Don’t miss this powerful cross-cultural collaboration event at the St. Paul JCC on Sunday, February 5th at 3pm!
Join the St. Paul JCC for Ghost Stories, an evening of spoken word at the St. Paul JCC. Sunday, February 5, 3 pm. Free and open to the community. St. Paul JCC, 1375 St. Paul Avenue 55116.
When Mai Neng Moua, the daughter of a soldier in the Hmong Secret Army in the Viet Nam War, and Margie Newman, the daughter of a survivor of the Holocaust, met as participants in the Loft Mentor Series, they were struck by the similarities in their writings.
Working in the genre of creative non-fiction, they found that their writings were consistently informed by the “back-story” of the traumas experienced by their parents and their communities.
As Mai Neng and Margie continued to share their writings they began to perceive their families’ trauma as a kind of ghost—present and powerful, but whose specific form was difficult to determine. They recognized that there were other Minnesota writers whose work was also informed by the ghosts of a traumatic history. This will be the fifth reading given by the group, which also includes Marcie Rendon, Joan Maeda Trygg and Carolyn Holbrook, in various communities and neighborhoods throughout the Twin Cities.
“This is what art is supposed to do,”commented St. Paul JCC cultural arts director Jeffrey Richman, “to allow us entrée into another’s experience, and provide a glimpse into how he or she perceives the world. This powerful and positive reading left me feeling very hopeful that people have far more in common,far more uniting them, than dividing them.”
After the reading the community is invited to stay for a short moderated discussion.
Ghost Stories was made possible in part through the support of Rimon: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council—Nourishing Jewish Life Through the Arts. Rimon is an initiative of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation.
For more information call 651.698.0751 or visit www.stpauljcc.org.
(Photo: Barnaby)
For more exciting events in the Jewish community, check out TC Jewfolk’s Upcoming Events Page. This event information was provided to TC Jewfolk by the St. Paul JCC.
