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American Lives
The Virgin of Prince Street: Expeditions into Devotion
2019 Foreword INDIES Award, Gold for Essay
With organized religion becoming increasingly divisive and politicized and Americans abandoning their pews in droves, it’s easy to question aspects of traditional spirituality and devotion. In response to this shifting landscape, Sonja Livingston undertakes a variety of expeditions—from a mobile confessional in Cajun Country to a eucharistic procession in Galway, Ireland, to the Death and Marigolds Parade in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Mass in a county jail on Thanksgiving Day—to better understand devotion in her own life.
The Virgin of Prince Street chronicles her quest, offering an intimate and unusually candid view into Livingston’s relationship with the swiftly changing Catholic Church and into her own changing heart. Ultimately, Livingston’s meditations on quirky rituals and fading traditions thoughtfully and dynamically interrogate traditional elements of sacramental devotion, especially as they relate to concepts of religion, relationships, and the sacred.
With organized religion becoming increasingly divisive and politicized and Americans abandoning their pews in droves, it’s easy to question aspects of traditional spirituality and devotion. In response to this shifting landscape, Sonja Livingston undertakes a variety of expeditions—from a mobile confessional in Cajun Country to a eucharistic procession in Galway, Ireland, to the Death and Marigolds Parade in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Mass in a county jail on Thanksgiving Day—to better understand devotion in her own life.
The Virgin of Prince Street chronicles her quest, offering an intimate and unusually candid view into Livingston’s relationship with the swiftly changing Catholic Church and into her own changing heart. Ultimately, Livingston’s meditations on quirky rituals and fading traditions thoughtfully and dynamically interrogate traditional elements of sacramental devotion, especially as they relate to concepts of religion, relationships, and the sacred.
184 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2019
5 people are currently reading
690 people want to read
About the author
Sonja Livingston
11 books114 followersSonja Livingston is the author of four books of literary nonfiction. Her latest, "The Virgin of Prince Street: Expeditions into Devotion," chronicles her startling return to Catholicism and uses the return to launch various expeditions through space and time to explore Roman Catholic tradition with new eyes. "Ladies' Night at the Dreamland," combines memory, research and imagination to provide poetic profiles of historic women. "Queen of the Fall," weaves together strands of memory with icons from 1980s/90s pop culture, religion and mythology to consider the lives of women, while exploring beauty, fertility and longing. Her award-winning memoir of pervasive childhood poverty, "Ghostbread," was widely adopted for classroom and book club use. Sonja's writing has earned an AWP Book Award in Nonfiction, a NYFA Fellowship, an Iowa Review Award, and a Susan Atefat Essay Prize. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the Virginia Commonwealth University.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
October 16, 2019
This is an example of how the reader of a book brings something to the reading. I grew up Catholic, I am from Rochester, New York, which is where Corpus Christi is located,, and I have left the church and attempted to return and left again. As I read this book all of those things influenced how I read and interpreted it. There’s a lyric quality to the essays that cover a range of topics around Catholicism. I was especially touched by the essay called Altar Girl which made me tear up a bit as I read it. I have no idea how someone without my background would react to these essays, I only know that for me it was an incredibly powerful book and I found it very moving.
June 27, 2019
Sonja Livingston's fourth book is part of the American Lives Series, selected by Tobias Wolfe, and published by the University of Nebraska Press. Her 2015 book, Queen of the Fall: A Memoir of Gods and Goddesses was also selected to be part of this series. Both books are delightful collections of lyrical essays--a craft Livingston has indeed mastered, and this is an excellent book for anyone seeking to learn and practice this form. In her newest collection, Livingston is drawn back to her Catholic religion--something she has rejected, but revisits with curiosity and hesitant interest. One essay--"Search for the Virgin"--os broken into eight parts and works as a binder and driver for the entire book. In this multi-part essay, Livingston hunts for a particularly beautiful Mary statue that she remembers from her childhood, but has been removed from her church, which has closed. She searches other churches and salvage businesses, and, in the process, learns a lot about religious statuary. Virgin of Prince Street is not a religious book. No one will be converted by reading it, but Livingston stimulates thoughts about faith, devotion, ritual, and finding a place within organized church.
