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bakkabennu 's review for:
A Year of Biblical Womanhood
by Rachel Held Evans
Admittedly, this is pretty far removed from my usual fare, but a girl can't read Kierkegaard and Boethius all the time. I'm in the middle of a Zizek theology book that is far too Ivory Tower even for me, and having seen things from Rachel's blog previously (that were very well done) I took the plunge and bought this when it went on the $3 monthly kindle sale (really only $1 for me, since I had some credit). It was worth $1 and a review.
While at the outset the book's project seems embarrassingly silly and pretty boring, Rachel did it just about as well as anyone possibly could. She needed a gimmick to sell a book to her publisher and more power to her for making it work. It's a nuanced exercise in systematically dismantling contemporary (American) evangelical notions of femininity. Along the way she interviews and consults with orthodox jews, polygamists, the amish, old order mennonites, quakers, and catholic monks, among many others. It's well researched, you learn a lot of cool things. It's funny. And well she succinctly proves (in case you were still blissfully ignorant) that most religious right notions of femininity are not from ancient jewish culture, but alas, transplanted from 1950s America.
That being said it is hopelessly irritating at points. The parts going on and on about the importance of buying fair trade chocolate come to mind. While the author is well-intentioned, it reeks of pretentious mainstream center-left politics at points. But the parts that are good are really good - like her re-claiming of female biblical characters throughout. This is something I think a wide-range of people would have a good time reading, even though most feminists and evangelicals would dismiss it outright and never bother I hope they don't because they have the most to gain from it.
While at the outset the book's project seems embarrassingly silly and pretty boring, Rachel did it just about as well as anyone possibly could. She needed a gimmick to sell a book to her publisher and more power to her for making it work. It's a nuanced exercise in systematically dismantling contemporary (American) evangelical notions of femininity. Along the way she interviews and consults with orthodox jews, polygamists, the amish, old order mennonites, quakers, and catholic monks, among many others. It's well researched, you learn a lot of cool things. It's funny. And well she succinctly proves (in case you were still blissfully ignorant) that most religious right notions of femininity are not from ancient jewish culture, but alas, transplanted from 1950s America.
That being said it is hopelessly irritating at points. The parts going on and on about the importance of buying fair trade chocolate come to mind. While the author is well-intentioned, it reeks of pretentious mainstream center-left politics at points. But the parts that are good are really good - like her re-claiming of female biblical characters throughout. This is something I think a wide-range of people would have a good time reading, even though most feminists and evangelicals would dismiss it outright and never bother I hope they don't because they have the most to gain from it.