“Pain and Memory: Reflections on the Strength of the Human Spirit in Suffering”

St. Francis College English Professor Gregory F. Tague is pleased to announce the publication of Pain and Memory: Reflections on the Strength of the Human Spirit in Suffering (Editions Bibliotekos), a book of creative prose and poetry falling under the literary theme of medical humanities. The book, which was carefully edited by Prof. Tague, features twenty-five selections by eighteen accomplished and award-winning authors. Assisting in the publication process was St. Francis English Major Paul E. Benkert. John F. Lennon, Assistant Professor of English, wrote the Foreword to the collection.

“These are stories and poems on life and death, families and illness and relationships involving loss and grief,” said Professor Tague. “Pain and Memory may fit the genre of medical humanities but there is nothing clinical about this book.”

In his Foreword, Dr. Lennon writes: “Pain and Memory refuses to shy away from looking at those tender moments of pain. Whether it is unflinchingly writing about the moment of death... or trying to come to grips with the loss of a loved one... or the reeling that happens at the end of a relationship... or attempting to understand an injury... or finding the exact words to discuss the feeling of being abandoned... this anthology does not Hollywoodize pain or sanitize its imprint on those who are affected by it. Instead, these stories pull back the gauze that hides the day-to-day wounds of our lives and, with surgical precision, allows us viscerally to experience them.”

Prizes and honors received by the contributors include: New Millennium Writings; finalist for the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Award; nominations for the Million Writer Award, Best of the Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize.

Publisher Fredericka A. Jacks writes in the Preface, “These writers recall not only the suffering but also the courage demonstrated by those who are sick and by those who participate in their illness. The writings consistently reminded us, in some ways, of Paul Tillich’s expression (and the title to one of his books), the courage to be. In many of these writings the reader will be grasped by the human need for connection and the desire for existential meaning when confronted with pain and suffering. In pain we suffer a fear of non-existence and want to forget, but in the anxiety of forgetting we risk denying life.”

Contributors include: Daniel Cartaina, Jennifer Clark, Kathie Giorgio, Howie Good, Jomar Daniel Isip, Rivka Keren, Mitch Levenberg, Robert P. McParland, Tim Nees, Ryan C. Neighbors, Rebecca Newth, Elizabeth Primamore, Ruth Sabath Rosenthal, Lynne Shapiro, Anique Taylor, Cynthia Trenshaw, Anne Whitehouse and Elizabeth Yokas.

Professor Tague has authored and edited numerous books including: as author, Ethos And Behavior: The English Novel from Jane Austen to Henry James (Academica Press, 2008); as co-editor and contributor, Origins of English Dramatic Modernism, 1870-1914 (Academica Press 2010); and as author, Character And Consciousness (Academica Press 2005). He also publishes The Association for the Study of Ethical Behavior in Literature Journal.

A reading at St. Francis College of some of the work from Pain and Memory is scheduled for April 22 at 4:00pm.

St. Francis College, founded in 1859 by the Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn, is located in Brooklyn Heights, N.Y. Since its founding, the College has pursued its Franciscan mission to provide an affordable, high-quality education to students from New York City’s five boroughs and beyond.
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