The Ethics of Telling Other People’s Stories
Long Story Short. The ethical conversation of telling others’ stories comes down to power, profit, and participation.
Every book I’ve written has, in one way or another, featured the stories of other people. My most recent books—I Am Not Your Enemy and Where the River Bends—narrated stories of traumatized people in conflict and traumatized people in prison. I spent many, many hours thinking through the ethics around how to tell their stories well.
It’s not uncomplicated. Writing other people’s stories is like walking through a minefield. This is especially true if you’re a white man like me, because white men like me have profited for a long time by stealing stories from other people and capitalizing on the power of those narratives.
For me, the ethics of storytelling primarily deal with questions of power. By virtue of the fact that I was publishing their stories in my book, I had the primary power by default. To balance this, I needed to address two major issues:
Profit
Participation
I was not writing my books to make a living off other people’s stories. Writing has never been a bill-paying venture for me. And still, if I were to make any money at all off a project that in large part narrated other people’s experiences, then I had to be sure they benefited as well. The get-off-easy perspective would say that providing a platform for their stories to be told is how they benefit. But unless you are publishing a best-seller, this is almost never true. If the author is profiting financially, the subjects should as well.
When it comes to participation, I considered two things. First, fully informed consent; and second, feedback on stories before publication. I wanted to be sure everyone I wrote about knew exactly why I was speaking with them and what might be done with their stories, and second, that they recognized themselves in the way I narrated them and agreed to being represented in that way.
As an example, this is how I handled all this for I Am Not Your Enemy:
Each person I spoke with knew the parameters of the project and that I was recording what they said. Some of the people I spoke with were happy for their stories to be used on social media, but did not want to appear in a book. I, of course, respected that, and their stories weren’t published. Each story that appeared in the book appeared with the expressed consent of the person I spoke with.
Since I recorded every conversation I had during my travel, the quotations from each person are verbatim what they said to me. As much as I can, I’m sharing with you their stories in their own words. I sent each person the chapter containing their story in order to elicit editorial feedback. Whatever changes they requested to their story were immediately implemented without pushback.
Finally, I offered honorariums from my book advance to each person whose story appeared in the final publication, and I am donating a portion of all future proceeds to the three major organizations with whom I partnered while traveling.
What do you think of this approach? What other issues must be considered when narrating others’ stories?
