“It took a village to rear this baby.” So says editor Jenna Glatzer on her acknowledgements page of Stories of Strength, an anthology for disaster relief. Published with Lulu.com, a print-on-demand company that made the remarkably quick publication of this work possible just two months after the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina, Stories of Strength features stories of “what it takes to beat the odds.” Glatzer may have many to thank for helping her mother this mother of an anthology, but she deserves recognition for conceiving the original idea for such a powerful, poignant book that’s also an impressive fundraising project.
In the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina, Glatzer suggested to other writers in the forum of her website AboutWrite.com that they publish a book and donate the proceeds to relief efforts. Having now guided Stories of Strength through the publishing process, Glatzer is spearheading publicity efforts that include a Stories of Strength website featuring a tracker of total sales. All profits from the anthology’s sales, including those earned by Lulu, will be donated to support on-going hurricane relief.
More than 100 writers contributed the heartfelt essays, stories, and poems that make this collection a celebration of the wondrous human drive not only to survive, but to overcome—and flourish. Organized into nine areas, the anthology explores some potentially obvious aspects of strength in sections named Physical Strength, Role Models of Strength, and Strength of Community.
They nonetheless offer plenty of subtle surprises. Stories of less obvious aspects of strength are grouped under headings such as Strength of Spirit, Borrowing Strength, and The Strength to Start Over. All the sections boast compelling works from new as well as established writers. Strength in Fiction alone features memorable stories by the popular Sci-Fi/Fantasy author Orson Scott Card and the Christian fiction author Robin Lee Hatcher, as well as from 16 new and emerging authors.
Strength of Spirit starts things off on a wondrous note with “The Shrine,” a stirring personal essay by Matthew James. Poetry and additional personal essays of heartache and redemption, humor and remembrances, fill out this section. “My Mother’s Table,” by Noreen Braman, resonates with historical references, the impact of past tragedies, and an appreciation for the stories that bind us in a tapestry of shared experiences. In “Taking Back My Heart,” Deborah Rose, a survivor of childhood psychological and sexual abuse, offers the powerful perspective of a person who’s fought her entire life to realize the depths of her own strength.
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