When Blood and Bones Cry Out
Journeys through the Soundscape of Healing and Reconciliation
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- $45.99
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- $45.99
Publisher Description
Around the world communities that have suffered the trauma of unspeakable violence--in Liberia, Somalia, West Africa, Columbia, and elsewhere--are struggling to recover and reconcile, searching for ways not just to survive but to heal.
In When Blood and Bones Cry Out, John Paul Lederach, a pioneer of peace-building, and his daughter, Angela Jill Lederach, show how communities can recover and reconnect through the power of making music, creating metaphors, and telling their extraordinary stories of suffering and survival. Instead of relying on more common linear explanations of healing and reconciliation, the Lederachs demonstrate how healing is circular, dynamic, and continuing, even in the midst of ongoing violence. They explore the concept of "social healing," a profoundly important intermediary step between active warfare and reconciliation. Social healing focuses on the lived experience of those who have suffered protracted violence and their need to give voice to that experience, both individually and collectively. Giving voice, speaking the unspeakable, in words and sounds that echo throughout traumatized communities, can have enormous healing power. Indeed, the Lederachs stress the remarkable effects of sound and vibration through tales of Tibetan singing bowls, Van Morrison's transcendent lyrics, the voices of mothers in West Africa, and their own personal journeys. And they include inspiring stories of transformation: a mass women's protest movement in Liberia that forces leaders to keep negotiating until a peace agreement is signed; elders in Somalia who walk between warring clans year after year to encourage dialogue; former child soldiers who run drum workshops and grow gardens in refugee camps; and rape victims in Sierra Leone who express their pain in poetry.
With equal measures of insight and compassion, When Blood and Bones Cry Out offers a promising new approach to healing traumatized communities.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this thoughtful discussion of social healing, John Paul Lederach (The Little Book of Conflict Resolution) and his daughter Angela Jill Lederach, a community group conferencing facilitator, explore using new metaphors to better describe and articulate the processes individuals and communities engage in to begin finding wholeness after or in the midst of unspeakable violence. Garnering wisdom from local groups in places as far-flung as Liberia, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Colombia, and South Bend, Ind., the Lederachs have come to favor musical and circular metaphors for healing rather than the linear, results-oriented models normally used by international aid organizations. The Lederachs urge conceptualizing healing as a Van Morrison song or the sound that reverberates from a Tibetan singing bowl, circling around and sending sound waves multidirectionally through a community. Conversations, stories and poems, and simple gestures like a "cutting-hair ritual" to reintegrate child soldiers in Liberia can start the reconciliation process. Based on deep listening and respect for the people who have suffered the most from violence, this book offers sensitive insights for approaching the space between trauma and forgiveness.