The Most Anticipated Memoirs of 2020, She Reads • Bay Area Authors to Read This Summer, 7X7 A literary memoir of one woman's journey from wife to warrior, in the vein of breakout hits like Cheryl Strayed's Wild and Jeannette Walls's The Glass Castle. At thirty-six years old, Caitlin Myer is ready to start a family with her husband. She has left behind the restrictive confines of her Mormon upbringing and early sexual trauma and believes she is now living her happily ever after . . . when her body betrays her. In a single week, she suffers the twin losses of a hysterectomy and the death of her mother, and she is jolted into a terrible awakening that forces her to reckon with her past—and future. This is the story of one woman’s lifelong combat with a culture—her “escape” from religion at age twenty, only to find herself similarly entrapped in the gender conventions of the secular culture at large, conventions that teach girls and women to shape themselves to please men, to become good wives and mothers. The biblical characters Yael and Judith, wives who became assassins, become her totems as she evolves from wifely submission to warrior independence. An electric debut that loudly redefines our notions of womanhood, Wiving grapples with the intersections of religion and sex, trauma and love, sickness and mental illness, and a woman’s harrowing enlightenment. Building on the literary tradition of difficult women who struggle to be heard, Wiving introduces an urgent, striking voice to the scene of contemporary women’s writing at a time when we must explode old myths and build new stories in their place.

The fiction The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage is a fascinating story that focuses on marrying the titular character Lance Cleaverage, set in Cumberland County of Tennessee. This is a work by American writer Alice MacGowan, who is famous as the author of Judith of the Cumberlands, The Last Word, Huldah, and Return. The book also contains colorful illustrations by Robert Edwards. Alice became a writer of short stories and novels while teaming up with her sister Grace MacGowan on almost all of her works. They wrote over 30 novels, about a hundred short stories, and some poetry together. The subject matter of their works included Westerns, mysteries, historical novels, and social novels.

First published in 1998. This anthology coomprises a diverse range of historical treatises and tracts that discuss and debate gender and sexual relations in early modern England. Combining complete texts and extracts-many hitherto unavailable in modern editions-the collection focuses on prevailing conceptions of sexuality and gender in major areas and institutions of Tudor and Stuart society. A broad selection of religious sermons, moral handbooks, household manuals, midwifery and legal textbooks, ballads and chapbooks has been chosen.

Cover -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- 1. Introduction -- 2. "Whither Am I to Go?": Old Yiddish Love Song in a European Context -- 3. (Non- )Intersecting Parallel Lives: Pasquino in Rome and on the Rialto -- 4. Purim Play as Political Action in Diasporic Europe and/as Ancient Persia -- 5. Vashti and Political Revolution: Gender Politics in a Topsy-Turvy World -- 6. The Political Liminality of Mordecai in Early Ashkenaz -- 7. Feudal Bridal Quest Turned on Its Jewish Head -- 8. The Other of Another Other: Yiddish Epic's Discarded Muslim Enemy -- 9. Conclusion -- Appendix: Elia Levita's Short Poems (English translation) -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- H -- I -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W -- Y