Carmella J. Braniger - Böcker

Critical stories are more than just anecdotes or tales. They are narratives that raconter, or recount, the author’s own experiences, situating them in broader cultural contexts. Just as the autoethnographer situates the self in relation to the “others” of which the self is both a part and from which it is distinct, the critical storyteller situates his or her story of conflict in relation to the broader reality from which the conflict arises. The key is the reality that is being related and the perspective from which it is being shared. In Critical Storytelling in Millennial Times, marginalized, excluded, and oppressed people share insights from their liminality and help readers learn from their perspectives and experiences. Examples of stories in this volume range from undergraduate perspectives on financial aid for college students, to narratives on first-hand police brutality, to heartbreaking tales about addiction, bullying, and the child sex trade in Cambodia. Undergraduate authors relate their stories and pose important questions to the reader about inciting change for the future. Follow along in their journeys and learn what you can do to make a change in your own reality.Contributors are: Ben Brawner, Dwight Brown, Bryce Cherry, Kaytlin Jacoby, Jimmy Kruse, Dean Larrick, Bric Martin, Kara Niles, Claire Parrish, Grace Piper, Claire Prendergast, Alexsenia Ralat, Alec Reyes, Stephanie Simon, S. H. Suits, Katy Swift, Morgan Vogels, and Brittany Walsh.

Critical stories are more than just anecdotes or tales. They are narratives that raconter, or recount, the author’s own experiences, situating them in broader cultural contexts. Just as the autoethnographer situates the self in relation to the “others” of which the self is both a part and from which it is distinct, the critical storyteller situates his or her story of conflict in relation to the broader reality from which the conflict arises. The key is the reality that is being related and the perspective from which it is being shared. In Critical Storytelling in Millennial Times, marginalized, excluded, and oppressed people share insights from their liminality and help readers learn from their perspectives and experiences. Examples of stories in this volume range from undergraduate perspectives on financial aid for college students, to narratives on first-hand police brutality, to heartbreaking tales about addiction, bullying, and the child sex trade in Cambodia. Undergraduate authors relate their stories and pose important questions to the reader about inciting change for the future. Follow along in their journeys and learn what you can do to make a change in your own reality.Contributors are: Ben Brawner, Dwight Brown, Bryce Cherry, Kaytlin Jacoby, Jimmy Kruse, Dean Larrick, Bric Martin, Kara Niles, Claire Parrish, Grace Piper, Claire Prendergast, Alexsenia Ralat, Alec Reyes, Stephanie Simon, S. H. Suits, Katy Swift, Morgan Vogels, and Brittany Walsh.

Critical stories are narratives that recount the writer’s experiences, situating those experiences in broader cultural contexts. In this volume of Critical Storytelling, marginalized, excluded, and oppressed peoples share insights from their liminality to help readers learn from their perspectives on living from behind invisible bars. Female inmates at Decatur’s Correctional Center and the undergraduate Millikin University students who worked with them come together to give voice to their specific histories of living from behind invisibile bars and pose important questions to the reader about inciting change for the future. Specifically, the voices in this volume seek to expose, analyze, and challenge deeply-entrenched narratives and characterizations of incarcerated women, whose histories are often marked by sexual abuse, domestic violence, poverty, PTSD, a lack of education, housing insecurity, mental illness, and substance addiction. These silenced female inmate voices need to be heard and contextualized within the larger metanarrative of prison literature. Through telling critical stories, these writers attempt to: sustain recovery from trauma, make positive changes and informed decisions, create a real sense of empowerment, strengthen their capacity to exercise personal agency, and inspire audiences to create change far outside the reaches of physical and metaphorical bars.Contributors are: Anonymous, Soren Belle, Megan Batty, Dwight G. Brown, Jr., Sandra Brown, Kathryn Coffey, Kelly Cunningham, Paiten Hamilton, Kathlyn J. Housh, Rebekah Icenesse, Kala Keller, Jelisa Lovette, Bric Martin, Amanda Minetti, Laura Nearing, Angie Oaks, Claire Prendergast, Cara Quiett, J. M. Spence, Noah Villarreal and Alisha Walker.

Critical stories are narratives that recount the writer’s experiences, situating those experiences in broader cultural contexts. In this volume of Critical Storytelling, marginalized, excluded, and oppressed peoples share insights from their liminality to help readers learn from their perspectives on living from behind invisible bars. Female inmates at Decatur’s Correctional Center and the undergraduate Millikin University students who worked with them come together to give voice to their specific histories of living from behind invisibile bars and pose important questions to the reader about inciting change for the future. Specifically, the voices in this volume seek to expose, analyze, and challenge deeply-entrenched narratives and characterizations of incarcerated women, whose histories are often marked by sexual abuse, domestic violence, poverty, PTSD, a lack of education, housing insecurity, mental illness, and substance addiction. These silenced female inmate voices need to be heard and contextualized within the larger metanarrative of prison literature. Through telling critical stories, these writers attempt to: sustain recovery from trauma, make positive changes and informed decisions, create a real sense of empowerment, strengthen their capacity to exercise personal agency, and inspire audiences to create change far outside the reaches of physical and metaphorical bars.Contributors are: Anonymous, Soren Belle, Megan Batty, Dwight G. Brown, Jr., Sandra Brown, Kathryn Coffey, Kelly Cunningham, Paiten Hamilton, Kathlyn J. Housh, Rebekah Icenesse, Kala Keller, Jelisa Lovette, Bric Martin, Amanda Minetti, Laura Nearing, Angie Oaks, Claire Prendergast, Cara Quiett, J. M. Spence, Noah Villarreal and Alisha Walker.

From this set of critical stories emerges a timely confession from marginalized imagined communities at the physical and metaphorical Mexican-American border. These hybrid storytellers create a multivalence of experiences and genres. Composers of this ground-breaking collection draw readers into an affective connection with the borderlands, offering critical examinations of legal status, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, social class, family, and health. Additionally, creative representations across genres explore notions of geography, vulnerability, suffering, trauma, pain as well as joy, healing, and love. By posing questions about loss of innocence, they incite new literary and visual spaces for fusing together fragments of the remains of land, body, and/or being, all the while creating a site of fresh confessions where critical stories are illuminated collages assembled together from within la línea.Contributors are: Kiri Avelar, Irving Ayala, Carmella J. Braniger, Roxana Fragoso Carrillo, Marisa V. Cervantes, Guadalupe Chavez, Julio Enríquez-Ornelas, Liliana Conlisk Gallegos, Verónica Gaona, Andrea Gómez, Filiberto Mares Hernández, Víctor M. Macías-González, Carol Mariano, Ana Silvia Monzón Monterroso, Juana Moriel-Payne, Rachel Neff, Jumko Ogata-Aguilar, José Olivarez, Isabela Ortega, Paul Pedroza, Jorge Omar Ramírez Pimienta, Raphaella Prange, Felipe Quetzalcoatl Quintanilla, Erica Reyes, Fidel García Reyes, Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana and Santiago Vaquera-Vasquez