This chapter explores how those in power craft and manipulate stories to their advantage—and how you can recognize, counter, and construct narratives that serve your own interests.
Controlling the Narrative
They Want to Control the Story—Take It Back.
History is not just facts. It is narrative. It is the way events are framed, the way truth is shaped, the way people remember or forget. They understand this. That is why they rewrite, distort, and erase. That is why they control the books, the films, the headlines. That is why they dictate which voices are credible and which are dismissed. If they control the story, they control reality itself.
But stories are not just theirs to tell. You must claim your own. You must tell the truth, your truth, the truth of those who have been silenced, the truth of what has happened and what must not be forgotten.
Why Storytelling is a Weapon
Passing on stories to future generations is essential to preserving culture, identity, and hard-won wisdom. Stories act as time capsules, carrying the values, lessons, and experiences of those who came before us. Stories create:
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Cultural Continuity: Stories maintain traditions, language, and beliefs, ensuring that unique identities aren’t lost over time.
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Lessons from History: They provide insight into past struggles and victories, helping future generations avoid repeating mistakes.
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Inspiration and Resilience: Tales of perseverance and ingenuity, empower individuals to face challenges with confidence.
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Moral and Ethical Foundations: Stories teach values, empathy, and social norms in a way that resonates deeply.
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Generational Bridges: They create a sense of connection between ancestors and descendants, reinforcing shared heritage.
Stories help preserve lost voices, especially those of marginalized communities. Stories help shape the future because what we choose to remember influences how society evolves and shapes the narratives of justice, innovation, and humanity. Without storytelling, knowledge dies, cultures fade, and wisdom is lost. The stories we share today shape the world tomorrow.
How to Tell Stories That Shape Reality
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Preserve the Stories They Want Forgotten - Find the untold histories, the erased voices, the inconvenient truths. Record them. Share them. Keep them alive.
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Make Truth Impossible to Ignore - A cold fact can be dismissed. A powerful story cannot. People may argue with statistics, but they don’t forget emotions. Make them feel what happened.
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Speak Even When You Are Not an Expert - You don’t need permission to tell a story that matters. You don’t need credentials to bear witness. If you wait until you’re qualified, history will be rewritten before you ever open your mouth.
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Use Art, Music, and Media to Carry the Message - Not everyone reads history books. But they listen to songs, watch films, and absorb stories in unexpected ways. A story well told—through any medium—travels farther than facts alone.
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Expose Manipulated Narratives - They will twist history to fit their needs. They will frame injustice as order, resistance as chaos, cruelty as necessity. Call it out. Tear their lies apart piece by piece.
First Task: Reclaim a Story That Matters
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Find one piece of history, personal or political, that is being erased, distorted, or ignored. Learn it. Speak it. Share it.
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Identify a narrative that has been used against you or your people. Reframe it. Define it on your terms.
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Tell a story today, one that carries truth, one that cannot be erased, one that must be remembered.
"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history."
— George Orwell
Historical Reflection
Toni Morrison
Stories shape how we see ourselves, how we understand our past, and how we imagine the future. Toni Morrison knew that to control the story is to control history. In a literary world that had long ignored Black women’s voices, she wrote so they could never be erased again. Her novels did more than tell stories—they reclaimed histories, re-centered the forgotten, and insisted on the worth of lives that others had overlooked.
Born in 1931, Morrison grew up in a world where Black stories were often told by those who did not live them. She set out to change that. Her novels, from The Bluest Eye to Song of Solomon to Beloved, did not just depict history, they felt history. She wrote about the weight of memory, the beauty and sorrow of Black life, the ghosts of slavery that still whispered through generations. She understood that history is not just recorded in textbooks, it is carried in bodies, in dreams, in the grief passed down in silence.
Morrison did not shy away from pain, but she did not write for suffering alone. Her work was about survival, about love, about the full complexity of Black existence. She did not soften her words to make them more palatable to white audiences. She did not explain. She did not justify. She wrote for those who needed to see themselves on the page, who needed proof that their stories mattered.
In 1993, she became the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, a recognition of the worlds she had built with language. But Morrison did not write for prizes. She wrote because without stories, people disappear. She wrote because truth, once spoken, cannot be unspoken. She wrote because silence, when imposed by power, is theft, and she refused to let that theft continue.
Her legacy is not just in the books she left behind but in how she changed literature itself. She did not just write stories, she restored voices. She did not just create fiction, she told the truth. And because of her, those who were once silenced will be heard forever.
Historical Reflection
Isabel Allende
Some stories must be told so they are not lost. Isabel Allende writes so that memory does not fade, so that the disappeared are not erased, so that truth remains even when history is rewritten. Exiled from Chile after the 1973 military coup, she found herself far from home, but her homeland remained in her stories. Through fiction, she preserved the lives, struggles, and spirits of those who could no longer speak for themselves.
Her first novel, The House of the Spirits, was born from loss. As her grandfather lay dying, she wrote him a letter; a letter that became a novel, a novel that became a legacy. It wove together the personal and the political, the real and the magical, refusing to let Chile’s painful history be buried by those in power. She became a storyteller of exile, of resilience, of those silenced by dictatorship and violence.
Allende’s writing blends the mystical with the historical, creating worlds where the past lingers and the dead are never truly gone. Her words carry the weight of memory, ensuring that the voices of those who suffered don’t vanish with time. Her novels, spanning decades, have become bridges between generations, reminding the world that forgetting is not an option.
But Allende does more than preserve history, she amplifies the voices of women, the ones often left out of official records. She tells of women who refuse to be erased, of families that endure, of love that survives even the darkest times. She does not just write fiction, she writes truth disguised as myth, history wrapped in magic.
Through her books, she has given memory a home. She has made exile a place where the past is still alive, where the disappeared still speak, where what was nearly forgotten is remembered forever.