What is Means to Be An Outsider

A review of Kate Story’s “Am I Not A Proud Outlier” in Sum of Us: Tales of the Bonded and Bound (Laksa Media Group, 2017)
By Derek Newman-Stille

In a hive, dance is crucial. Dance is the way that decisions are made, but dance is also a way of expressing dissent. Kate Story’s “Am I Not A Proud Outlier” is a tale of a space hive with typical bee like characteristics. This hive is moving from planet to planet, and colonizing as they move, but something has gone wrong in the hive. A space that is supposed to be unified has become disrupted and violence has broken out between different factions leaving a Queen without support. This hive has a caste system like most bee hives do, with certain members specialized to fulfill certain roles like building, nursing, and cleaning. But, this hive also has a role that is meant to present alternatives, the Outlier caste, a small group of isolated people who bring up ideas and perspectives that the harmony of the hive hasn’t considered. They are built to be contrarians and to be introverts.

Outlier 31’s role is to resist that sense of security and safety that comes with belonging, to counter the uniformity of the rest of the hive to open up questions about the status quo and challenge unilateral thinking. In Outlier 31, Kate Story creates the quintessential image of the artist. She points out that the role of the artist is to live in a state of intellectual curiosity and uncertainty, always willing to push boundaries into alternatives that others may not think of. She reminds the audience that art has an important role to disrupt easy answers and ask new, more potent questions. But, perhaps more importantly, Story connects art to the act of care-giving, the focus of the “Sum of Us” anthology, pointing out that artists provide an important caring role in their acts of critical questioning. 

Outlier 31 thinks of words that have not been used before, brining the power of language to the task of re-assessing meaning in her hive, she dances histories that the hive prefers to keep secret in their desire to present one unified historical narrative. Outlier 31 is an essential part of a community, but is forever kept separate from it. Yet, things change in times of crisis. Outlier 31 must simultaneously take on care-giving roles (roles that are suited for other members of the hive like the Nurses), changing her fundamental make-up, while still being true to her need to be contrarian. 

To find out more about the work of Kate Story, visit http://www.katestory.com

To discover more about Sum of Us: Tales of the Bonded and Bound, visit http://laksamedia.com/the-sum-of-us-an-anthology-for-a-cause-2

Derek Newman-Stille

2 Responses

Leave a Reply