April's Book Club with author Linda L. Hunt (center)
This month’s book club meeting was a special treat; Linda Hunt, the author of Bold Spirit not only joined us for our discussion but hosted the meeting at her spacious and inviting retreat center. Linda greeted us with a warm smile and a large pitcher of herbal sun tea as we began to assemble ourselves outside to take advantage of the opportunity to sit in her gardens with the sounds of babbling water and birdsong in the background.
Once everyone settled around the table Linda introduced herself and gave us a brief history of how the retreat center came to be. She and her husband created The Krista Foundation for Global Citizenship with a focus on service in urban America, developing nations and environmental projects. The center was inspired by these three values possessed by her daughter, Krista, who was killed at the age of 25 in an automobile accident in Bolivia. The center serves as a meeting space for the organization in many different ways, sometimes for conferences, at other times for retreats; always, I imagine, it serves compassion, generosity and love.
Our discussion about Bold Spirit had much to do with imagining the twenty-first century equivalent of two women crossing the nation by foot in 1896. Not only was this a difficult thing to wrap our minds around but equally difficult was the idea that this story was nearly lost through the silencing of it by the family.
The act of silencing stories or, more importantly, the practice of passing along family stories instead is the message Linda would like her readers to hear. She talked about the importance of finding a way to include this piece in the story. In the book’s closing Linda states that sometimes silencing of stories is done to protect a family’s image in the face of situations like abuse, alcoholism or origins of birth but that, “at times the silencing of such stories affect those who need to hear them to correctly interpret events in their own lives.”
Remember this and consider whether you participate in the silencing or sharing of your own family’s stories. Do what you can to be your family’s storyteller and please do read Bold Spirit, a story that show’s an earlier picture of our city’s history and invites us all to contribute our own.
I wish I could have made it! Sounds so lovely with stimulating conversation to match!
Recently I learned of some silenced stories in my family’s past. Apparently by blood I’m not even a McKay after all. I’m a Dalrymple or something else. I had a great great grandfather that took his stepfather’s name in part to save face. My great great great grandma (I think) was an adventuresome independent woman who traveled to several countries throughout her lifetime, including Australia, which wasn’t such a common destination at the time.
Either way, I’m definitely going to read this book!