// Category: Commentary

Gender is a story we tell ourselves
The first time I read Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit, I was captivated by the worldbuilding and the story’s overarching military conflict. Ninefox Gambit is a space opera about a female soldier and the undead male general whose spirit possesses her and, although the author is trans, the story has no explicitly nonbinary or trans…

We all have narrative power
Narrative is shaped in conversations. Here’s how a meeting with a Ukrainian cab driver in New York clarified one person’s identity.
What listening to Rusty Mae Moore taught me about narrative change
The story of Rusty Mae Moore and Chelsea Goodwin shows us how the strongest narratives are complex and woven through the richness of life.

Five films we’re watching at Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival starts next week, January 20th, 2022, with incredible storytelling on tap. Here are five films we’ll be watching.

A 2021 narrative reading list to launch your 2022
The articles, essays, resources, podcasts and more that made us think about how narrative change is working as we head into 2022.

Narrative Organizing: How we shift power towards justice
Narrative organizing is the act of building, creating and using narrative to shift power towards justice, equity and democracy. Here we look at why we connect narrative to organizing. We will describe narrative organizing and highlight some of the practices and skills we have found necessary to do narrative organizing.

Terms of Abuse: White Supremacy, Structural Racism and White Nationalism
Scot Nakagawa guides us through the cultural and legal systems of white supremacy, structural racism and white nationalism to find new narrative power.

Systems Language for Narrative Power
Our systems language too often disempowers people. Putting people into systems stories as proactive agents of change is a skill we can practice and improve to create more powerful narrative change.

How to do Intersectionality
Getting intersectional analysis right is an important piece of the narrative puzzle. Here are great examples of intersectional organizing to learn from.
Facing Race: A National Conference 2022
Two weeks ago, Narrative Initiative took our goodies to the Facing Race conference in Phoenix. The conference is sponsored by my former organization, Race Forward, so this was my first chance to see old friends in person since 2020. As always, this conference crowd is multi-everything kind, loving, joyful and determined. There’s no better place…