Podcast Episode 6: Our Role as Storytellers (w/ Dr. Umi Hsu)

For full episode transcription, click here.

3 Takeaways from Art and Archives

This week, we sat down with Dr. Umi Hsu (they/them), a digital strategist and activist engaged with agendas for equity in arts, technology, and civic life. Umi is currently the Director of Content Strategy at ONE Archives Foundation, an independent community partner that supports the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California Libraries.

Umi’s career has spanned all across the world of art, archives, and activism. But one of the practices at the core of what they do is storytelling. In this week’s episode, we discuss at length what it means to collect, store, and share our stories—especially of under-represented groups.

1. Stories are about what you don’t say

As researchers, we often think about stories as things that we create. But Umi argues that storytelling isn’t actually an act of creation. The stories we seek to tell as collectors, archivists, or researchers already exist in the form of life stories, anecdotes, lived experiences, and—in the case of UXR—collected qualitative and quantitative data.

The task of a storyteller, then, isn’t actually to create anything. Instead, Umi says, it’s a practice in economizing. It’s about what you choose to cut out or gloss over, and what you choose to leave in its full detail, that gives a story its shape.

Re-positioning stories as subtractive rather than creative raises an important question that we should all be asking ourselves: whose stories are being dropped for the sake of the story? Whose data are we taking detail away from, or cutting completely? And can we balance that act of subtraction by highlighting those overlooked experiences elsewhere?

2. Stories have more staying power when they’re contained

Umi talks about stories as if they are living, breathing things. In many ways, they are—they grow, change, and evolve with each telling.

This can make it difficult to create a focused story that fully engages and sticks with your audience. They are such sprawling entities, and there is so much competition for audiences’ attention, that it’s easy for them to bounce off the surface without really sinking in.

Umi believes that stories that stick often do because they have a container, or frame, to help sharpen them and give them purchase in the audience's lives. They suggest several suggestions for story ‘containers’, including:

• Tying them to an event in your audience’s lives
• Tying a historical issue to a current issue relevant to your audience
• Make it into evidence for an actionable policy

3. Take a breath and drink some tea

Umi works to tell stories of historical and current issues facing the queer community through innovative ways. These can be heavy topics, and take a huge amount of thoughtfulness, empathy, and creativity. We asked them to share with us how they avoid burnout amidst all these high demands.

Their answer was to focus on the quiet things. For Umi, it’s tea (among other things): to brew, pour, and consume a cup in a slow and mindful way. They also make room in their days to share digital cups with their teammates. These are forms of self-care and mindfulness that help Umi ensure they have the inner resources to continue doing their important work.

Interested in checking out other People Nerds podcast episodes? Read more of our breakdowns here.