Storyverse

I had two inspirations/influences behind this project. I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that history is sometimes if not always written by the winners, and that “every coin has 2 sides”; the second inspiration comes from stories told by my father and my grandmother.

Both of them came from a turbulent time in China where grandma was a teacher and dad in his childhood years during the prime time of the Culture Revolution, an event where many people were wrongfully accused and prosecuted and their lives distroyed because they were academics, artists, educators, and so were they considered “liberal extremists” at that time, and all who had academic backgrounds and profile were punished. I really wanted to get my grandmother to talk or write about her stories from that time and in essence record our family history before the opportunity passes. But since it was so traumatic she would rather try to forget and get on with her life than remember because its too painful to talk about, so instead my Father was the one who told me some of the incidents and how it had affected his life in the most personal way.

This along with other people I know while living in South Africa, how the Apartheid had affected their lives, have all become the fundamental driving force behind this project.

What if historical events can be told from a collective first person’s experience? What if there is a way to let people talk, record and preserve the stories of their lives before it’s lost? What if by sharing their stories it can somehow help them unload their baggage? Could the future generations benefit from this?

So with this in mind, I wanted to create something that gives people the ability to share stories and life experiences with others – to showcase world milestone events experienced and told from the first person’s perspective.