The Book of Mev
Description:... The Book of Mev is the story of Mev Puleo, an American photojournalist and young Catholic who actively confronted a world of injustice, poverty and violence. From witnessing homelessness in the United States to struggles for social change in Haiti, El Salvador, and Brazil, Puleo used photography and interviews to be a bridge between poverty and affluence, the First World and the Third World. Puleo's familiarity with suffering, however, was dramatically intensified when she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor at the age of thirty-one. She died twenty-one months later.In his book, All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time (Crossroads, 1997), Robert Ellsberg placed Mev Puleo -- a "witness of solidarity" -- alongside the Hindu Mohandas Gandhi, the Jew Anne Frank, the French writer Albert Camus, and many traditional Catholic saints. While in his two pages, Ellsberg hinted at Puleo's short life of passionate integrity, The Book of Mev chronicles her soaring and searing journey as a photographer, person of faith, and woman in love. Mev Puleo's life was an ardent search for faith, hope, and love. The Book of Mev explores many varieties of love including that between a woman and man who teach and learn from each other, as well as the communities they are blessed to be part of. Puleo's own compassion in the face of so much social suffering and her joie de vivre even as she battles with cancer provide an unusual portrait of a young person's grappling with death and life's ultimate questions. As a college student, Ms. Puleo wrote: "When I was in my early teens, a thought took hold of me. Jesus didn't die to save us from suffering - he died to teach us howto suffer, to be with us in our every anguish and agony, to give meaning to our pain. . . . Sometimes I actually mean it. I'd rather die young, having lived a life crammed with meaning than to die old, even in security, but without meaning." Readers of all ages and religious commitments will find such meaning in The Book of Mev, which illumines such timeless issues as the joy of connection, the suffering of the innocent, and the grace found in community. Chmiel contextualizes the particulars of Puleo's life by making reference to broader, global struggles for life and justice in Iraq, Haiti, Brazil, and the Middle East. In such wise, The Book of Mev offers a challenge to American readers not only to savor the people one loves in the present moment but also to consider a wider horizon of faith and struggle beyond one's own personal misfortunes.
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