Sara

During the process of creating your digital story, what did you discover through the experience? 

“It took some time. But did not seem as long as it was.”

After watching your digital story, what did you learn about yourself?

“First off, my voice isn’t as annoying as expected. Somehow my ramblings seemed coherent.”

Cumulatively, I recorded 2.5 hours of footage of Sara. I produced four (1-3 min) videos documenting memories, moments, and stories Sara shared during our time together. When Sara shared this memory with me, it came from a conversation of her detailing her experience working in the print industry. She pointed out how frequently she was the only woman in her department, and sometimes even the entire facility. She began to recall when she first was interested in printing, the schools she went to, and then, the story of her instructor came about. During the recording, Sara was actively on the clock, so I would shift and pivot trying to capture her reflections as she performed her job. Not only does Sara experience expected silence when she is used as an example in the classroom, but she reveals an empowered internal voice she conceals in the moment. 

This moment of what Glenn terms “expected silence” places Sara in a marginalized position, muted outside of the dominant rhetoric (10). The instructor explains to her and the other students in the class, a pink sweater, like Sara's, is too feminine. She imparts ‘wisdom’ to make the women hide their femininity. She silences Sara and the other women by suggesting ways they join the dominant communicative system of the industry, where they must remain muted, not themselves (less feminine). Edwin Ardener published a study on women’s mutedness and points out a key factor in women’s communicative subordination, he says, “One of the problems that women presented was that they were rendered “inarticulate” by the male structure; that the dominant structure was articulated in terms of a male-world position. Those who were not in the male world-position were, as it were, ‘muted.’...” (qtd in Glenn, Unspoken 21.25). Thus, the instructor impresses a logic that the more woman-like or feminine Sara is, the more she will be silenced by her peers or not taken seriously. The female instructor's teachings display a systematic silencing where she is (consciously/unconsciously) protecting an oppressive gendered hierarchy.

During her digital story, Sara expresses the words behind her silence. At the moment of being made an example in the classroom, Sara’s response of silence aligns with Johannesen’s eleventh point, “The person is in awe, or raptly attentive, or emotionally overcome” (qtd in Glenn, Unspoken 11). Reflecting on that emotional moment, Sara uses her digital story to share her internal dialogue, she recounts, “Why do I have to change for somebody else. If they have an issue, that’s their issue, not mine.” There are multiple truths to Sara’s encounter. Not only was it a moment of silencing, but also a moment of reflection and restraint. Her digital story gives her a platform and space to reveal a truth she held inside in the moment. Caroline Lennette et. al finds in their Digital Storytelling study in ‘Better than a pill’: digital storytelling as a narrative process for refugee woman: “...digital storytelling enables each woman to re-author her own story… we might learn from the concepts women propose for themselves as meaningful ways to articulate their lives…”(67-68). Sara re-authors the moment from her point of view where now she can stand in an empowered position to her silence.