Local book shares stories about experiences of gun violence
Sharon Short
Several months after the traumatic mass shooting in Dayton's Oregon District shooting on Aug. 4, 2019, The Dayton International Peace Museum, members of the Dayton community, and The Facing Project began collecting stories from individuals, per the project's website, “with a story to share on the topic of gun violence.”
Kate Geiselman, chair of the Department of English at Sinclair Community College, served on the steering committee of the Facing Project for Dayton as well as an editor of the collection, entitled “Facing Gun Violence: It's Always Close To Home For Someone.”
I chatted with Geiselman at the inception of the project about how it would proceed, and caught up again with her recently to talk about the finished book, which was published on July 28.
Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley and Dayton International Peace Museum Director Kevin Kelly each wrote forewards for the collection. Eighteen writers were paired with 18 storytellers; the writers recorded and transcribed the storytellers' stories of facing gun violence, pared down the stories for length and flow, and sent the written version back to the storytellers for review and approval.
Geiselman's role at first was to recruit storytellers and pair them up with writers.
“The pairing process of storytellers and writers ramped up just as COVID-19 really hit here in our area, in early March,” Geiselman says. “That added a layer of complexity to an already challenging process. It made the ‘facing' part a definite challenge. Part of the goal of Facing Projects on various topics is to allow people to tell their stories one-onone to another human, in person, and have that person capture their story in writing.”
This is a much different dynamic, Geiselman says, than someone writing down their own story.
“Telling the story is much more raw and organic,” Geiselman says. “The writer's job is to then review the raw story, and shape it.”
“The next step after pairing is training for the writers on how to sensitively listen and draw the stories out of storytellers, and how to approach asking questions,” Geiselman explains. “We were scheduled for in-person training on March 16.”
With COVID concerns, the training was switched to
Literary Life
the online Zoom platform.
Geiselman gives credit to Dr. Katherine Rowell, who was a Facing Project coordinator and is a professor of Sociology at Sinclair Community College, for helping project volunteers navigate the technological challenge of quickly switching to online training and, in cases where socially-distanced discussions could not be arranged, online interviews.
“Part of the training for writers is in how to help storytellers if the trauma is fresh or if the storyteller isn't used to telling the story,” Geiselman says.
She served as a writer, and says this was a different experience for her than writing her own essays and stories.
“In this case, it was the writer's job to disappear from the story,” Geiselman explains, “and to be a conduit for the storyteller. All the stories are in ‘as told to' format, and so it's really about listening, finding the heart of the story, and sensing how to arrange the story. It's also important to capture the storyteller's vernacular, their voice.”
“It was an interesting experience for me as a writer,” Geiselman adds.
“This project wasn't about me showing off my own voice, and that was really freeing.”
She explains that writers also needed to find the shape of the story, eliminating extraneous details — for example, an anecdote about a pet, or a lot of detail about the weather on the day the story took place, if those details don't really add to the story. Then, the writer might also rearrange the order in which the storyteller told about the event to put it in a chronological order.
After the Facing Project did an initial edit and organized the story order, Geiselman's next role was to line-edit and proof the book.
“The impetus of the book project was the Oregon District shooting, " Geiselman says. “About a quarter of the stories reflect on that tragedy. But more broadly, the stories are about experiences with gun violence, and to show the human impact. The goal wasn't to examine issues around gun control, though if the storytellers wanted to offer up their views as part of their stories, that was their prerogative.”
“I admit that this was a heavy topic to tackle, especially as a pandemic and racial justice protests are unfolding,” Geiselman says. “And yet it was so moving to realize that the way people survive these experiences, emotionally, is incredible. It's indelibly life changing no matter if the contact with gun violence is big or small. I hope this collection takes readers out of thinking of gun violence as an abstract news story or political issue, and helps them see that it's a concrete issue, to see how very real and shockingly common and personal this issue is.”
All proceeds from the book go back to the nonprofit Facing Project to cover production costs and support similar projects in other communities. The book may be purchased via online vendors Amazon. com and Barnesandnoble. com.
Sharon Short writes historical mysteries under the pen name Jess Montgomery (www. jessmontgomeryauthor. com). Send her column ideas, book club news, or literary events at sharonshort1983@ gmail.com.