August 17, 2020
This was not initially what I expected from the cover blurb--I guess I expected more of a Karen Armstrong-type semi-academic look at religion in America--but after the first couple of chapters, I ended up liking it. It helps that Sonja Livingston is such a good writer. Through her lovely prose, we can see her struggle with mixed feelings about religion and her hesitancy to return to church, even while she has almost an obsessive draw to it and to finding the Madonna statue that she had an emotional attachment to as a child. (Who knew, unless raised Catholic, that there were so many different genre of Madonna statues and that they all had names?) The book essentially chronicles a struggle between Livingston's head and her heart.
The parts I especially liked were the religious history anecdotes. Not having been raised Catholic, I was able to pick up a bit of knowledge and understanding of what a Catholic upbringing is like. I didn't realize when I started the book that it would be limited to Catholicism instead of a more comparative survey of religious devotion, and I expect the book will be much more appreciated by those who can identify with Livingston's feelings of nostalgia for the religion of their youth.
The parts I especially liked were the religious history anecdotes. Not having been raised Catholic, I was able to pick up a bit of knowledge and understanding of what a Catholic upbringing is like. I didn't realize when I started the book that it would be limited to Catholicism instead of a more comparative survey of religious devotion, and I expect the book will be much more appreciated by those who can identify with Livingston's feelings of nostalgia for the religion of their youth.
August 28, 2024
Didn’t capture my interest.
May 2, 2020
I really enjoyed this memoir in essays. It is quiet and personal but in the author's journey I felt as if I was journeying along, considering and deepening my own devotion. I didn't read this with quite as much breathlessness as I did the author's memoir of her younger years, Ghostbread, but this is a more mature, and hence more measured, memoir. It feels like finding lost treasure for me, a Catholic, to find a female writer who is a respected member of the literary community and who explores and returns to again and again her Catholic identity. Livingston is truly a brave voice, and I look forward to reading more.
August 6, 2019
An interesting book, not at all what I was expecting.
Through this book, we follow the author on a journey to discover more about herself, her faith & the changing Catholic church. Although I am not Catholic, I admired the way she kept being drawn to the familiar, and finding meaning in the rituals she had known from her childhood. Throughout her time trying to discover more about herself, she also embarks on a personal quest to find a statue of the Virgin Mary that she remembers from her childhood church, now closed. Her search takes her all over the state of New York & the East Coast of the USA, visiting other churches, chapels & even salvage businesses - she learns a lot about the reordering of churches, statues, religious iconography and rituals on the way.
As a book to read, it felt disjointed, but that was probably more to do with the way I read it, expecting more of a story & less of a bunch of essays. To read it as individual chapters, with a break between, would be a better way to read it! Don't let the "religious" label put you off this book, it's more of a memoir, a journal of one woman's experience.
Disclosure: I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Through this book, we follow the author on a journey to discover more about herself, her faith & the changing Catholic church. Although I am not Catholic, I admired the way she kept being drawn to the familiar, and finding meaning in the rituals she had known from her childhood. Throughout her time trying to discover more about herself, she also embarks on a personal quest to find a statue of the Virgin Mary that she remembers from her childhood church, now closed. Her search takes her all over the state of New York & the East Coast of the USA, visiting other churches, chapels & even salvage businesses - she learns a lot about the reordering of churches, statues, religious iconography and rituals on the way.
As a book to read, it felt disjointed, but that was probably more to do with the way I read it, expecting more of a story & less of a bunch of essays. To read it as individual chapters, with a break between, would be a better way to read it! Don't let the "religious" label put you off this book, it's more of a memoir, a journal of one woman's experience.
Disclosure: I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
August 23, 2019
The Virgin of Prince Street: Expeditions into Devotion chronicles Sonja Livingston’s return to the Catholic religion of her childhood. The allegory for her journey is the quest to find a missing statue of the Virgin Mary that she remembers as being a part of the Catholic Church she knew as a child. The statue was modest, but in her memory it glowed with the glimmer of many votive candles and was lovely.
