ABSTRACT
For three years (2013–2015), I had the honor of co-presenting with Dr. Lee Bell at the National Conference for Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education (NCORE) on her Storytelling Project (STP) model. I remember feeling empowered and excited that I had read about and now experienced a structured, yet fluid, way to engage people in telling stories about race and racism and how these constructions intersect with other aspects of our person-hood. Each time we presented the model at a pre-conference institute, it was more powerful for me than the previous experience because I had begun to see myself as a race storyteller and embraced ways the model could positively impact my pedagogy and practice. Since those years, I have used the model in my own classroom at Teachers College, Columbia University, and watched and listened as students, often for the first time, publicly tell personal stories about how race, racism, power, and other constructs and systems have impacted their lives. It is fortuitous that the second edition of this remarkable book is being released during a time when the sociopolitical context of our nation is at a low point—when stories cast in the media about race are too often single-sided, stereotypical stories that flatten the lives and experiences of people of color, women, those in our immigrant communities, and others of us who are most affected by inequality, injustice, and bias.
