An evocative celebration of Cretan—and female—power.
A feminist theologian shares her journey from despair to rebirth while leading her first “Goddess tour” in Greece in this revision of her 1995 memoir.
Teaching summer courses about Greek goddesses on Lesbos turned out to be life changing for Christ (Goddess and the God in the World, 2016, etc.). Finding it “more and more difficult to return to a culture that sapped the life energy I felt so strongly in Greece,” the American academic, whose marriage had “suddenly ended,” eventually “resigned the tenured full professorship I had worked so hard to achieve” to live full time on the island. While she initially felt blessed by a joyous new love affair, “the voice of my despair returned” after that relationship ended. Christ, who then moved to Athens, soon coped with the death of her mother, struggled with writer’s block, and entered group therapy. In this memoir, Christ describes how she then came to a freeing sense of self-worth while leading her first “Goddess tour,” or female-only pilgrimage, throughout Crete. She relates that the women visited caves, museums, and other special sites showcasing Crete’s matriarchal spiritual and cultural roots. They left food offerings to goddess figures, danced within mystical labyrinths, dined, and reveled in Cretan culture, embracing their female energy. By the book’s end, Christ, who had often felt exhausted and disorganized during the tour, experienced rebirth, realizing that she had drawn strength from the goddess spirit and that “part of the healing process is losing control.” The author, who now runs ongoing “Goddess tours,” fuses relatable personal angst and thought-provoking feminist commentary in this memoir. She paints an alluring portrait of Crete by way of many colorful anecdotes, including learning about raki making (“After the wine is pressed, they put the skins and stems into barrels.…The mixture takes six weeks to ferment, and then they bring it to a still, where it is heated over a fire. The steam that rises is directed through long curved pipes, and comes out as raki”). She also offers many intriguing “herstory” insights, including that Crete’s “royal” palaces were likely goddess-focused religious and administrative centers. While the author notes in her new preface that her book originally received criticism for its discussion of her male relationships, most readers will likely enjoy this Eat, Pray, Love flavor.
An evocative celebration of Cretan—and female—power.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: The Far Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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