Reclaiming Inheritance: Enacting Leadership in African Storytelling Contexts

Abstract

The current article examines leadership with an emphasis on African literature and storytelling practices. Grounded in critical leadership theory and social change models of leadership, the essay presents examples of ancestral storytelling practices employed to address health and peacemaking challenges, counterstorytelling as a methodology of centering marginalized voices and communities, and the use of vernacular language and local storytelling strategies to promote social change. In each case, storytelling and counterstorytelling practices enact both resistance to oppressive structures and reconstruction of more just social environments.