Listening is an Act of Love

Dave Isay, ed., Listening is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the Storycorps Project.

Thanks to my mother-in-law, we received a copy of Listening is an Act of Love recently. At first blush I was unfamiliar with the book's contents and the NPR program. I don't drive often and I'm nervously connecting my ipod once I am buckled in rather than skipping around the radio pre-sets and settling on NPR. I can almost hear the gasps dripping with condescension "you don't listen to NPR and have this committed to memory?!?!" Despite that, the stories contained within Listening is an Act of Love reached my ear during the fleeting instances when I kept vigil at 90.1 FM, and I was pleasantly surprised that I had absorbed more of these vignettes than I previously thought.

The Storycorps Project is a stunning endeavor that recorded memories that run the emotional gamut from stirring to joyous to painful. Dave Isay edited a plethora of stories that range in quality and duration. He winnowed them into a tidy 270 pages based around five thematic chapters: Home and Family, Work and Dedication, Journeys, History and Struggle, Fire and Water. The book is, as the subtitle claims, a celebration of American life in all of its manifestations, be they ugly or verdant.

The subjects volunteered their time and recollections in traveling and fixed recording booths across the US that digitally captured an exchange between the subject and a facilitator or friend/loved one. The Library of Congress' American Folklife Center houses the Storycorps' recordings, along with a catalog of inestimable value and depth. Oral history, one could contend, is an example of appreciation for an oral tradition whose sinews connect us to our earliest ancestors and their transmission of history. From the WPA interviews to contemporary projects such as the Storycorps, Americans largely celebrate oral history and Listening is an Act of Love taps into this desire with aplomb. The stories are so disparate that they defy a simple review that I would compose in this space.

I walked away from Listening is an Act of Love with an improved appreciation for oral history as a methodological tool that charts the obstacles faced in every day life and the strategies employed to overcome the peaks and valleys. After wrapping up "Fire and Water," the final chapter covering 9/11 and Katrina, I reconsidered the lens by which I interpreted the first decade of this century for Americans. With the September 11 attacks, Katrina, and the colossal failure of the US' financial and economic system, the decade consisted of bookends and a meaty center where ruin was heaped on the United States with an attendant social cost that will be reckoned with for the subsequent decade or longer. Americans will persist and slog through the ruptures we face, and Listening is an Act of Love reinforces the durability of Americans and, possibly, a nebulous American spirit. After the past year, I'm sick of partisanship and empty-headed screeds warning of communism and socialism, and possibly these nuisances are the product of the shocks from '01-'09. I remain positive in spite of the apoplectic, frothing displays that the US will rebuild a foundation of rational centrist approaches to regulation and taxes, and that politicians will forsake short-term political gain to join a discussion of how to safeguard our country. I trust that a toxic political conversation abates in the near future. If the missives in Listening is an Act of Love reveal anything, it's the ability for Americans to harness renewal and hope to rebuild.