Book 31: Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence by Rosemary Curb & Nancy Manahan

I first became aware of this book in college; I was reading any feminist tomes I could get my hands on and several mentioned Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence. No copies were available anywhere, so when an episode of The L Word depicted a copy (with a historically inaccurate cover) I had to laugh at the idea that I had to go to Vancouver to get one! Despite attending a Catholic college, I was so anti-Christian at the time that I probably wouldn't have given this book the open mind it deserves.

The first time I managed to get a copy from a library was around 2016 or 2017, and I bought my secondhand copy shortly afterwards. This is probably my third time reading the book. This is important history on the women's liberation movement, the Roman Catholic Church, Wicca/Paganism, and queer organizations/communities. What struck me reading this time was that the vast majority of the women in this book would be around the average age of a woman religious now: 88-ish. The few I Googled to see what they'd done with their lives in the past 40 years have all passed - which confirms for me how important this history is to keep alive! 

Usually books of essays bore me, but the common themes throughout these women's lives, whether they stayed in or left their religious communities, connected all these points smoothly. This book is a cornerstone of the rest of my personal library.


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/119716.Lesbian_Nuns

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