Her quest takes her to a confessional in Cajun Country, a Eucharistic procession in Galway, Ireland, and The Death and Marigolds parade in Albequerque. Along the way she explains her own drift away from the Catholic church as a young adult and her slow, somewhat halting, return. Livingston’s style is understated: she never raises her voice in this somber but honest and friendly book, a narrative voice that may seem too reticent for some readers, but in the end it is fitting.
After all, the lesson she is learning as she attempts to track down her beloved statue is the humility that the journey teaches, the sacrifice, devotion, and call to duty that the quest brings out in her, and her calm, candid, and disarming voice is the perfect vehicle.
Her quest takes her to a confessional in Cajun Country, a Eucharistic procession in Galway, Ireland, and The Death and Marigolds parade in Albequerque. Along the way she explains her own drift away from the Catholic church as a young adult and her slow, somewhat halting, return. Livingston’s style is understated: she never raises her voice in this somber but honest and friendly book, a narrative voice that may seem too reticent for some readers, but in the end it is fitting.
After all, the lesson she is learning as she attempts to track down her beloved statue is the humility that the journey teaches, the sacrifice, devotion, and call to duty that the quest brings out in her, and her calm, candid, and disarming voice is the perfect vehicle.
September 8, 2019
I'm struggling to find the right words to express how much this book moved me. If you grew up Catholic, especially in Rochester, you will most likely love this book. Sonja's personal journey back to the Catholic faith, and her thoughts about where we are now, are written in a beautiful series of essays. I "found" her a year or so ago while reading an article she wrote for "America" magazine. I've now read her memoir, "Ghostbread," and "Virgin." I've also read several of her essays published in other periodicals. She'll be doing a reading and book signing in Rochester at the Central Library on Saturday, Sept. 28 at 2 p.m. Very much looking forward to meeting her in person.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 3, 2019
More fine writing from the award-winning lyrical essayist, this time taking the reader on a series of journeys into the territory of religious mystery, myth, and meaning. This collection doubles as a timely assessment of the Roman Catholic church - its colorful history, rituals, and cultural influence - that manages to be, at turns, both critically reflective and sympathetic to the human need for traditional means of relating to the sacred and for pathways that allow us to move from self absorption to reverence.
April 20, 2020
Sonja Livingston's remembrances of her girlhood Catholc church resonated with some of my own experiences from girlhood in a Chicago suburb and my lifetime spiritual journey. As an adult she takes the reader on her quest to find her beloved statue of Mary from her childhood and shares more broadly her spiritual journey. I appreciated her transparency and honesty and look forward to reading more of her work.
May 21, 2020
A journey--literally!--into faith to find a lost statue and to explore what it means to believe in a time of doubt. Livingston's confident prose and questioning nature provide an ideal pairing for considering Catholicism as she attempts to find a specific statue of Mary in New York state, with detours along the way to Ireland, Florida, New Mexico, and elsewhere. An excellent book with something to offer believers, nonbelievers, and in-betweeners.
November 18, 2020
Well-written and engaging essays about, on the surface, the author's search for a particular statue. The essays together form a memoir about her struggle with faith. I appreciated Livingston's honesty and emotional accessibility, her willingness to acknowledge her questions.
September 23, 2024
i really enjoyed the plot, however i am just not in love with her writing style. she seems to jump back and forth a lot and for me its just too much to keep up with. but she does say so many worthwhile things in this book and its such a beautiful story.
June 12, 2019
It was an interesting biography. That is a interesting read and I enjoyed finding out about something new.
October 21, 2019
In this wandering, disorganized, often hard-to-follow memoir, a woman searches for religious meaning in the Catholicism of her youth. Not my cup of tea, but more importantly not well-written.
December 19, 2019
Lyrical and provocative contemplation on faith and devotion in the modern world.
September 6, 2020
Cool concept and good writing, but unless you are familiar with Catholicism, it could be difficult to engage with. I did appreciate the author's offbeat perspective.
