenize ways of seeing and being.
But all of these events would be nothing—nothing!—without you, you and your embodied participation; your stories—oh your stories!—imagined or real, laconic or loquacious, dismal or delirious—tell them, reader—unburden yourself.
I fear, sweet reader, that it will be months before you read my words again, which is why, oh my wonderful reader, it is important, that I see you in person, and you tell me your story. Until then, goWEST.
Ever, ‘Ilaheva Tua’one