ometimes people ask
Reverend Elizabeth Maxwell, "Why have a writing workshop at a soup
kitchen? Isn't it frivolous? Shouldn't you be focusing on the basic
human needs: food, clothing, shelter?" Over the years, Maxwell has come
to respond that writing – telling one's story – is a basic human
need. Writing is food for the soul.
Now,
the fruits of these endeavors can be savored by all in Food for the
Soul: Selections from the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen Writer's Workshop.
This anthology, published by Seabury Books, is compiled and edited
by Elizabeth Maxwell and Susan Shapiro with an introduction by Ian
Frazier, who founded the workshop over ten years ago to open a creative
forum for soup kitchen guests.
The essays and verse that make up this volume provide us with a
window into the diverse lives, backgrounds, personalities and interests
of these unique individuals, many of whom know what it is to live on the
margin. We get a view of what has shaped their lives, what excites them,
what saddens them.
The writing styles of the twenty-five contributors range from the
factual to the fanciful as they tell of things that are funny and others
that are quite poignant. Some of the pieces are heartwarming, others
heartbreaking.
One of the book’s most prolific writers is Carol West, who writes of
everything from trying to find clothes that fit and her passion for
hats, to her experience as a child being passed from relative to
relative because her parents abdicated their responsibility before she
reached the age of two.
In "A Writing Fable" West tells of becoming excited about writing in
junior high school, only to be told by her teacher, "I have other
students who write much better than you do." "In that one moment my
world stopped," writes West. "I felt the pain of just not being good
enough, a failure and disappointment…. I never bothered to write again.
Until three decades later, when I saw a flyer for a writing workshop at
Holy Apostles."
Another talented writer with a different style is Peter Nkruma, who
writes in "Where I'm From":
"I am from Uganda, the eye of the skull-shaped African continent. And
from the eye I am. The lush, hot African landscape receded and a
Canadian one took its place in my life. Cold, long winters and free
roaming wolf-dog hybrids as numerous as snowflakes were my morning. Then
in the afternoon, the Canadian canvas was replaced with an American one.
Washington serenaded me with star-spangled anthems and I ate hot apple
pie at the ballgame."
Also
much to be admired are the writings of Tory Connolly Walker. In "How I
Got to New York," in only a page and a half she conveys so much of her
life by simply describing herself on her different trips to New York.
Towards the beginning she says:
"The first time I got a glimpse of this fabulous city, I was visiting
as a post-debutante, pre-college student, an eighteen-year-old,
wide-eyed ingénue with life stretched before me like a golden brick
road. New York was just like I pictured it: Big. Bad. Dramatic."
But on her fourth trip to New York: "I was thirty-eight years old….
By that time I not only had an alcohol habit but a powder and crack
cocaine habit, had lost my reporting career, and had been hospitalized
over twenty-two times for manic depression. Big. Bad. Dramatic. New York
I hardly knew ‘ye.’ But the Lord would set me free."
In other essays Walker tells of finding God, being released from her
demons, and moving on to a productive life today.
Another affecting writer is Donald Mackey. In "Recovering" he reveals
his feelings about being out of the shelter system, living in a private
home, and shopping at the local supermarket when he gets blocked by the
cart of the same lady in several aisles. "The third time this happened,"
Mackey writes, "I was about to be annoyed when I suddenly recalled the
times when I was tired, homeless, and hungry. I would peer into
supermarket windows, watching people going about their normal shopping
routines, wishing that my life was that normal again…. Suddenly I
appreciated the great changes I've made in my life."
Mackey says he’s presently completing a book and, best of all, has
just finished his theological study and become a licensed minister.
"Today when I leave the writer's workshop I am scheduled to visit a sick
church member at Brooklyn Hospital," he writes. "I feel very thankful I
can help someone else."
When you read this anthology, it brings home that if there is this
much talent among soup kitchen guests in writing alone, how much more
untapped ability there must be just waiting to be brought forth in
countless other fields as well.
