If Women Rose Rooted

by Sharon Blackie

[HekArtemis]

4.5 stars.

We'll start with the not great, because I seem to be good at pointing that stuff out. This book has a lot of what could be said is gender essentialism and stereotyping. There was some emphasis on the balance of male and female, men and women needing each other - a bit hetero-centric in other words. But also, to my mind, that plays a little too much into the idea that we must have a romantic style relationship with men in order to be happy and fulfilled. I really liked listening to the Celtic stories/lore/myths, I love them - but some of the examples used to show female power and energy/essence actually read to me like they were showing male power and, again, gender essentialism and stereotyping. Same old same old. I mean of course they do, they come from a patriarchal world - but as examples of woman power, eh not exactly. In many cases they just seemed to me to be examples of women being prizes, as usual. Women being required to be pretty (consider a story about a man being honourable enough to marry and kiss a super ugly woman and his reward for that is that she turns beautiful, because of course). Women having only the power to not have power. The power to care for everything and everyone, but nothing more.

The stories often did do a good job of showing how horribly women have been and are treated by men, by society. So there is that.

All that negative stuff said though, I honestly really loved this book and while those ugh things made me drop a half star, it is only a half star and I rounded up because I loved it way more than I didn't love parts of it. Blackie spoke of many things that I have been thinking of for a while, some things that just aren't mentioned very often, that seem to be missed by many people. Like how much the Eve story impacts how we view ourselves as women, and view other women, women as a group. That's just not spoken of enough.

This book does include a fair bit of mysticism and spiritualism, so if you're not into that, this book is probably not going to work too well for you. I'm Pagan though so, no worries.