September 26, 2019
These are personal and insightful essays about a woman finding her way back to the religion of her youth. I learned a bit--didn't know much about how saints become saints--and at times found myself revisiting my own trips to mass with my grandmother.
April 28, 2022
This is a lovely reflection on devotion and the good of what draws us to religious traditions. Beautiful!
I’m drawn now to other people’s faith journeys because each is so unlike another’s. We’re all met by God in some strange and mysterious way. We all choose to look or turn away or wander around for a while, oblivious to God’s presence. But in each of our stories there are these glimpses of divinity, visions of hope and promise, streaks of holiness that highlight the profound love and compassion that is God’s very essence.
The stories I love the most are the ones that admit doubt, wandering, wondering, and bewilderment, which is one of the reasons I was drawn to Sonja Livingston’s The Virgin of Prince Street. Livingston grew up in a poor neighborhood in Upstate New York with a gaggle of siblings and a single mother, but she’s long since left her old stomping grounds, leaving behind her Catholic faith.
Despite the decline in numbers of those who call themselves Catholic and Livingston’s own wandering away from the Church, Livingston found herself back in her childhood parish, Corpus
Christi. “I looked around one Sunday morning, mystified,” Livingston writes. “The rows of empty pews did not baffle me, nor did the worn fixtures or the precariousness of Corpus Christi’s survival. I was surprised only by how much I cared. My attempt to make sense of this lingering connection—the various curiosities and anxieties it unleashed—led to the journeys that follow.”
The Virgin of Prince Street begins with Livingston’s return to Corpus Christi Church in Rochester, New York for a Christmas Mass that turned out to be in Spanish.
“I’d loved the sandstone building on East Main and Prince Streets for as long and as hard as I’ve ever loved anything… But as much as the parish was part of my life, I was never traditionally religious,” writes Livingston. “I was not the swooning type—nor was I ever likely to be—but fast-forward a few decades and there I was on Christmas Eve, stuffed with a sensible sermon and elegant hymns but hungry for something else.”
As she and her husband surveyed the ways the church had changed, Livingston looked all around but could not find the Virgin Mary, or one specific Virgin Mary, that had always been a feature in the church of her youth. Livingston can’t explain the longing to see this statue or why she’s so drawn back to the church, but the hunger for that “something else” drives Livingston forward, to find the Virgin, to begin her expedition into devotion, to open herself to what this world of statues and iconography and saints has to offer her.
“When the norm is walking away, devotion itself becomes a radical proposition,” Livingston writes. “Deliberately embracing one thing—no matter how troubled—caused my appreciation for all things to grow. Such openness cannot be contained. What began as a series of essayistic explorations became acts of reclamation. I too am a dusty pilgrimess, it turns out, who found herself fed by the fruit of abandoned gardens and the swell of underground streams.”
It’s been over 20 years since I became a Christian, and the faith I began to practice then looks vastly different from the one I practice now. I’m far more open to mystery and the broad and diverse ways we all express our devotion to something larger than ourselves. Our journeys of belief are each unique, and if we’re honest, they’re as complex, baffling, riddled with doubt, and blanketed with awe as Livingston’s.
There are days when I am filled with wonder, an “appreciation for all things” that spurs my heart to adoration for the Something Greater I call God, our beacon of perfect love. And there are dark moments when the chaos and trouble of the world seems too much. Why do I even bother? What would my life look like without this devotion to Something Greater?
Despite the trouble, the contradictions and hypocrisy, the countercultural swim upstream that is required in this walk with Jesus, I cannot help but be compelled onward, called into the mystery by the whisper of a loving Savior. I am wooed and hooked and somehow won’t be—can’t be—let go. Grace has gotten hold of me. I can’t unsee the beauty of what I’ve seen.
It is a pleasure to find others who are along for the ride.
(Full review originally published at Root & Vine News.
