Skip to content
  • 0 items

The New Quarterly

The New Quarterly logo
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • Subscribe
  • 0 items
  • Login

  • Genres
    • Online Exclusives
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Nonfiction
  • Issues
  • Submit
  • Contests
    • Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest
    • Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest
    • Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award
  • Subscribe
  • Events
    • The Wild Writers Literary Festival
  • Shop
  • Donate

What’s Sarah Totten Reading?

By Sarah Totton

Reading: Piazza, Jo. If Nuns Ruled the World: Ten Sisters on a Mission. Open Road Media, 2014.

Since my day job involves reading non-fiction, a non-fiction book has to be very unusual to entice me to read it in my free time.

Each of the ten chapters in this book features a different nun’s life story.

I was interested to find out what a typical nun’s life is like, but that is not what this book is about. The nuns in this book are not garden-variety nuns. They are “badass nuns”, as the author calls them. And they are all American. Given the book’s title, I was hoping for a more international focus.

Two chapters were the highlights of the book for me, because they described how the nuns were making a positive impact on people’s lives.

Sister Joan Dawber runs a safe house for survivors of human trafficking. It’s a dangerous job, as not all of the perpetrators involved have been caught by the police.

Sister Tesa Fitzgerald, runs a charity (Hour Children) that helps mothers in prison stay connected to their children and on release, helps the mothers train for and find work and a safe place to live. Tesa fosters a lot of these children while their mothers are in prison. I would honestly read an entire book dedicated to her work, as I felt that a single chapter barely scratched the surface.

 

Photo by Flickr user adm

Read more

  • Sarah Totton
  • Issue 149
  • Who's Reading What
  • Writer Resources

Post navigation

What is Terry Watada Reading?
Launched: The Amateurs by Liz Harmer

Magazine

  • About
  • Where to Buy

Contribute

  • Submit
  • Volunteer
  • Join Our Board
  • Donate

Connect

  • Contact Us
  • Newsletter
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram

© 1981 - 2021, The New Quarterly. Privacy Policy