Post #22 – Women’s Memoirs, Book Raves – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
Review by Marcia Breece, author of
Finding This Place – One Woman’s Journey Beyond Restriction
The opening scene came alive in The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, as scenes do in books by Sue Monk Kidd. We can see and feel the author entering a drug store. Rain had fallen, “but now the sun was out, shining on the tiny beads of water that clung to trees…” she jumped a puddle. Right away, there’s action. In the store, two middle-aged men approach the author’s teenage daughter who’s at work stocking bottom shelves. One of the men says, “That’s how I like to see a woman, on her knees.” (page 7) As a reader, I wanted to see what she did next. How would this scene impact the theme of the book? As a woman, I came unspooled. As a memoir writer, I analyzed her ability to elevate my blood pressure with so few words.
My copy of The Dance of the Dissident Daughter is marked with dozens of little post-it flags, indicating skillfully crafted sentences and paragraphs I want to read again and again, “…the spark of her awakening is struck. And if she can give that awakening a tiny space in her life, it will develop into full-blown experience that one day she will want to mark and celebrate.” ( page 11)
Sue Monk Kidd writes about awakening to the patriarchal bias of her conventional religious training, and realizes how religion helped anesthetize her feminine spirit. As her feminine soul finds its voice, it causes difficult changes in the contour of her marriage. “He squeezed the little hump of flesh between his eyebrows. Don’t.” he sighed. He was talking about more than my going away. He was talking about the whole journey, and we both knew it….” (page 90) “I wished for a marriage where we could walk paths that allowed for the unconditional sharing of soul. Without it marriage becomes very lonely.” (page 91)
Although The Dance of the Dissident Daughter is a memoir about the changes in her life, Sue Monk Kidd skillfully weaves extensive research into the fabric of the story to support and justify her growing discontent. There are pages of foot notes, including quotes from Clarissa Pinkola Estes (Women Who Run With Wolves) and Rosemary Radford Ruether (Sexism and God-Language). She includes a quote from Margaret Starbird’s The Woman with the Alebaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail, “Institutional Christianity, which has nurtured Western civilization for nearly two thousand years, may have been built over a gigantic flaw in doctrine—a theological ‘San Andreas Fault’: the denial of the feminine.” (page 63)
Another expert reinforces Kidd’s point: “I am talking about a consciousness of liberating action in which we work to change the patriarchal structures that deny women dignity, value, and power. Feminist theologian Carter Heyward suggests we consider the analogy of a house. If there’s a structural problem, we don’t fix it by changing the wall paper….” (page 167)
Her research adds authority and validation to the central theme of the book, a theme that is clear throughout. The book is about discovering and embracing feminine sprit in spite of contrary, sometimes bold, sometimes subliminal, religious training, a subject so dear to my heart, I may be less than objective. The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, is my all time favorite memoir.
If you are writing your memoir, you’ll find yourself wearing both the hat of a reader who appreciates the content and the hat of a writer who wants to relish Kidd’s skillful use of language.
