Listening is an Act of Love.

So my dear friend Jillian told me about this book while walking around the lake one day.  She was excited to share some book recommendations with me, and these were the ones she rattled off - Listening is an Act of Love, This I believe, and the Hunger Games trilogy of course! 

She went on to talk about Listening is an Act of Love and explained that you can't really talk about the book without first talking about the StoryCorps project.   According to the inside flap, "StoryCorps began with the idea that everyone has an important story to tell.  Since 2003 this remarkable project has been collecting the stories of everyday Americans and preserving them for future generations.  In New York City and in mobile recording booths across the country - from small towns to big cities, at Native American reservations and army posts - StoryCorps is collecting the memories of Americans of all ages and from all backgrounds and walks of life.  The project represents a wondrous nationwide celebration of our shared humanity, capturing for posterity the stories that define us and bind us together.  Drawing from more than ten thousand interviews, StoryCorps - the largest oral history project in the nation's history - presents a tapestry of American stories, told by the people who lived them to the people they love."

In the introduction, the editor states, "StoryCorps is built on a few basic ideas: that our stories - the stories of everyday people - are as interesting and important as the celebrity stories we're bombarded with by the media every minute of the day.  That if we take the time to listen, we'll find wisdom, wonder, and poetry in the lives and stories of the people around us.  That we all want to know our lives have mattered and we won't ever be forgotten.  That listening is an act of love."

Participating in StoryCorps is a fairly simple process.  First, you must make an appointment to visit one of the recording booths.  Second, you must bring someone of your choosing - your grandmother, your dad, your mom, your sister, your son, your best friend, or even the random guy on the bus - to the booth where a trained StoryCorps facilitator will greet you, record your forty minute conversation, and then send you on your way with a copy of the conversation.  One copy for you and one copy for the archives at the American Folklike Center so that your great-great-grandchildren will someday be able to listen to the voices of their great-great-grandparents.

Sounds pretty cool huh??  Who do you want to learn more about and who would you choose to bring to the booth??  What types of questions would you ask??  What do you think you would learn about them?

So back to the book - Listening is an Act of Love is a compilation of all sorts of stories that have been recorded specifically for the StoryCorps project.  All the stories were great, but some of my favorites were at the end of the book, in the section titled Fire and Water.  These stories consisted of interviews from survivors from September 11th and Hurricane Katrina.  These personal stories made the devastation of both events seem all the more real and so much more tangible.

Anyhow, read the book and follow up on the StoryCorps Project!

Click HERE to hear some of the stories!  and click HERE to read more about the StoryCorps project.