A literary anthology exploring contemporary Catholic women’s experiences.
Finalist for the 2013 Fore Word Indie Fab Book of the Year Award in the Anthologies Category
This unique literary anthology is devoted to unruly Catholic women. In short stories, poems, personal essays, and drama, the contributors describe women’s struggles with Catholicism and also complicate contemporary understandings of women’s relationships to their faith. Catholicism often oppresses the women in these creative pieces, but it also inspires them to challenge literary, social, political, and religious hierarchies. The collection reflects the considerations of a wide range of women from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, geographic locations, and generations; they encompass the gamut of reactions to the Catholic experience-humor, anger, nostalgia, critique, appreciation, and engagement or rejection on one’s own terms. Authors address real life versus Catholic dogma, motherhood, childhood, alienation from the Church, Catholic school days, mentors and exemplary figures, Church strictures on women’s sexualities, and leaving or remaining in the Church among many other experiences. Readers will find this a rich and multifaceted exploration, one that offers new perspectives and moments of recognition.
Inhoudsopgave
Acknowledgments and Permissions
Introduction: Mysteries of the Faithful, Dreams of the Future
Part One: The Joyful Mysteries
the first joyful mystery (poetry)
Susanne Dutton
Praying Twice (poetry)
Liz Dolan
My Soul Sisters—or, How the Nuns of my Childhood Inspired a Feisty Feminist (personal essay)
Renée Bondy
Jerusalem Road (poetry)
Mary Rice
Where I First Met God (personal essay)
Lacey Louwagie
Age of Reason (poetry)
Suzanne Camino
Uniforms Optional (personal essay)
Leah Cano
Sunday Morning in a Foreign Country (poetry)
Lauren K. Alleyne
Wool Skirts (personal essay)
Martha Marinara
Lord I am not your woman (poetry)
Susanne Dutton
It Takes a Village to Rear a Word Weaver: Memoirs of a Black Catholic Girlhood (personal essay)
Mary-Antoinette Smith
Fact of the world I (poetry)
Lauren K. Alleyne
girltruth (personal essay)
Stacey Ginsburg
the Easter fear (poetry)
Susanne Dutton
Part Two: The Sorrowful Mysteries
Holy Thursday: The Passion (poetry)
Lauren K. Alleyne
That Easter (fiction)
Leonore Wilson
Our Lady of the Library (poetry)
Sarah Colona
For the Vatican Dress Code (poetry)
Annrose Fitzgerald
Nothing Soup (fiction)
K. Biadaszkiewicz
Nailing My Backbone to the Cross (poetry)
Donna J. Gelagotis Lee
True Confessions (poetry)
Patti See
Resolution (poetry)
Lauren K. Alleyne
Excuse me for this, Sister Mary (poetry)
Ava C. Cipri
A Meditation on Sexuality for Catholic Clergy (personal essay)
Dolores De Luise
Moth Song (poetry)
Sarah Colona
Last of the Tomboy Pings (fiction)
Patti See
Penance (poetry)
Donna J. Gelagotis Lee
Thou Shalt Not Have Strange Gods Before Me (personal essay)
Pamela Galbreath
Sister No One (poetry)
Liz Dolan
Superstitions of a Catholic Childhood (poetry)
Martha K. Grant
Fear and Trembling (poetry)
Lauren K. Alleyne
Rewinding the Wedding Tape (poetry)
Patti See
Invisible Nature (personal essay)
Leonore Wilson
Lying to God (poetry)
Donna J. Gelagotis Lee
Our Father Who? (personal essay)
Carol Cooley
Mass Revolt (poetry)
Caterine Mc Guire
Hunger (drama)
Kari Ann Owen
Angels (drama)
Kari Ann Owen
Confessions of a (Catholic) Presbyterian Woman (personal essay)
Madeleine Mysko
Blue Lights (poetry)
Mary Rice
Part Three: The Glorious Mysteries
Water’s Wine (poetry)
Allison Whittenberg
Exile (personal essay)
Colleen Shaddox
Anathema (poetry)
Natasha Sajé
Intersections (poetry)
Lauren K. Alleyne
Telling My Mother I Can’t Say the Rosary (poetry)
Patti See
Secrets of the Confessional (drama)
Pat Montley
Ninth Month (poetry)
Leonore Wilson
Resurrecton (poetry)
Mary Rice
The Sentence (poetry)
Leonore Wilson
Interior Castle (poetry)
Sheila Hassell Hughes
Sacrament (poetry)
Donna J. Gelagotis Lee
Sister Ming in the Year of the Monkey (fiction)
Susan Leonardi
Anthony’s Asceticism (poetry)
Ava C. Cipri
The Taste of Apples (poetry)
Lauren K. Alleyne
Untitled (poetry)
Paula Timpson
Notes on Contributors
Over de auteur
Jeana Del Rosso is Professor of English and Women’s Studies and Director of the Morrissy Honors Program at Notre Dame of Maryland University. She is the coeditor (with Leigh Eicke and Ana Kothe) of The Catholic Church and Unruly Women Writers: Critical Essays. Leigh Eicke is a writer and independent scholar in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Ana Kothe is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez.