Introduction to the Special Issue: Global Storytelling

Abstract

In an age of transmigration and border-crossings, many academics and professional storytellers have looked to storytelling as a way to broaden and deepen our participation in a global community. "Global storytelling" has emerged as a term to identify individuals and projects that engage the act of storytelling to create culturally responsible interaction across borders. Border-crossing involves vulnerability, trust, mutual listening, bodily investment, an ethical imperative of respect, and a desire to learn all of which are inherent to storytelling. In the academic world, global storytelling scholarship helps us to question the role of power in international story arenas and the constructed nature of cultural storytelling. It provides us with ethical models for cross-cultural engagement, as well as cautionary tales of those who "crossed the line" in their border hopping. The best of this scholarship lives both in the trenches and on the page engaging in relationships with others and promoting dialogues that provoke, incite, and move us toward a greater understanding of how cultures story themselves and how they narrate their own locales, folklore, and family histories. In the festival world, tellers and audiences are connecting across the globe in exciting patterns. Madrid's festival in 2010 brought tellers from Venezuela, Chile, Cuba, the United States, and Mexico. Festivals in Columbia, Cuba, Argentina, and Mexico gather tellers from throughout Latin America. Penang's children's storytelling festival 2010 brought tellers from India, Thailand, Japan, Indonesia, and the United States. The Beyond the Border festival in Wales brings in epic performers from around the world each year. The festival in 2012 features a Kazakh epic singer and a group of Iranian poets and musicians. Partially because of U.S. visa barricades and partially because of our reliance on English language audiences, the United States is less involved in this international movement of tellers than much of the world. However, North American tellers are traveling abroad in ever-increasing numbers, and international tellers are coming to visit the United States and Canada. The international website Red International de Cuentacuentos (www.cuentacuentos.eu) is taking the lead in connecting storytellers worldwide. The National Storytelling Network's Storytelling Magazine has recently added the section "International News." The blog http:// historiasparacambiarelmundo.blogspot.com is promoting an international storytelling day: Historias para Cambiar el Mundo/ Stories to Change the World. In 2012 there were participants from Australia, the United States, Spain, United Kingdom, Brasil, Switzerland, the Dominican