Read previous chapters here. Chapter 10 Soledad had been taught to pray. Pilar attended Mass each week and made sure all of her children received their first communions in a special way. In time, it became time for Soledad and Maria to take the Lord’s sacrament, so Pilar talked to the nuns, those women Soledad... Continue Reading →
From July of 2013 to August of 2015, I worked in a history library as an intern for a remarkable scholar who has become one of my dearest friends. Her name is Jenny, and she is fighting leukemia again. I don’t want to focus on her illness, however. I want to focus on her influence... Continue Reading →
I have learned a lot about faith in the last few years. Events in my religious community have caused me to examine my own beliefs and to study and ponder more on the issues that are important to me. I am learning to be, as Emma Goldman suggested, “broad and big” in trying to understand... Continue Reading →
I began reading Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women (2013) with the impression that I was going to learn about how Jesus was a feminist. After all, my own feminist leanings began because of how well the feminist theory I was studying as a master’s student seemed to line up... Continue Reading →
Jimmy Carter’s new book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power (2014) is like the cliff’s notes version of Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. This isn’t meant as a criticism, but instead admiration. I’m in awe that a man in his 90s with much power and influence in... Continue Reading →
Life of Pi (2001) by Yann Martel, number 51 on the BBC book list, is one of my favorite books. When I first read it several years ago, I began recommending it to everybody. I even made my husband read it, and he’s generally not a reader. It is just a great book, one that... Continue Reading →
I've been on a journey to find people like me. People who think like me, feel like me, and write like me. People who care like I do and for what I do. It is a new journey, it promises to be a long journey, and so far it has been a rewarding journey. Some... Continue Reading →
A few years ago, my husband and I watched a popular television show. Whenever I tried to explain the show’s premise and action to somebody who hadn’t seen it, I sounded like a crazy person. “There’s a polar bear, a black smoke monster, and a hatch in the ground. The people crashed there on a... Continue Reading →
Well, that title is quite a mouthful. I should’ve just said that George Eliot covers just about everything in her 800-page novel Middlemarch (1874), number 20 on the BBC book list. I decided to read Middlemarch at the same time as Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Let’s just say, Middlemarch is now finished, and War and... Continue Reading →
Marilynne Robinson is so smart that I can barely understand her books. Her work forces me to slow down, savor each sentence, and really think about what I’ve just read. When I put forth this effort, I am richly rewarded by her prose. She’s like Joan Didion, another one of my favorite essayists, only Robinson... Continue Reading →
The Bookshelf of Emily J. 