By JeanMarie Martin, Linebaugh Public Library
This year is the 100th birthday of MTSU and the 10th year of the MTSU Summer Reading Program. 2011’s selection is Listening is an Act of Love, by Dave Isay. For more information, visit mtsu.edu/summerreading. And you can have a chance to get your copy signed by the author on Aug. 27 at 7 p.m. at Linebaugh Library, where Isay will lead a conversation about his book.
“Once upon a time . . . I remember when I was a girl . . . Your grandfather would . . . One time, your mother and I . . . ”
There are as many ways to begin a story as there are stories to tell, and Listening is an Act of Love is a wonderfully moving collection of stories told by people from all walks of life by way of facilitators of the StoryCorps project. Grouped into categories of Home and Family, Work and Dedication, Journeys, History and Struggle, Fire and Water, the transcript excerpts give an oral history that the interview subjects wish to pass down to their family and friends. At the end of the forty-minute session, broadcast-quality CDs are produced, one for the participants and one to be archived in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
Listening is an Act of Love chronicles the interviews of parents, spouses, friends, strangers, fellow prisoners, generations of families, the homeless, the dying, survivors of war and disaster, and those who lost loved ones to the same. The StoryCorps booths, whether one of the permanent sites in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal or at Ground Zero or on one of three mobile interview units that travels around the country, give people the opportunity to interview someone whose story they wish to learn, honor and preserve. These extraordinary stories of everyday people are part of a tremendous oral history preservation project that will serve to educate generations to come on what life was like for those who came before, told literally in their own voices.
When the first StoryCorps booth was opened on Oct. 23, 2003, at Grand Central Terminal, its founders wondered what the response would be and how much participation there would be on such a scale. They needn’t have worried. It seems as though the intimacy of the interview booth and the presence of the microphone give credence to asking those unasked questions or speaking aloud those thoughts previously deemed too sacred, too painful or too shameful to mention to others. Inside the booth, the words come, and so do the healing tears and even laughter as well.
As these stories attest, the primary focus is on the shared experience of the participants. Story after story left me feeling as if I had spent hours visiting with the subjects instead of just a few minutes reading a transcript, so intimate were the sessions and the sharing. It takes courage to find your voice, and Listening is an Act of Love is a compilation of examples of ordinary people finding their voices through the courage of StoryCorps.
Also included in the book are suggestions for doing your own interviews, samples of favorite types of interview questions or story starters, tips for successful sessions and more information of how to set up a StoryCorps session at either a permanent or mobile site.
