K's Books

I first read this book 20 years ago, freshly out of the closet at Alverno College and soaking up all queer culture I could get my hands on. The monthly drag shows, weekly Rainbow Alliance meetings, and occasional events at the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center weren't enough - I needed it all of the time, which meant a lot of books. The vast majority of these books were from the 70's-early 90's, many lesbian feminist tomes that haven't aged well. I was also just beginning to become disillusioned with Wicca, and I knew that the religion and queerness were somehow tied up with each other, but it was so hard to find anyone who'd written anything about this. Another Mother Tongue was the perfect book to me, combining the depths of queer culture with mythology, Pagan spirituality, and symbolism. The LGBT Community Center had a fundraising event including a sale of secondhand books; I didn't have the money for this, but the stunning cover intrigued me so I sat in a corn...

I'm glad this book came right after In Memory of Her a s this was much easier to read! I first read this probably probably in '14 or '15 and it was so hard to find this book that I bought the used copy that I own now just to read it. I reread it again while preparing for seminary, so this was my third time reading it. This book is much whiter than I remember, since much better able to identify that now. It really grated on me to read that spiritual revelation comes to individuals and not communities - this is a very white way of thinking! Throughout the rest of the book, Radford Ruether doesn't mention race and treats whiteness as the default without seeming to realize it.  This speaks a lot to the feminist Catholic movement in the early '80s, which has only marginally improved. Nevertheless, this is historically a very significant book and I'm grateful for it. It's a foundational, mostly accessible text about how sexism has been ingrained in Christian insti...