David Given Schwarm

The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine by Sue Monk Kidd
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kidd is a great writer, but this book spends way to much time on the trivial and the travels to be useful.

Clearly her calling is for fiction and not biography–the imagery is rich and wonderful, but the journey is slow and laborious–the book could be half this long. The sand bagging (“and then I found Sappho, a poet I had never ever even HEARD of before”) is over done for failed dramatic effect and the number of time she finds herself dancing naked with diverse women reads more like a Grateful Dead tour then a spiritual awakening.

The Baptist church should be shut down for its misuse of Christianity.

I really liked the scenes with Sandy, her husband.

This book is a VERY good apologetic for traditional Catholicism, but over all there is not much to recommend in this very personal narrative.

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