Stories Of Our People

Mainstream fiction—including movies, plays and TV, as well as books—tends to erase social justice activists. If we do appear, we’re often depicted us as coldhearted, silly, dogmatic, extremist, and so forth. Being stereotyped and marginalized, whether consciously or not, hurts us as people and hinders our work. We need stories portraying us as three-dimensional humans, woven with authentic details—funny, inspiring, surprising, suspenseful—from our real experiences. Since we are the ones who know what it’s like to be us, we need to create our own literature. We have a lot of exciting raw material!

In a SOOP workshop, participants write brief vignettes of activist experiences that affected them personally. We toss these into our cauldron as ingredients for fiction. Each participants picks one or more and weaves them into a new story.

Depending on how long we work, we come up with drafts or complete stories, or even the germs of novels. We hope participants will join our FFA Writers Circle to keep going.

Please fill out the contact info  to host a SOOP workshop, or participate in the Writers Circle.