THE One Book
Book: Listening Is an Act of Love
Editor: Dave Isay
Dates: Fall Semester 2012
Call Number: E169.Z8 L49 2007 (on reserve)
In Listening Is an Act of Love, StoryCorps founder and legendary radio producer Dave Isay selects some of the most remarkable stories from the already vast collection and arranges them thematically into a moving portrait of American life. The voices here connect us to real people and their lives-to their experiences of profound joy, sadness, courage and despair, to good times and hard times, to good deeds and misdeeds.
To read this book is to be reminded of how rich and varied the American storybook truly is, how resistant to easy categorization or caricature. Above all, this book honors the gift each StoryCorps participant has made, from the raw material of his or her life, to the Americans who will come after. We are our history, individually and collectively, and Listening Is an Act of Love touchingly reminds us of this powerful truth.
To read this book is to be reminded of how rich and varied the American storybook truly is, how resistant to easy categorization or caricature. Above all, this book honors the gift each StoryCorps participant has made, from the raw material of his or her life, to the Americans who will come after. We are our history, individually and collectively, and Listening Is an Act of Love touchingly reminds us of this powerful truth.
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Stories
Click on the titles below to hear their stories. For more, visit Listening Is an Act of Love on NPR.
- A Long Life of Love and Wonder
Anna and Joseph Wise, childhood sweethearts, were married for nearly six decades. Now 96, she has outlived him for 16 years and wonders how "you get through almost anything." - Discovering a Mother's Hidden Talent One day when she was in kindergarten, Cynthia Rahn realized she had forgotten to do an assignment. All hope seemed lost — until she made an unbelievable discovery on the kitchen table the next morning. What she found there revealed her mother's secret talent.
- Learning to Read After Decades Brings Joy Joe Buford, 63, has a high school diploma but kept a secret, even from his family: He couldn't read. He managed to fool others into thinking that he could. And he was terrified that his inability would be passed on to his kids.
- Living on 'One Tough Block' Celedonia "Cal" Jones grew up in Harlem during the 1930s. When he was 9 years old, his family moved to a new neighborhood. Being the new kid on the block wasn't easy.
- Remembering A Father's Hard Life And Riches When James Lacy was growing up, his father prospered by running a general store in rural Texas. But the merchant lost everything in the economic collapse of 1929. Though his dad spent decades paying off debts, Lacy says, he was rich in other ways.
- Summers Of Learning In The Tobacco Fields As a teenager in the 1950s, Mark Sullivan worked in the tobacco fields of Connecticut. He'd come home so filthy that his mother would make him take off his clothes before going inside. The tar washed off, but the lessons he learned stayed with him.
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