Janina RamirezCritiques

I'm coming to realize I am not the audience for these books, as much as I whine and cry and try to make them be.

Femina is not so much a "new" history of medieval women's lives as it is a series of nine biographies of exceptional women who lived in the European Middle Ages. There are much fuller negative reviews on this that I recommend perusing, but broadly speaking, this book offers nothing new to readers familiar with the period. The author's thesis is the laziest of pop-feminist history: "Did you know... Women did stuff back then?" Anyone who seriously believes women did nothing exceptional for a thousand years is so far gone, maybe it's a blessing that this book exists.

Anyway, this book reminded me of everything I hate about the current trend of popular feminist frameworks of texts. Femina reminded me of the let-down that was The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society—A pop-history book promising to elucidate the reader on something much larger, complicated, and nuanced than the author is either able or willing to do. I always find it funny that the authors of books like this remind the reader over and over again how rich the tapestry of time is but cannot seem to go deeper than the surface-level critique their advertising promises. When will they truly take to heart that history cannot be boiled down to pithy feminist takes? When will (usually female) social historians give their readers something to really chew on? Why do I feel like women's-interest history always believe their readers are complete fucking dolts?

To summarize, I don't think it's possible to extract more than Ramírez simple thesis when you look at only nine people, and nine very, very wealthy and powerful people at that. It's interesting, sure, and these women absolutely deserve to be in the casual historical canon as the author argues, but... It is in no way a "new history," you know? That would entail much, much more than Ramírez is willing to put in.

Well... The book obviously strikes a cord though: look at those high reviews! I would only recommend this to people who know close to nothing on this period, and obviously only as a supplement to a more historiographical sound or primary source texts. I'm just annoyed at sexism and its over-production of limp-wristed non-fiction texts.

On to new pop history I will inevitably hate...

Goddess: 50 Goddesses, Spirits, Saints and Other Female Figures Who Have Shaped Belief—An Early Reader Review—The first thing to be noted is that this book is beautiful--the paper is thick, the color is rich and the illustrations capture the flavor of the various cultures. Each character is given a brief two-page coverage, so it is easy to read a few pages at a time and then pick this book up again later without feeling that you may have missed something. The organization is handled in such a way so as to keep the readers’ interest fresh, and the balance of subjects selected is very wide—there are some that are known universally, some that may have been heard of but the details of their stories are made clear, and some that are not well known at all. The entries are brief vignettes that help the reader decide which of these subjects one might want to learn more about from other sources. The author has done a very good job keeping the essence of each character while avoiding some of the “vicious rumors” circulating about some of them in terms of romantic conduct and/or destructive behaviors and even how the questionable aspects of their existence was important. This is a great introduction to the world’s rich diversity and a review of how others may see our own culture.

If I had to sum up this book in one word, I wouldn't hesitate to choose which word: gorgeous. The vibrant illustrations make you want to explore every detail on every page and keep turning the pages to see more. This book is worth getting for the lovely illustrations alone.

But the illustrations aren't the only thing the book has going for it. The brief descriptions of the female goddesses, spirits, and other religious figures are interesting. If you're not familiar with the personal already, you'll get a brief description of who she is, what role she played, and how she influenced the religious practices in the society she comes from.

Readers will likely recognize a few of the names such as Mary the mother of Jesus and Eve from Christian beliefs and get to find out about feminine figures from across the world they hadn't heard from before.

Overall, it's a great addition to any bookshelf for readers young and old.

What a treat to get this in the mail. It is a gorgeous book featuring 50 goddesses, spirits, and saints from different global belief systems and regions of the world. The book is organized by topics: ruling and guiding, new life, war and death, love and wisdom, and animals and nature. Each two page panel features a goddess, with a beautifully illustrated god and smaller illustrations to help readers connect the words with the text.

The text is modern and easy for children to grasp and understand. I also appreciate the author incorporated current events into the text -- such as in write-up of Pele (Hawai`i) there is a line about Mauna Kea and a proposed telescope that would desecrate Pele's home.

