Unveiled: The Hidden Lives of Nuns
Books / Hardcover
Books › Social Science › Women's Studies
ISBN: 0425195112 / Publisher: Berkley Hardcover, March 2004
Drawing on interviews with three hundred nuns from a variety of orders, a study of convent life describes their daily lives, worship services, vow ceremonies, friendships, attitude toward the modern world, and interior lives.
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When reporter Cheryl L. Reed set out to examine the lives of nuns, she was fulfilling a personal quest, discovering for herself what was behind the mysterious image instilled by her Protestant upbringing and reinforced by Hollywood cliches, misguided speculation, and her Catholic friends' childhood stories of unyielding figures in black.So began a journalistic pursuit of an enigmatic subculture, during which Reed interviewed more than three hundred nuns of diverse beliefs and lifestyles - from cloistered and isolated to untraditional and activist - from more than fifty different orders across the country. Is the sisterhood still a viable option for women in today's society? Why had so many of these women entered the strict, habited orders? How could they possibly exert their own identity in a world of such conformity? And why were they so willing to give up material pleasures, money, the company of men and sex? The answers not only changed Reed's perspective on nuns, they changed Reed's perspective on herself and on her life.She lived and prayed with them, observed their daily lives, and participated in silent worship. She witnessed their vow ceremonies, mourned with them, celebrated and drank with them. They welcomed questions no one had ever dared ask before. Reed listened to their personal stories and candid musings about love and sex, life and death, faith and joy, loss and regret. In the end, the nuns Reed had approached with suspicion and curiosity ended up reaching her more about motherhood, relationships, and feminism than she ever gleaned from the outside world.
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