Brick by brick

Nicole d’Entremont is a Peaks Island neighbor who inspires me deeply.

We met in Eleanor Morse’s Sudden Fiction course years ago, when she first arrived on the island. Both Eleanor and Nicole have been tremendous mentors for me, with writing and leading the way in social justice activism.

I made this card for Nicole from an illustration I did for The Star Fruit Tree, a Vietnamese folk tale. She traveled to Vietnam in December, volunteering in a Habitat for Humanity Global Build in the Mekong Delta.

Nicole was recruited by old friends who had, like her, worked at the Catholic Worker. Nicole left college and joined others at St. Joseph’s House on Chrystie Street on the Lower East Side, where they fed the homeless and spread the news of non-violence during 1964 – 1974, earning $5/week and room and board. She also served as an editor of the newspaper. The first paper was sold on May 1 in 1933 by Dorothy Day at a penny a copy. It remains the same price to this day.

I had illustrated the cover of Nicole’s first book, City of Belief, which was centered in the Lower East Side and Vietnam War protests, and was eager to hear how this trip would go. We had just watched The Vietnam War documentary, a hard reckoning of a brutal history.

She came back renewed and hopeful, fortified by the sweaty work of laying bricks, speaking English with eager young people, and making friends with her team and the Vietnamese family.

Their team of eleven, five men and six women, built a home in a rural area north of Ho Chi Minh City, for the family of Madame Lam, across from the site of their current home, seen below as it is being taken apart for the reuse of some of the materials.

Upon return, Nicole asked me to illustrate a piece she was writing for the paper, about her experience in Vietnam. She wanted a before and after drawing, because the team departed before the roof was done by a professional team.

This is the Before:

This is the After, which includes a bathroom that is unseen in the drawing.

She recently gave me a copy of the March April issue.

Nicole wrote, “All of us had our own reasons for choosing Vietnam. Many of us were old enough to have been personally touched by the war in Vietnam either in our own lives or the lives of friends and family. There were many opportunities for private reflection on that war.”

Nicole raved about the team’s translator, Luu Tan Phuoc, who made everyone feel welcome and was “tireless in his concerns for the volunteers.” He also is connected to a local school community, and Nicole vowed to send him books of mine for their benefit. We shipped off two boxes from the Peaks Island PO and crossed our fingers.

It took a few weeks, but Phuoc sent this photo, evidence of their arrival. Here he is reading Tiger Boy by Mitali Perkins.

These are the local students who will be practicing their English with my books!

Nicole wrote, “The global family is visible if we open our eyes and let the truth enter, but it helps to sweat and carry bricks and to get dirty together.”

As Women’s History Month comes to a close, I learned even more by drawing Dorothy Day, a pioneer in social justice, a committed pacifist, author, and co-founder of the Catholic Worker.

Nicole loaned me her copy of Dorothy Day: Portraits by Those Who Knew Her by Rosalie G. Riegle and I noticed this quote, by Dostoevsky, that Dorothy was fond of repeating: “The world will be saved by beauty.”

I’m grateful to brave women who follow their faith in the world, and especially to Nicole, who lives her own beauty, brick by brick.