Welcome back to Stone and Signal. I am excited about this episode. I hope you enjoy it.
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The Thin Line Between Cancelling and Censoring
Every year, Banned Books Week comes around like a mirror we’re asked to look into—and what we see reflected says a great deal about who we are becoming.
The books that end up on “challenged” or “restricted” lists rarely surprise me anymore. They tend to be the ones that speak too plainly about what others would rather not confront—identity, power, the environment, grief, or truth. If a story makes us uncomfortable, it’s easier to remove it from reach than to ask why it unsettles us.
If I’m honest, many of my own books could probably find their way onto those lists.
Stories that speak of youth defying systems, of ancient forces rising against human arrogance, of governments rewriting morality under the guise of progress—these are not comfortable subjects. They’re not meant to be. But that’s the point. Fiction has always been a rehearsal for reality, a space to test our courage and empathy before the world demands them for real.
The trouble is, we now live in a culture that often blurs the line between accountability and erasure. When a story, an idea, or a voice challenges the dominant narrative, the reflex is to cancel—to deplatform, to silence, to scrub from view. But if we silence everything that unsettles us, we lose the capacity to discern, to debate, to grow. Censorship doesn’t begin with governments; it begins with collective fear disguised as virtue.
We must remember that banning isn’t always a bureaucratic act. Sometimes it’s an algorithm deciding a story is “too sensitive.” Sometimes it’s a publisher declining a manuscript because it won’t fit the marketing grid. Sometimes it’s readers policing each other, deciding what stories “should” or “shouldn’t” exist.
Yet the measure of a healthy culture isn’t how it protects its comfort—it’s how it protects its storytellers.
Because storytellers are memory keepers. They remind us of what’s been lost, hidden, or rewritten. They risk misunderstanding to tell the truth as they see it. They walk that thin, essential line between reflection and rebellion.
So this week, as others celebrate banned books, I don’t just think of the ones that made the lists. I think of the stories that never made it to shelves at all—the ones that were quietly discouraged, self-censored, or buried under the weight of “not now.”
Those absences haunt me more than any list could.
Storytelling is, and always has been, an act of faith. Faith that someone will listen. Faith that truth, however inconvenient, is still worth speaking.
And so we keep telling.
Even when the world grows uncomfortable.
Especially then.
Stone and Signal – Episode 5: Storytelling as Resistance
Welcome to Stone and Signal. I’m
Lawrence Nault.
Not all resistance looks like protest. Sometimes, it looks like a story told
in the margins. A book no publisher wanted. A poem written at midnight. A truth
spoken, even when the room falls quiet.
Today’s episode is about storytelling as resistance. About choosing to speak—softly, clearly, persistently—in a world that benefits from your silence.
"The forest doesn’t argue with the axe. The ocean doesn’t plead with the net. They remain silent, wanting only to live—and they die anyway. Those who say silence protects you should ask the land how that worked out."
[Segment 1 – Why Storytelling Is Inherently Political]
All stories carry a worldview. Whether they mean to or not.
They say something about who matters. What deserves remembering. What gets
erased. What gets sanitized or monetized. And what’s quietly disappeared.
That’s why silence is never neutral. And that’s why storytelling—especially
honest, uncomfortable, inconvenient storytelling—is a form of resistance.
I don’t mean resistance as spectacle. I don’t mean viral posts or callouts that echo for a
day and then disappear. I mean the quiet kind. The long game. The slow burn.
The kind that plants seeds. The kind that remembers. The kind that refuses to
conform to a world that’s speeding toward collapse, distraction, and denial.
Every time we choose to tell a story that centers a marginalized voice, a
silenced truth, or a forgotten history—we interrupt the narrative of dominance.
Every time we write into the shadows, we expand what the world is allowed to
remember.
Resistance through story isn’t new. It’s how entire cultures survived
colonization. It’s how memories outlived regimes. It’s how revolutions found
their shape. From folktales whispered under threat to banned books passed hand
to hand, storytelling has always been a form of defiance.
And not just defiance. Continuance. Refusal. Identity.
In Indigenous cultures around the world, stories weren’t just
entertainment—they were law. They were memory. They were inheritance. They told
you who you were, where you came from, and what your responsibilities were to
the land, to your kin, and to the future.
To tell those stories, even now, even after centuries of attempted erasure,
is to stand in resistance to everything that tried to silence them.
That’s why I say: telling a story is never just telling a story. It’s
drawing a line. It’s taking a stand. It’s saying, “This happened. This matters.
This will not be forgotten.”
[Segment 2 – The Indie Path]
I started self-publishing almost two decades ago. I believed in the freedom
it gave me to write the stories I needed to write—not the ones that fit a trend
or a market.
Later, I stepped back. The industry was shifting. My life was shifting. But
I never stopped writing. And now, I’ve returned—more deliberate. More rooted.
Independent publishing has never been easy. But it has always been
necessary.
It’s where the uncomfortable truths live. The niche voices. The books that
don’t promise profit, but offer perspective.
Writing outside the mainstream lets me speak about what matters—youth power,
environmental grief, Indigenous resurgence, and systems that need to be
challenged.
