Archive for April, 2010
Share the story of you and your sister!
We are looking for a few SF Bay Area women, who have sponsored a sister in the Congo, to participate in a video project. On April 26th and 27th, we’ll be taping short video segments of women who were inspired to sponsor a sister in the Congo through Women for Women International. You’ll have the opportunity to meet Lisa Shannon in person and tell the world what inspired you to sponsor a sister in the Congo through Women for Women International—and how your life may have been changed by doing so.
If you’re interested in being a part of this video and sharing your story, please send an email briefly introducing yourself and your sister to Andie East at email hidden; JavaScript is required for consideration.
And for anyone else who would like to share their story here on the blog, please post your story as a comment! Let’s inspire one another!
Winnipeg Free Press gives Rave Review of A Thousand Sisters
A Thousand Sisters
My Journey into the Worst Place on Earth to be a Woman
By Lisa Shannon
Seal Press, 300 pages,
It is rare for readers to open a book and discover with immediate joy that it will deliver far more than it has promised.
If there is any justice in the highly unpredictable world of modern publishing, A Thousand Sisters will emerge as the iconic example of that exquisite experience.
At first glance, this memoir about one American woman’s journey to activism on behalf of the women in Africa appeals to a narrow market, primarily “do gooders,” feminists, and weekend runners, as strange a group of bedfellows as one can imagine.
Within a few pages, however, in a hauntingly lyrical and intimate narrative, Lisa Shannon is guiding anyone willing to go with her into the landscape of the tallest questions of human experience, the questions we avoid because they cast shadows and gloom over the contentment of daily life.
Why do the innocent suffer? Why does evil everywhere appear to prevail? Is there any point, any point whatsoever, in individual resistance to a world fixed in its hatred, its violent greed and corruption?
A Thousand Sisters is not a narcissistic rant about white-girl angst. Nor is it the work of a philosopher, an academic or a spiritual guru, yet it is as powerful a meditation on the Power of One as any more celebrated personality could produce.
In 2005, Shannon was a young photographer in Portland, Maine, leading and more or less enjoying the ideal life as portrayed in TV commercials: at age 29, she had her own business, a pleasant home, a devoted fiancé, a minor weight problem. Her life was all about — her.
It all changed when she caught a glimpse of a journalist talking to Oprah Winfrey, undisputed diva of daytime television, about women in the Congo. In the frenzied competition for the title of World’s Worst Place for Women, trumping even Iraq, Afghanistan and pre-earthquake Haiti, Congo is the sad and clear “winner.”
Newly awakened to the routine atrocities there — mass murder, kidnapping, rape, sexual slavery, savage cruelties inflicted on women as pleasurable pastimes for soldiers — Shannon decided to do the very little bit she could: run. Her first solo 30-mile run has since evolved into an annual event and a national organization called Run for Congo Women.
A Thousand Sisters tells the story of her travels to Congo, the women she met there, and the lessons she learned from her African sisters, among them the true meaning of love and survival.
As of last year, Shannon’s run has produced sponsorship of the sort usually recruited for children, of more than 1,500 women in Congo. With comparatively moderate money, those women are raising, nurturing and supervising some 30,000 children.
Even though A Thousand Sisters places readers squarely into the hell human beings have made of Congo (it won’t be necessary to read anything else to understand the gruesome conflict and the world’s lame response to it), the book is an inspiring call to action, a reminder of the humanity that persists, in spite of overwhelming odds, in all of us.
Lesley Hughes is a Winnipeg writer and broadcaster.
Searching for “Trevor Samson”
To be honest, the searching part only took about 10 seconds. Last night, as I drew a bath, I mused about reconnecting with an old roommate who shared my failed marathon training- and ended up in my book for it! Then I thought of someone else who has a cameo in book. Someone I haven’t heard about in close to 20 years. Those who have read my book have asked, “What ever happened to that kid Trevor Samson???”
Well, the miracle that is Facebook, about 15 minutes after I put in my friend request, the follow exchange was ignited.
Trevor Samson April 8 at 8:17pm
Hello Lisa, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I’d love to take you on as a friend but am curious as to how you came by me as a potential as I see we share no friends.
A few minutes later:
Trevor Samson:
Your picture looks familiar, do I know you from somewhere?
Lisa Shannon April 8 at 8:28pm
Hi Trevor,
Did you attend Mount Tabor Middle School and Lincoln High School? If you are the Trevor I think you are, we shared a significant moment in gym class freshman year- I broke up a fight between you and some prickish bullies from the West Hills. 20 years later, I included that anecdote in my book, being released this week. I changed your name in the book, but I remember you well, and the incident stuck with me for a long time. For those who have read the book, many ask who you are, how you are, what happened to you.
Hope this isn’t too intrusive.
