Between these covers lies a world of mythical women embedded in modern-day worlds. Herein swim Eves to their own rhythms and doing just fine, thanks, without that irksome rib to hinder and bind their grace and self-actualization. In this little gem youall find metaphorical LittleRedHoodies who get fed up with the same old lines and same old tale and skip out with the BigBadwoofie to the RazzleDazzle to shake that thang to yummilicious groovies. And youall discover Cinderellas who stomp the glass slipper to pieces in favor of 7hole DocMartens. In here laughs a SnowNotWhite who gets really sick and tired of being kissed by whatever glittery princey that flounces along, and decides to tear it out of the woods with girl pals in a Hummer to kick it at the RazzleDazzle with Hoodie and Cinders. And thereas even a Rapunzel who hops right out of that tower and lands nice and solid on her own two feet. This is a spinerette with bite, poetry that screams with rage, soars with beauty, and weaves aJezebelas Hipsa through aEveas Ribs.a

New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • An Oprah's Book Club Selection “Powerful . . . [Kingsolver] has with infinitely steady hands worked the prickly threads of religion, politics, race, sin and redemption into a thing of terrible beauty.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review The Poisonwood Bible, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, established Barbara Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, it is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in Africa. The story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters—the teenaged Rachel; adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility.

This book engages the ways African American authors have shifted, recycled, and reinvented the conjure woman in fiction. Kameelah Martin Samuel traces her presence and function in twentieth-century literature through historical records, oral histories, blues music, and collections of African American folklore.

The debates on gender and sexuality are widespread today. Many claim that a cultural war is being waged between “conservatives” who uphold the time-honored values of family and sexuality and “liberals” who promote an agenda to redefine these traditional roles. Since the public is often uninformed about the science and philosophical currents undergirding the questions of gender and sexuality, the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum organized an academic symposium in Rome to shed light on the debate. This book gathers the insights of that symposium, which integrated the disciplines of medicine, neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, history, philosophy, moral theology, biblical studies, law, bioethics, and pedagogy. This work is aimed at Catholics and all those who seek a more profound understanding of one of today’s most important topics. In the personalist approach of bioethics, the natural law tradition distinguishes the person from his or her acts. In the case of same-sex attractions, the Church teaches clearly that the inclination is not in itself sinful, and that persons with such attractions are deserving of respect and compassion in accord with their full human dignity. Nonetheless, same-sex acts are not natural or ordered. The Church strives to build bridges with the LGBT community by fostering a relationship of compassion, sensitivity, and mutual respect. However, real bridges also require honesty and openness to the truths that pertain to human sexuality, procreation, the family, and the education of future generation.

There is no deeper, more intense human longing than to know God is real and to see Him face to face.Ó In some circles, having a personal relationship with GodÓ is synonymous with being a Christian. We are told, in fact, that we 'must' have such a relationship if we are truly God's children. But if we are honest, says Tim Stafford, we must admit that often there is a considerable gap between our talk and our experience. We want to know God. The problem is that we don't know how to know Him. How do we know God personally?Ó After examining the traditional answers and finding their shortcomings for himself, Stafford began his own search for the means to knowing, personally, a personal God. 'Knowing the Face of God' is the moving record of his quest.