About the Book
Transformative Language Arts, an emerging field and profession, calls on us to use writing, storytelling, theater, music, expressive and other arts for social change, personal growth, and culture shift. In this landmark anthology, Transformative Language Artists share their stories, scholarship and practices for a more just and peaceful world, from a Hmong storyteller and spoken word artist weaving traditions with contemporary immigrant challenges in Philadelphia, to a playwright raising awareness of AIDS/HIV prevention.
Read the stories, consider the questions raised, and find inspiration and tools in using words as a vehicle for transformation through essays on the challenge of dominant stories, public housing women writing for their lives, histories and communities at the margins, singing as political action, the convergence of theology and poetics, women's self-leadership, embodied writing, and healing the self, others, and nature through TLA.
The anthology also includes “snapshots,” short features on transformative language artists who make their livings and lives working with people of all ages and backgrounds to speak their truths, and change their communities.
Table of Contents:
Introduction-Ruth Farmer and Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
A Snake in the Grass: Challenges of Dominant Stories-James SparrellSnapshot: Sherry Reiter, Poetry Therapy Pioneer, Educator, Clinical Social Worker, Writer, Storyteller
Snapshot: Seema Reza, Recreational Arts Program Coordinator at Military Hospitals, Poet and Writer
“Everyone's Life is a Book”: Public Housing Women Write for Their Lives-Caryn Mirriam-GoldbergSnapshot: Vanita Leatherwood, Writer, Facilitator, and Director of Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Center
Snapshot: Heather Severson, Writer, Workshop Model Developer, and Facilitator
Holding the Space: TLA Values in Education-Ruth FarmerSnapshot: Patricia Fontaine, Writer, and Facilitator of Workshops for People Living with Cancer
Snapshot: Nancy Morgan, Arts and Humanities Director at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center
Youth, Writing, and Identity: An Interview with Sarah W. BartlettRuth FarmerSnapshot: Suzanne Adams, Workshop Facilitator for Adolescent Girls, and Writer
Snapshot: Minna Dubin, Workshop Facilitator for Women and Youth, and Writer
Zamlers, Tricksters, and Queers: Re-Mixing Histories in Yiddishland and Faerieland-Ezra Nepon BerkleySnapshot: Miriam Gabriel, Blogger, and Spoken Word Artist
Snapshot: Ruth Gendler, Writer, Artist, and Facilitator of Workshops for Children and Adults
Performing for Social Change: Interviews with Kao Kue, Taina Asili, and Katt Lissard- Ruth FarmerSnapshot: Kelley Hunt, Singer-Songwriter, International Teaching and Touring Artist Snapshot: Deb Hensley, Singer-Songwriter, Writer, Consultant, Facilitator and TLA Network Coordinator
Theopoetics as a Spiritual Form of Transformative Language ArtsCallid Keefe-PerrySnapshot: Larry Greer, Interfaith Minister and Pastoral Coordinator
Snapshot: Joanna Tebbs Young, Writer, Columnist, Expressive Writing and Spirituality Workshop Facilitator, and Workshop Developer
Women’s Self-Leadership Through Transformative Narratives-Yvette Angelique Hyater-AdamsSnapshot: Lisa McIvor, Home Health Nurse, Workshop Facilitator for People With Disabilities, Poet and Writer
Snapshot: Jen Cross, Writer and Erotic Writer, Facilitator of Workshops for Survivors of Sexual Violence and for Erotic Writing
Snapshot: Angie River, Spoken Word and Burlesque Artist
Autobiography of a Social Body-Juliana BorreroSnapshot: Richard Hodgson, writer, storyteller, and workshop facilitator for elders
Snapshot: Scott Youmans, Seminarian, Web Consultant, Writer and Facilitator
Deep Connection: Healing Self, Others, and Nature through Transformative Language Arts-Brian W. SunsetResources
Contributors & Editors
About the Author :
Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg is the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate, founder of Transformative Language Arts at Goddard College, where she teaches, and author of five collections of poetry; the novel, The Divorce Girl; an award-winning book on the Holocaust, Needle in the Bone; and several memoirs. She leads community writing workshops widely for many populations. www.CarynMirriamGoldberg.com
Ruth Farmer is an essayist, poet, fiction writer, and educator. She directs the Goddard Graduate Institute and teaches at the Community College of Vermont. Writing and learning have always been essential in her life, personally and professionally. In recent years, she has embraced dance and yoga as expressive languages that go where words cannot go.
Review :
When you take writers and poets into areas where real people are dealing with real life problems and traumas, with humble joys, renewing their hope in life, having expressive breakthroughs—that is the gift to all of us. This allows real people to tell their stories, to share their grief and gratitude, to untwist the dark silence that wraps their hearts and lengthen it out into a sonnet, a narrative poem, a celebratory lyric—that is essentially what language and words are for.
What these writers have done is nothing short of challenging the stale models of writing to and for other writers, other poets entrenched in the moldy hallways of academia. When writing breaks down the doors, when writing is used to really reach across the dark chasm and speak out, call by name the ghosts that lurk there and invoke one's own power with fearless defiance, well, then, that is truly writing from the heart, writing that is mapped and charted to define and explore our human experience. That is what this book does, and I applaud the editors, the writers and poets. So impressive is this volume that every high school child and every citizen should have it in their backpacks and book shelves.
This is as much a testimonial to the resilience and creativity of the human spirit as it is an informative exploration of an emerging field, Transformative Language Arts. A collection of reflections, stories, reports on the work of change agents whose medium is language (whether spoken, written, sung, enacted, or remembered), it shares with us the many ways people are successfully being moved to write, to be heard into speech, and to be liberated into action through the work of these caring professionals.
A transformation awaits each reader in this volume’s wealth of language, heart, scholarship, and stories within stories to inspire action in whatever small way we can to affect our large, troubled yet beautiful world. Each contributor is a “change agent” who creatively points the way to a higher level of understanding of our varied fellow human beings through language’s many avenues leading to hope and survival.
This new anthology of Transformative Language Arts essays highlights the excitement of this emerging field. Founded as a Master of Arts program at Goddard College, TLA has spread across the country as a cutting edge practice in the arts, ecology, business, activism, and health. Farmer and Mirriam-Goldberg bring together leading voices to demonstrate how words have power to change individual lives as well as communities. Join with them to help catalyze social change.
This book is about how words can change lives, and in so doing, change the world. From stories of homeless women finding their voice to the power of song to transform inner life, this is a book that revives the ancient awareness of the dynamic energy of language. What an antidote this book is to the popular media's silence and silliness in the face of injustice.
Having already been familiar with Farmer and Mirriam-Goldberg’s teaching and work, I am thrilled to see this book actualize the remarkable teaching and pedagogy they both advocate. This collection not only moves you to rethink your teaching practices with its understanding of “communities of congruence,” but invites you to investigate methodologies that alter the stale modes of workshop and creative writing teaching and the possibilities of teaching outside the classroom—the rest of the world and its places of nurture, hardship and recovery.
Now one could argue that it was merely a creative writing class and you would be right, but what is teaching creative writing but teaching creative thought? And from imagination springs dreams.
The essays in this groundbreaking anthology provide artists, educators, activists, scholars, community organizers, and spiritual leaders with a blueprint for applying the spoken, written, and/or sung word for initiating personal and social transformation. Leading artists, educators, and practitioners within the emerging field describe concrete ways to present workshops, performances, and other community activities that engage participants in the process of self-discovery, creative expression, and community building. Whether working with women subsisting in housing projects or people combating mental illness or cancer patients and caregivers living with the profound impact of the illness, the contributors share their experiences as testimonials to the life-changing power of these practices.
