Book 35: The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions by Paula Gunn Allen

I first read this book during seminary, probably 2018. It had been on my to-read list for years but very few copies were available and, as I've written here before, I rarely purchase a book I haven't read. Seminary was so disappointing that I assigned myself Native American liberation theology books to make sure I'd learn something, and I bought this despite my misgivings. This now was my second time reading it.

Gunn Allen's connection of Native (she differentiates between nations and does not generalize) cosmologies, creation stories, social structures, and survival techniques is fantastic. It can get a little dry and repetitive, but this is incredibly important work - especially because she's very obviously not writing for an academic audience. I greatly enjoyed, both my first time reading and now, her more autobiographical sections. Her connection of Native liberation theology to lesbian identity, community, and culture is unique, which she acknowledges, and very much of the time (1986). 

Judy Grahn mentioned Gunn Allen in Another Mother Tongue, and and it was cool seeing Gunn Allen mention her in The Sacred Hoop just a few years later! She also writes admiringly about Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, which was also less than a decade old at this time. My personal library is beginning to reference itself, which I saw coming but didn't realize it would be so early on.


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/112217.The_Sacred_Hoop 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 32: New Catholic Women: A Contemporary Challenge to Traditional Religious Authority by Mary Jo Weaver

I first discovered this book about a year ago when I explored the Loras College library. As a rule, I won't purchase a copy of a book that I haven't read, but this was a rare exception. After skimming it for around a half hour, I knew that I needed my own copy! This was my first time reading it. What's so significant about this book is Weaver wrote about the development of Catholic feminism while it was happening; I haven't encountered any other books that did this. She compared Catholic feminist theologians to each other during their careers, as well as the ongoing impacts of the Goddess movement. I have a few books that treat this period in the mid-80's as history, but Weaver was an analyst of this movement in real time.  My two main experiences while reading this book: 1) I know what happens after its publication, I know where the careers of these theologians went and I know that most of them are now dead. Weaver writes with a few vague predictions of the future,...
Read more

Book 1: Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Image
Up until middle school, everyone in my class hated studying history. Our textbooks were hand-me-downs from a local high school and all we were taught were names & dates of battles. And then we got a new middle school history teacher who taught us about how people lived throughout history, and we all loved it. In 7th grade we learned about the Civil War, and Mrs. Brenneman explained the significance of the book Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. I asked if we were going to read it as a class, and she said no, it was too difficult for middle schoolers.  I was determined to read it anyway since it was so historically important, and I found a decrepit copy in my mother's basement - I have no idea why she had it. She told me not to read it because people would think we were poor if they saw me reading a book barely held together by old tape, so I snuck it to school. When my reading teacher saw me physically struggling with the book, she bought me the copy t...
Read more

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 ...
Read more