Not everyone wants to hear these stories. But I keep telling them. Because I
believe they need to exist.
Indie spaces allow for depth. For slowness. For a kind of integrity that
doesn’t hinge on performance metrics. I can explore ideas that haven’t been
sanitized for mass appeal. I can sit with contradiction, ambiguity, and ache.
That’s not just freedom—it’s responsibility.
[Segment 3 – Stories the System Ignores: AI, Censorship, and
Control]
We’re living in an age where technology is reshaping everything—including
how stories are created, distributed, and erased.
I write about AI—its connection to us, and the possibilities that lie just
ahead. And out of necessity, I research it deeply, so the stories I tell remain
grounded, not speculative for speculation’s sake. But I don’t trust the systems
building them.
When algorithms decide what’s seen, nuance disappears. Speed is rewarded.
Reflection is not.
And beyond the tech itself, there’s something more insidious—the normalization of silence. The way cancel culture flattens complexity. The way disagreement turns into exile. The way digital platforms reward outrage and punish depth.
As an indie writer, I’ve watched this play out in the literary world. One
misstep, one unpopular idea, and you’re not just criticized—you’re erased.
It’s a chilling thing for a storyteller to witness. And it’s why I keep
carving out space—not just for my voice, but for others who are quietly holding
space for truth.
Stories that are censored, deplatformed, or quietly buried are often the
ones we need most.
And when AI begins to mimic those stories—without context, without soul—it
becomes even more urgent to preserve the originals. The ones made in grief, in
joy, in resistance. The ones with fingerprints on the pages.
AI doesn’t feel urgency. It doesn’t grieve the way humans grieve. It doesn’t
carry generational memory. So when it writes, it does so without the blood
memory, the lived pain, the ancestral tether. And when we allow those AI
versions to dominate the landscape, we risk replacing witness with simulation.
There’s also a danger when tech companies start to curate not just what we
see, but what we’re allowed to create. When automated moderation removes a poem
about loss because it contains the word "death." When a story about
protest is throttled by an algorithm labeling it controversial. When platforms
bury uncomfortable truths in favor of content that keeps us scrolling.
This is what censorship looks like now—not overt bans, but silencing by
omission. By ranking. By obscuring.
That’s why storytelling today requires more than courage. It requires
awareness. Intention. Sometimes, encryption. Sometimes, exile.
But more than anything, it requires community—a network of readers, writers,
and witnesses who are paying attention, and willing to hold space for stories
that challenge the system.
[Segment 4 – The Sacred Work of Holding Space]
Telling stories is only part of the resistance. The other part is listening.
Creating space for others to speak—especially those whose voices have been
historically ignored or distorted—is a
radical act. And that work, of holding space, is sacred.
We live in a world of noise. Endless timelines, breaking news, and reactive
comment threads. But holding space requires something different. It demands
slowness. Stillness. It asks us to pause long enough to hear what’s not being
said.
Too often, we ask youth to speak but fail to build the scaffolding that
allows their voices to be heard with care. We ask them to be brave but don’t
stay long enough to hold their bravery. We amplify selectively. We tokenize. We
rush to share, but not to sit with.
To truly empower people—especially young people—we have to do more than just
say “We believe in you.” We have to slow down, shift the structures, and be
willing to change because of what they say. We have to create ecosystems that
nurture—not extract—their insight .
That means rethinking who gets the mic—and who controls the edit. That means
recognizing emotional labor and making room for stories that aren’t neat or
easily consumed. The messy ones. The painful ones. The ones told through tears
or laughter or both.
It also means becoming comfortable with discomfort. Knowing that when
someone shares their truth, it might unsettle ours. That’s not a threat—it’s a
gift. And it’s part of what makes storytelling sacred. Not because it makes us
feel good, but because it makes us feel more alive.
Being a listener is active work. It’s not waiting to speak. It’s not
tolerating silence until it’s your turn. It’s being transformed by what you
hear. Letting someone else’s words rearrange something in you.
To create space for resistance through story, we must build spaces that can
hold pain, rage, joy, wonder—all at once. Spaces where people can speak without
having to explain. Where survival isn’t the whole story, but the starting
point.
That’s the kind of storytelling that doesn’t just resist—it regenerates.
[Segment 5 – Reflection & Invitation]
If you’re a writer, a creator, or simply someone with a voice that’s been
pushed to the edge—I want you to hear this:
You don’t need permission to speak.
You don’t need approval to matter.
And you don’t need a platform to begin.
Resistance doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it whispers.
Sometimes it takes the shape of a poem. A journal. A single sentence that won’t
let you go.
So tell your story. Hold space for others to tell theirs. Make room for
complexity. Invite contradiction. And trust that if you tell it with heart,
someone, somewhere, will hear it when they need it most.
If you’d like to read more of my work, you’ll find my books wherever stories
are still allowed to breathe. Sales help support this podcast—and the quiet
time it takes to create it.
You can also find transcripts and reflections on my blog.
Thank you for listening.
Until next time, may your signal find the stones that hold it.
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