Trevor Samson April 8 at 9:14pm
And so the connection is made, you’re not being intrusive. Life has been a series of failed careers and closed businesses, I have not done as well as I would have liked and have always had difficulty with my social autism. I ended up going to community college for landscape and nursery technology, that fell through, I was overqualified to be a landscape worker and under experienced for a team leader, or so I was repeatedly told by potential employers. After several other attempts at entry level work I finally went to massage school and graduated with a B average only to fail the boards. It didn’t matter, I poured to much into the work to be able to sustain it for a living, in the end I stopped looking for a career and started liking for someone to spend my life with taking what I could in an ever more turbulent market. At six-foot-five and 200+ pounds, I never shook the image of a grunt worker and ended up as a custodian at the YMCA married to a woman I first met while working at McMenamins. We started as friends and 8 years latter tried a deeper relationship. It worked and now we have three children and despite sudden and drastic cuts in my hrs at work are living happily, if poorly in a rented house on the outskirts of town.
Lisa Shannon April 8 at 9:39pm
Congratulations on your happy marriage and family! I’m delighted to hear it. If there’s one thing I’ve gotten through my interactions with women in the Congo, its that we are human beings, not lifestyles. Would that we all could live happily on the outskirts of town! It makes me think of a story I heard in a writing workshop last year. At the end of Graham Greene’s life- he was like 80- someone asked him about his life, after all of the awards, his place in the cannon of American literature, etc, was there anything he felt he wished he had done/ accomplished. He reportedly responded, “It would have been nice to have had one meaningful human connection.”
What do you mean by social autism? Is that actually a disorder?
Do you remember the almost-fight by the volleyball net? What I remember even more was an incident later that year when you were taken to the hospital. [Note to readers: Trevor was cornered in a the boys locker room, his head beaten against a cement floor until he collapsed, bloody, and a teacher called an ambulance.] I always wondered about that. Never talked with you about it, but I felt for you and was haunted by it. Always thought I should have reached out somehow- everyone was so unfair and hard on you. Kids.
I’ll send you a copy of the book when I get my authors batch. You’ve been immortalized! At least under a fake name! But mostly, hopefully in retrospect, it gives some of those high school memories a bit more context and meaning, and perhaps will spark some questions about human’s capacity for violence and the role we all play in the world- both in Africa and at home.
Trevor Samson April 8 at 10:20pm
LOL You sound like you’ve been studying anthropology from an emotional stand point. Aspergers is a form of social autism, it has to do with an inability to recognize the importance of some social “traditions” of society. You’ll remember, I was a bit of “an odd duck” in those days. Even now, I have difficulty understanding things other people find important on a social level. Capacity for violence is easier to understand when you’re on the outside looking in. That is hard for most, but not so for me. We strive and seek security, strength, power over our lives. It is social survival, and survival instincts work along the line of fight or flight. We don’t see those who run and hide, but those who stand and fight perceived threats…well they are the ones we see.
My, this conversation has taken a peculiar turn. How about I step down from my soap box long enough to let you respond. It is good that you didn’t step in on those situations in high-school. In that social climate, to have a “mere girl” stand up for me would have been a great “loss of face” for me in that testosterone loaded environment. Tell me of the purpose of your book. What is the underlying theme you wish to convey.
Lisa Shannon April 8 at 10:32pm
Ah, Aspergers! I’ve heard of it, of course, and had no idea that’s what you were dealing with back then!
Well, Trevor, I have to admit- I DID step in to stop a fight! I had not thought about the “mere girl” loss of face angle! Oh no! I believe I gave some big speech (left out of the book) about violence is not the answer…! Then I owe you a major apology. I stepped in the middle, and was consequently told to “shut up you fucking hippy bitch” by the guys giving you trouble.
I do work for women in the Congo. The point I was making in the book is that when I was young, like many of us, if I saw a situation that wasn’t right, I stepped in the middle of it. But as I got older, I lost that all together- as many of us do- until I was about to turn 30, and kinda remembered who I used to be…and decided to do something for the Congo. Hence, the book. The incident with you is short- only a couple of paragraphs.
Trevor Samson April 8 at 11:01pm
And yet they stuck with you because you did your best. The politics of the situation aside, you must do what you feel is right and you did. It was nice for me to know someone cared. It gave me the strength to grow and the ability to realize when I was on the verge of bullying my way through an argument and not addressing the fact that the other boy felt he was in the right. This happened my senior year at Green Thumb and in that day I realized that both sides could be right in their hearts, and until a connection was made between their feelings then no true solution could be reached. Many people feel that. Many people feel that we have the freedom of choice in our lives within the boundaries of fate. I feel that its the opposite, fate is contained within the boundaries of our choices. We are destined to follow a thread through the beautiful tapestry of this world not because another guides our steps, but because we guide ourselves with who we are and what we’ve learned. I thank you for being part of my fate. Know that sometimes just being there is an act of helping a situation that isn’t right, the greatest gift you can give another is the strength to help themselves, then maybe they can find the strength to help others in the name of your kindness.
Lisa Shannon April 9 at 6:45am
Look at you Trevor! You’ve turned into quite the philosopher!
Trevor Samson April 9 at 7:18am
Always been a philosopher, finding the words to communicate it and finding people who listen is the hard part.
I look forward to further chats with you. I’ve always been curious about Africa, though I know how broad that statement is.
