Brief Eulogies at Roadside Shrines - Softcover

Lyons, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0983918872 ISBN 13: 9780983918875

Publisher: Wild River Consulting & Publishing, LLC, 2014

Synopsis

Descansos - resting places - are intimate memorials we glimpse at the edge of highways and rural roads that mark a place and moment of profound loss. They are also testaments to what survives. In his vibrant collection of stories, "Brief Eulogies at Roadside Shrines," Mark Lyons builds narrative shrines that redeem what is lost to misfortune and time. A snake-handling preacher - cast out and lost on the highway - finds faith in a junkyard. A hitchhiker feasts on roadkill with a hobo on the Great Plains and discovers the Cosmos. A Mexican-American Border Patrol officer arrests a mojado - a wetback - who asks him a question that makes him confront his own history. An artist whose paintings are rendered colorless by her abusive husband commits an act of vengeance and deliverance. A soldier returns from Iraq and meditates on the fate of the tumbler pigeon he left behind. "Brief Eulogies" are stories about communities - people finding ways to survive their histories, addictions, fears - hoping to reach a better place. Will this be their last home, their last stop on the line; or can they turn to each other and find redemption? A mesmerizing storyteller, Mark Lyons, Director of the Philadelphia Storytelling Project, weaves a collection of stories that reminds us how our lives can change in an instant, usually when we're not looking.

About this title

About the Author

Mark Lyons wrote, translated and Espejos y Ventanas / Mirrors and Windows, Oral Histories of Mexican Farmworkers and Their Families, published in Spanish and English by Temple University. He was a recipient of Pennsylvania Council of the Arts fellowships for 2003 and 2009, and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. As director of the Philadelphia Storytelling Project, Lyons uses digital storytelling in his work with teens, the immigrant community, and homeless veterans. Participants record their stories, mix them with music, and share them on CDs, the radio, webcasts, and public venues. He recently completed a project with immigrant youth who created dolls, recorded stories about their fears of their parents being deported, and implanted their recorded stories into the dolls to create talking StoryDolls. Lyons has worked in the Latino community for the last twenty five years, as a health worker and community organizer. He was the director of the Farmworkers Health and Safety Institute, a consortium of grass-roots organizations in the U.S. and the Caribbean. The Institute trained farmworkers to use theater and other popular education methods to train other farmworkers concerning health and safety issues and workers' rights. He also worked for several years in a community health center, as a provider and health planner. He also edits Open Borders, the Wild River Review series of immigrant stories.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wild River Consulting & Publishing, LLC
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0983918872
• ISBN 13: 9780983918875
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 218