I’m drawn now to other people’s faith journeys because each is so unlike another’s. We’re all met by God in some strange and mysterious way. We all choose to look or turn away or wander around for a while, oblivious to God’s presence. But in each of our stories there are these glimpses of divinity, visions of hope and promise, streaks of holiness that highlight the profound love and compassion that is God’s very essence.
The stories I love the most are the ones that admit doubt, wandering, wondering, and bewilderment, which is one of the reasons I was drawn to Sonja Livingston’s The Virgin of Prince Street. Livingston grew up in a poor neighborhood in Upstate New York with a gaggle of siblings and a single mother, but she’s long since left her old stomping grounds, leaving behind her Catholic faith.
Despite the decline in numbers of those who call themselves Catholic and Livingston’s own wandering away from the Church, Livingston found herself back in her childhood parish, Corpus
Christi. “I looked around one Sunday morning, mystified,” Livingston writes. “The rows of empty pews did not baffle me, nor did the worn fixtures or the precariousness of Corpus Christi’s survival. I was surprised only by how much I cared. My attempt to make sense of this lingering connection—the various curiosities and anxieties it unleashed—led to the journeys that follow.”
The Virgin of Prince Street begins with Livingston’s return to Corpus Christi Church in Rochester, New York for a Christmas Mass that turned out to be in Spanish.
“I’d loved the sandstone building on East Main and Prince Streets for as long and as hard as I’ve ever loved anything… But as much as the parish was part of my life, I was never traditionally religious,” writes Livingston. “I was not the swooning type—nor was I ever likely to be—but fast-forward a few decades and there I was on Christmas Eve, stuffed with a sensible sermon and elegant hymns but hungry for something else.”
As she and her husband surveyed the ways the church had changed, Livingston looked all around but could not find the Virgin Mary, or one specific Virgin Mary, that had always been a feature in the church of her youth. Livingston can’t explain the longing to see this statue or why she’s so drawn back to the church, but the hunger for that “something else” drives Livingston forward, to find the Virgin, to begin her expedition into devotion, to open herself to what this world of statues and iconography and saints has to offer her.
“When the norm is walking away, devotion itself becomes a radical proposition,” Livingston writes. “Deliberately embracing one thing—no matter how troubled—caused my appreciation for all things to grow. Such openness cannot be contained. What began as a series of essayistic explorations became acts of reclamation. I too am a dusty pilgrimess, it turns out, who found herself fed by the fruit of abandoned gardens and the swell of underground streams.”
It’s been over 20 years since I became a Christian, and the faith I began to practice then looks vastly different from the one I practice now. I’m far more open to mystery and the broad and diverse ways we all express our devotion to something larger than ourselves. Our journeys of belief are each unique, and if we’re honest, they’re as complex, baffling, riddled with doubt, and blanketed with awe as Livingston’s.
There are days when I am filled with wonder, an “appreciation for all things” that spurs my heart to adoration for the Something Greater I call God, our beacon of perfect love. And there are dark moments when the chaos and trouble of the world seems too much. Why do I even bother? What would my life look like without this devotion to Something Greater?
Despite the trouble, the contradictions and hypocrisy, the countercultural swim upstream that is required in this walk with Jesus, I cannot help but be compelled onward, called into the mystery by the whisper of a loving Savior. I am wooed and hooked and somehow won’t be—can’t be—let go. Grace has gotten hold of me. I can’t unsee the beauty of what I’ve seen.
It is a pleasure to find others who are along for the ride.
(Full review originally published at Root & Vine News.
December 29, 2021
Sonja Livingston is the Enola Holmes of Catholicism in this memoir as she embarks on a pilgrimage to find a Virgin Mary statue from her childhood church. As a devoted, Catholic, pilgrim Livingston is trying to understand her religion and faith better. While on her quest she addresses topics such as: relics, icons, tradition, devotion, sacraments and socio economic status in relation to her faith. Join her on her journey to learn more and to discover is she finds the Mary statue that her soul yearns to see.
I highly recommend this book and especially to Catholics who struggle with organized religion.
I highly recommend this book and especially to Catholics who struggle with organized religion.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews