Significant Stories

Asked whether any book has changed my life I found it difficult to choose one. Over the years many books have had an effect on me, but the one that truly changed my life would have to be The Paradise Papers by Merlin Stone, later re-published as When God was a Woman.

This book demonstrated to me how much of women’s history has been changed and suppressed, and it began my interest in and devotion to Feminist Spirituality. I was nearly thirty when I first read it and new to the subject of Women’s Studies. Around the same time I was introduced to a number of women fiction writers who strongly captured my imagination. The first was Marion Zimmer Bradley, author of The Mists of Avalon. I loved the magic of this book, which tells the legend of King Arthur from a feminist perspective. I’ve read it many times and also bought the others in the same series. In 2009 I was privileged to visit Glastonbury/Avalon, and walk the path up the Tor, which I had previously only imagined.

Another important novel was The Story of a New Zealand River by Jane Mander, the first book I’d read by a New Zealand woman author. I felt a particular affinity for Jane as she had lived in Onehunga in Auckland, where I was living when I read it.

It was Margot Roth, a much-loved Women’s Studies tutor sadly no longer with us, who suggested I also read Marge Piercy, and her Vida captivated me at a time when I was deeply involved in political action.

Is there a book that has changed your life?

A book can take us far away
and bring ideas that change our day