A Quote by Brandon Victor Dixon

Telling diverse stories is at the heart of our culture. — © Brandon Victor Dixon
Telling diverse stories is at the heart of our culture.
I wish we could all have a telling room, a place where we go to tell our stories and listen to the stories of others; in our culture, the telling room might be around the dinner table or in the car on a long trip.
Our stories arise from our hearts and our souls. In this sense, telling our stories becomes a sacred gesture, opening a clear way to that deep, ecstatic center where we are most uniquely our selves, individual and unique, and yet are ourselves, joined together at the heart.
All the excuses that people in power used to make for not telling diverse stories or including diverse people, they've proven to be false.
My real purpose in telling middle-school students stories was to practice telling stories. And I practiced on the greatest model of storytelling we've got, which is "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey." I told those stories many, many times. And the way I would justify it to the head teacher if he came in or to any parents who complained was, look, I'm telling these great stories because they're part of our cultural heritage. I did believe that.
All of us somehow felt that the next battleground was going to be culture. We all felt somehow that our culture had been stolen from us-by commercial forces, by advertising agencies, by TV broadcasters. It felt like we were no longer singing our songs and telling stories, and generating our culture from the bottom up, but now we were somehow being spoon-fed this commercial culture top down.
I think diverse stories are just stories. I don't think 'diverse' is an add-on package. Things that are not diverse are weird because that's not accurate.
Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories - and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.
Marvel does a fantastic job about bringing human stories - because you're telling big stories with a heart at the centre of it - and that's what connects all of the characters to our audience members.
Storytelling is how we survive, when there's no feed, the story feeds something, it feeds the spirit, the imagination. I can't imagine life without stories, stories from my parents, my culture. Stories from other people's parents, their culture. That's how we learn from each other, it's the best way. That's why literature is so important, it connects us heart to heart.
The language of the culture also reflects the stories of the culture. One word or simple phrasal labels often describe the story adequately enough in what we have termed culturally common stories. To some extent, the stories of a culture are observable by inspecting the vocabulary of that culture. Often entire stories are embodied in one very culture-specific word. The story words unique to a culture reveal cultural differences.
We made a commitment to making diverse stories with diverse characters brought to life by diverse artists.
We love being told good stories, and we love telling good stories, and all of our energy and our effort and our thought and our passion goes into telling the best story that we can.
So I found myself telling my own stories. It was strange: as I did it I realised how much we get shaped by our stories. It's like the stories of our lives make us the people we are. If someone had no stories, they wouldn't be human, wouldn't exist. And if my stories had been different I wouldn't be the person I am.
It has been said, "History is written by the victors." I take this to mean we can make ourselves victorious by writing, and then rewriting our own stories. In a country and culture so dominated by media, by the manipulation of words and stories, telling the tales of people whose stories historically have not been told is a radical act and I believe an act that can change the world and help rewrite history.
I don't think it's going to be possible for the next generation of writers to tell stories without telling stories about telling stories.
The heart will listen when the eyes are closed. The heart will hear when the mind is shut. The heart will move you when you feel you have nothing left. Stories talk to the heart. Our stories will rescue the heart of America.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!