ABSTRACT

To begin with, defining what is meant by narrative is a challenge. Of course narratives are created and understood within a particular sociocultural context, so that definitions of narrative vary over time and between places and individuals. Generally, however, historical narratives are assumed to share certain elements with fictional stories and such nonfictional accounts as biographies, autobiographies, and traditional histories. They linguistically represent past experience, either real or imagined. Events in these narratives are expected to be connected-to have some point or conclusion. This may seem simple enough, but there is still quite a bit of difference between the grand narratives that present the rise and fall of empires and the narratives of individual agency Jennifer and others find so appealing, or even the more narrative textbooks now being published. And, because all narratives are created within a particular sociocultural context, no historical narrative (or any other genre for that matter) can possibly tell readers “the way it really was.” Instead, narratives shape and interpret lives and events from the past, embedding them in a particular culture and often making direct parallels to the present. Consider, for example, how narrative shapes the events surrounding the destruction of Hiroshima in World War II. Perhaps you are familiar with Eleanor Coerr’s book Sadako. (You may have read an earlier version, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes.) Coerr does not simply lay out a chain of events and let readers make what interpretation they may. Instead, she carefully anchors her story in the details of one child’s life and death to make a point about the present. The story has a clear moral-“This is our cry, this is our prayer: Peace in the world”—that resonates in the present as it gives meaning to the past. Compare this to Jennifer’s experience with her history textbook: “The social studies book doesn’t give you a lot of detail. You don’t imagine yourself there because they’re not doing it as if it were a person.” For Jennifer, as for many children with whom we have worked, a narrative acts “as if it were a person” by particularizing and personalizing history. As Eleanor Coerr explains, “If you tell people that 200,000 died as a result of the bombing of Hiroshima, it doesn’t have as much impact as the story of one little girl.”