Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-Narratology

by Arthur W. Frank

Stories accompany us through life from birth to death. But they do not merely entertain, inform, or distress us—they show us what counts as right or wrong and teach us who we are and who we can imagine being. Stories connect people, but they can also disconnect, creating boundaries between people and justifying violence. In Letting Stories Breathe, Arthur W. Frank grapples with this fundamental aspect of our lives, offering both a theory of how stories shape us and a useful method for analyzing them. Along the way he also tells stories: from folktales to research interviews to remembrances.

Frank’s unique approach uses literary concepts to ask social scientific questions: how do stories make life good and when do they endanger it? Going beyond theory, he presents a thorough introduction to dialogical narrative analysis, analyzing modes of interpretation, providing specific questions to start analysis, and describing different forms analysis can take. Building on his renowned work exploring the relationship between narrative and illness, Letting Stories Breathe expands Frank’s horizons further, offering a compelling perspective on how stories affect human lives.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Writing, Academic, Psychology, Professional Development, Anthropology

224 pages, Hardcover

First published November 15, 2010

Reviews

[Diz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stories are a necessary part of our lives to help us make meaning of the world around us, and stories have power to influence the way that we see the world. The author provides a lot of ideas that will get you thinking about the stories in your own lives. This book covers both fictional stories and personal narratives with a more focus on the latter as many of the ideas that the author draws on come from the field of narrative therapy.

[Penni Russon · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a creative writer doing a multi-disciplinary PhD, this book was a useful resource for conceptualising a way of framing a creative writing methodology for working with stories that arise through qualitative research and participatory design. I'm thinking through the possibility of using his paradigm of translating-as-interpretation to make sense of research artefacts produced in response to a cultural probe (though I feel there's still a step missing for me in terms of converting the data I collect into meaningful texts for others, through as Frank argues stories are social, open always to other stories, so perhaps it will be a process of writing back to the stories I collect). Sorry I'm thinking aloud here, probably not so useful for anyone else! File under review-as-diary.

[Aengus · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's such a breadth of scholarship and wisdom in this book- it might take a while to get through it

[Corine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uiterst interessant boek voor liefhebbers van Narrative Knowledge. De rol van de luisteraar, de analyse van de dialoog etc Een boek wat ik regelmatig uit de kast pak en zal blijven bestuderen.