Elizabeth Esris
Examining Lyon’s Resistance and Deportation History Center
Elizabeth Esris was drawn to the Resistance and Deportation History Center in Lyon because of her enduring desire to understand how ordinary citizens muster the will to resist, sacrifice and survive in the face of repressive treatment.
James Baldwin: Scrutinizing America from Paris
Baldwin’s acute understanding of racial inequality and abuse is what makes his writing pertinent today. But how did his experiences as an expat in Paris help him evolve as a writer and analyst of life in the United States?
Paris 1971: Captured, Willingly
Photographs from nearly half a century ago lead Elizabeth Esris to revisit her first encounter with Paris with her then-boyfriend (now husband) and to rejoice in the timeless nature of travel discovery.
The Silence of Oradour-sur-Glane
As Elisabeth Esris walks the charred and shattered streets of Oradour-sur-Glane (near Limoges) with other visitors the uniformity of silence is remarkable. This is not a place for conversation or expletive even though each step leads to palpable savagery.
Notes from the Laverie
It’s a small step from novelist Gil Pender’s encounter with Ernest Hemingway in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris to writer Elizabeth Esris’s encounter with Josette in real life’s early morning in Paris. In fact, just around the corner, as Elizabeth tells in this exquisite travel story.
Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert: Who’s Minding the Cloister?
In this cross-Atlantic travel article Elizabeth Esris examines the beauty and the history of the village of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert in southwest France and then returns home to discover some of its missing elements at The Cloisters in New York.
The Abbey of Senanque: Lavender, Old Stones and Poetry in Provence
In Provence, contributor Elizabeth Esris breaks through the picture-post card view of lavender and old stones and allows her imagination to take over while visiting the Abbey of Senanque in the region’s Vaucluse area.
Les Vaudois: Reflections on a Religious Massacre in Provence
Elizabeth Esris visits the ruins at Mérindol, a hilltop village in the southern portion of Luberon (Vaucluse, Provence), where followers of the Christian Vaudois sect were massacred over a period of five days in 1545 in a crusade ordered by the French King Francois I.