Kaya Oakes teaches writing at UC Berkeley. Her fifth book, The Defiant Middle, will be released in November 2021.
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Book Review
Patricia Lockwood's novel explores how we live our lives online
Book review: In Patricia Lockwood's No One Is Talking About This, if you're willing to immerse yourself in the scroll of her narrative, you'll find plenty of humor and empathy in her first novel.
Commentary
Mary: Our often reimagined, always radical, mother
It’s important to understand that the Mary we meet on Mother’s Day in 2020 is not the same Palestinian Jewish girl who gave birth to Jesus 2,000 years ago. Nor is Mary a sentimentally perfect woman, meek, mild and passive, a religious Hallmark card who has come to represent the idealized mother figure most of our own mothers would struggle to measure up to.
Book Review
For a more robust Catholic literary culture
Book Review: Lakeland's book returns toward its end to the idea of the Catholic imagination, which is ultimately a sacramental one. Fiction can offer a world infused by grace in a manner that nonfiction and poetry might struggle to get across.
Book Review
Going, going, gone: Books study exodus from religion
Book reviews: More and more people are drifting away from traditional notions of church. These books explore where they go for spiritual fulfillment.
