Thursday, September 17, 2020

Timely and Timeless / "... We didn't perish that day in November 1972 ..." / Canoe Journey Anthem


 
















https://vimeo.com/397256728 (if you wish to listen to an excerpt)


“Expansive in scope and feeling, The Mountains Sing is a feat of hope, an unflinchingly felt inquiry into the past, with the courageous storytelling of the present.”

Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous


As I was reading a novel obtained from our public library, The Mountains Sing, by Nguyễn Phan Quế Maiduring this past week while confined indoors due to the smoke from the fires that continue to burn on the West Coast of the United States, I was reminded of Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Sandra Cisneros, Linda Sarsour, Louise Erdrich, Anna Akhmatova, Virginia Woolf, Ursula Le Guin, Jacqueline Woodson, and Thich Nhat Hanh and how so many of the circumstances that we are experiencing currently have been experienced throughout known history and that human beings have survived against all odds, continuing to be challenged to find ways to live in the present moment with complexity, grief, paradox, uncertainty and song:

Canoe Journey Anthem:


3 comments:

Sabine said...

Thank you for this suggestion, it's on my TBR list now.

ellen abbott said...

we do seem to be resilient. too much so as our population increases exponentially and we force out all other forms of life.

37paddington said...

Beautifully said, my friend. And now I shall have to find this book and read it, too.