This would be a great book for an upper elementary class project on learning how to do research.

One thing missing from the book is a pronunciation guide for the goddesses. But this could be an extended learning exercise for students to research if it is used in a classroom setting.

This book is GORGEOUS! It's organized not by country, culture, or religion but by the specialty of the female figure like Ruling and Guiding, New Life, or War and Death, which makes the connections between them interesting and clear. I cannot say enough about the illustrations, which are bold and bright and appealing to kids without coming off as childish. The bright pink hardcover and the gold flecked cover just call to you to pluck it off the shelf. Most importantly, the diversity is wonderful! Beautiful women of all shapes, sizes, and skin colors are included - Norse, African, Haitian, Welsh, Chinese, Greek, Jewish, Middle Eastern, Lakota, Irish, Aztec, Hawaiian - just to name a few! Really glad I won this book. I would highly recommend it!

Cultural historian Dr. Janina Ramirez has put together a collection of stories about female goddesses, spirits, saints, and other female figures who have shaped belief over millennia, and whose stories, she avers, deserve to be told.

She adds that these women were not perfect, but were complex: sometimes peaceful, sometimes loving, and sometimes vengeful, but always very powerful in some way. She observes:

“The women of the past were no different from us today in these basic ways and understanding them can help us to understand ourselves better.”

The selection of 50 goddesses from the mythologies of different cultures are grouped by five themes: Ruling and Guiding; New Life; War and Death; Love and Wisdom; and Animals and Nature. Readers may recognize some of the names from Greek and Roman culture, or even Celtic and Norse mythology, but the author also explores goddesses from mythologies lesser-known to Western audiences, such as, for example, those of West Africa, India, Babylonia, Japan. China, and Ancient Egypt.

For each goddess there is a 2-page spread with a profile giving the goddess’s origin, role, and a section called “Shaping Belief.” This latter part explores how the goddess affected the religious practices of the society with which she was associated.

Gorgeous illustrations by Sarah Walsh add vibrant color and interest to the stories.

Back matter includes a glossary and index, but, regrettably, not a pronunciation guide.

Evaluation: This middle grade book would not be lacking in appeal for either younger or older audiences, especially with adult guidance in the case of less accomplished readers.½

I loved this as the author was excited about new discoveries still taking place which brought new info to life, and so it was fascinating to learn more about specific women during this period and how they lived.½

There is a quote part-way through this book about the voices of the women of the Middle Ages, that they have either been lost or they are reflected in the views of the men around them. In this book Janina Ramirez tries to give voice to some of the key female players. They are not necessarily the most obvious but they highlight key roles and developments.
Ramirez writes with a true passion and her words sparkle. It is an incredibly well-researched book but that does not get in the way of the stories and that is what works so well. There are tales of women I was aware of and others I wasn't, also the roles of women in certain periods eg the Cathars. I really loved this book

This is a thought provoking book, which is successful in that it has made me further question popular history books for the general reader, and it is well written and engaging. I’m dissatisfied to the extent that it is (hopefully) making a historically dated argument (I may be optimistic here!) and does so in a disjointed way.

The book is a series of essays about various medieval women, but I found it dissatisfying overall, since other than relating to medieval women, the essays are otherwise disconnected. As the only narrative thread linking these stories is that they are about women, it does not provide the “new history of the Middle Ages” which is the book’s subtitle, and I found any pattern too fragmentary, although the essays are engagingly written and well researched. Ramirez’s excellent introductory essay concludes identifying the book’s purpose more honestly: “We need a new relationship with the past, one which we can all feel a part of. Finding these extraordinary medieval women is a first step, but there are so many other silenced voices waiting to have their stories heard.”

