The Plague - Part 2

One of the joys of this particular spring (in addition to the usual joys of nesting birds, blooming shrubs, warm sun on my winter-tired bones) has been the return of Bill Moyers to public television. Last month saw the debut of Bill Moyers Journal (old name, new show) on Friday nights. I am a shameless devotee of Moyers, his voice: civil, wise, concerned, inquiring, deeply sincere, is unique in our media world, now more so than ever. He and his guests thus far have kept me home on every Friday night since the show's beginning, and I don't regret a moment of it. However, none has electrified me, kept me unmoving in my chair through the entire hour, the way Maxine Hong Kingston did last Friday. If in this country we considered people National Treasures, as Japan does, Hong Kingston would surely be one of ours (as, I offer, would Bill Moyers). She has been writing, teaching, and working for peace her entire life. In fact, she began working for peace when she was just a little girl. Most people know her first book, Woman Warrior, but it is her most recent book that she and Moyers concentrated on: Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace.

This is not a novel, not non-fiction, not poems by Hong Kingston, it is instead a compilation of work by veterans who have taken part in the workshops Maxine has held since 1993, workshops...

devoted to turning their experiences into poems, novels and essays. Here in the hills of Northern California, over 500 veterans...from every war since WORLD WAR II have taken part, and some of their finest work has now been published in this book, VETERANS OF WAR; VETERANS OF PEACE. For many of them it has been a life-changing, even life-saving, experience.

What this remarkable woman has devoted the past fourteen years to doing is nothing less than trying to help these veterans, men who have seen and done horrors, who have had horrors done to them, to heal; "to convert the horrors they experienced into the words and stories that Kingston believes will help them cope and survive." Like Rieux, the doctor in Camus' The Plague, she has been working to cure the wave of pestilence that overtakes the world again and again, "refusing to bow down to pestilences, to strive their utmost to be healers." To listen to her, and to hear what those who have used her workshops to tell their truths have accomplished, is to be able to believe once again in this phrase from Rieux' final musings in Camus' novel..."that there are more things to admire in men than to despise." On the link to last Friday's segment of The Journal you can read the entire transcript, or watch the show on a video, an link to some of the writings themselves. As long as I have treasures like Bill Moyers and Maxine Hong Kingston to inspire me, I think I can work on overcoming my weariness and despair.

| +Save/Share | |