Ramirez’s essay style of an introduction to each chapter’s subject by reference to a relatively contemporary event (for example the 1997 canonisation of the fourteenth century Jadwiga, “King” of the Poles in chapter 7), followed by an imaginative verbal recreation of an event in the individual’s life and then an exploration of their wider historical significance is a good approach. But it does become repetitive and underlines the discontinuity of the essays.
The book is well illustrated with photos of artefacts, artistic reconstructions and useful maps, but for me there appears to be an idiosyncratic choice of historical figures, some well known, others unknown (the Loftus “Princess”), although each essay is engaging and full of interesting stories. Also, after introducing her eminent women in the early chapters, Ramirez can appear to go off on a tangent due to the lack of records, but skilfully brings the narrative back to her chosen exemplar of a worthy woman in the period, providing relevant context for their significance.

In her final thoughts, Ramirez says : “Like so many others, I have been led by generations of historians before me, their contemporary agendas often presented in the guise of empirical truths. I have tried a different, but similarly loaded, approach in this book, putting the spotlight on women. It is no less biased, and is representative of the time in which I am writing. But by re-examining extraordinary women like Hildegard and Margery, casting a new light on over-written females like Æthelflæd and Jadwiga, and using recent discoveries to reconstruct lost individuals like the Loftus Princess and Birka Warrior Woman, the medieval world has taken on a different complexion.”

My overall impression is of the book trying to make a larger argument (thesis) from a collection of engaging essays about medieval women who were influential in their time. Instead the book reads like a collection of case studies with which to make the argument that the role of historically significant medieval women has been downplayed when histories of the medieval period were being being written in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. This is “topped and tailed” with essays outlining Ramirez’s argument, that the histories of the medieval period need to be expanded to reflect the simplification and distortion of women’s roles, and this book provides some examples of historically significant medieval women.
The challenge identified in this book can be seen to have been accepted in books such as Michael Woods’ 40th anniversary updating of In Search of the Dark Ages published earlier this year, which includes new chapters on the historically significant Anglo Saxon women Aethelflaed, Lady Wynflaed and Eadgyth. The ongoing challenge for popular history writers will be to incorporate the stories of historically significant women seamlessly into broader narrative history, so widening our understanding. It is a difficult balancing act to show relevance and significance, but not to be read by modern readers as just inclusion as positive discrimination of “token” women.

I received a Netgalley copy of this book, but this review is my honest opinion.

I have a copy of The Revelations of Divine Love to read, but I figured that this would be a good start, putting the lady and her writing into context. I've seen a programme by Dr Ramirez on Julian of Norwich. It is interesting, we don't know much about her apart from what she chooses to tell. Her work is compared to some other English mystics of the same period in terms of the themes and language used in the book. The survival of the text itself is a mystery, in that it treads a fine line around being heretical and managed to survive the upheaval of the Reformation before a copy in a nunnery of English Nuns in France survived the French revolution.
This is a short introduction to whet the appetite.

As an aside, I love the cover design, with an image of Julian visible through the J shaped aperture of the front cover. A picture of her face is on the inside page. As an anchoress, she would have spent her time peering out at the world through a window this feels rather apt.

Julian of Norwich is a mystery woman, little is known about who she was and her life prior to her giving her life to God and writing. Julian is most famous for her 'Divine Revelations', a series of writings inspired by a set of visions Julian had in the mid-1300s. The beauty of her writing has inspired many.

This is a very short book but is very satisfying for that. Ramirez places Julian's life and writings in the context of the Middle Ages and the town of Norwich - a prosperous place but one that suffered greatly through waves of plague. The book is equally passionate about the beauty of Julian's writings and the danger that her potentially heretical thoughts could have placed her in. Even the story about how the Diving Revelations was almost lost to history is fascinating.

Book received from NetGalley.

The first time I had ever heard about Julian of Norwich was in my first British Literature class and I was fascinated by her. Her "Revelations of a Divine Love" are the earliest known surviving by a female writer. As soon as I saw this offered on NetGalley I requested it hoping to learn a bit more about this unique nun. Since Julian of Norwich lived in the Medieval era there is very little that can be found out about her life, prior to her becoming an anchoress. The book gives a bit more insight into her writing and just how rare something like this is. I suggest the book for those who study literature and history both since it will give more information on women writers in Medieval Britain.

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