Tag Archives: Catholic

Book Review: Save Yourself

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Title: Save Yourself
Author: Cameron Esposito
Release date: March 2020
Source: bought audiobook copy
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Save Yourself is a memoir by stand-up comedian Cameron Esposito that I bought on audiobook last March, and then never got around to reading/listening to. The minute I saw the description I knew it would be up my alley though. Cameron Esposito is a “masculine of center” lesbian comedian who was raised in a very devout Italian Catholic family and wanted to be a priest when she was younger. The memoir deals with her childhood not understanding her own sexuality because of the stigma around homosexuality and gender conformity in her family and church, and with her life through college and early in her career as she finally comes to terms with her sexuality and (mostly?) loses her religion.

As a bisexual woman from a devout Cajun Catholic family who didn’t even consider the fact that I might be anything other than straight until I was 20 years old, and didn’t come out until I was 30, I identified VERY strongly with the subject matter. Add to that, the fact that (as I mentioned in a previous book review) I was pretty damn sure I was to become a nun until I was 15 or 16 years old, and then proceeded to become more and more disillusioned and disconnected from the catholic church at just about the same time (and for many of the same reasons) as Cameron Esposito, and well… this book was pretty much written for me.

This is not a long book. I think the audiobook was about 7 hrs long, so if you were reading it in print at a medium pace, you could probably finish it around 4 or 5 hours. I finished it in about a day and half, listening while I was at work. I laughed through pretty much the whole thing. Cameron Esposito’s writing is absolutely hilarious, and the fact that she narrates the audiobook herself helps immensely with the delivery of certain lines and jokes. She is honest and blunt about herself, her family, and her relationships. She talks about place of upper-middle-class white christian privilege she came from as a child, the terrifying experience of discovering your own sexuality and coming out while attending the extremely-NON-gay-friendly Boston College, the rejection of her father who took years to accept her as a gay woman, her very problematic relationships (including being a victim of date rape, and admitting to cheating on several girlfriends), and yet she makes all of these very serious subjects human, relatable, and funny as hell.

(Side note: the cheating stories were particularly difficult for me to sit through because I absolutely cannot abide cheating. I know it happens, I know plenty of otherwise very good people have done it, I know we’re all human and flawed and all that… but I am very sensitive to stories about cheating, so I squirmed through those bits pretty uncomfortably.)

Thankfully, not all the stories she writes about are serious topics. Some of them are downright delightful: like making her from wanting to be a priest, to studying social work, to getting hired to several improv groups with shocking ease, and finally ending up in stand-up comedy; or (my favorite) joining a small alt-indie circus for a summer!

All in all, this was a delightful, funny memoir from a person I could identify with quite a lot (I’m not particularly butch or “masculine of center” as she describes herself, but that was one of a very small number of major differences). The writing is sharp and witty and deeply human. Her narration is perfect (not surprisingly, since that’s kind of what stand-up comedy is anyway). And it was a really fun way to spend a couple afternoons at work.

Book Review: Sisters of the Vast Black

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Title: Sisters of the Vast Black
Author: Lina Rather
Release Date: 29 Oct 2019
Source: bought 
Rating: 5 stars

I bought this book not long after it was released, sometime in late 2019, and then never got around to reading it, even though the premise was very exciting to me. Just one of those things, of course. But now I have finally taken the time to sit down and read it (it’s a novella, it only took about three hours once I finally just SAT DOWN), and wow was it great! (This also happens to be the first book of the year to fulfill a spot on my 2021 Reading Challenge!)

Sisters of the Vast Black is a novella by Lina Rather that manages to pack all the punch of a vast epic space opera into a very small 155-page package. It follows the space-faring convent of Sisters from the Order of Saint Rita, on board their living-ship called the Our Lady of Impossible Constellations. The sisters are out in the far reaches of space, in the “third system” of planets away from Earth, several decades after a disastrous and bloody war between Earth and its rebelling colonies. Most of the sisters have never even SEEN Earth, having been born and raised on space stations or other planets and moons. They administer to the sick and spread the word of God, though they feel that proselytizing is the least important of their duties. At the beginning of the story, they are going to a small moon to bless a brand new colony and perform marriage and baptisms for several colonists. But aboard the ship, many of the sisters harbor deep secrets.

The Mother Superior of their convent took a vow of silence forty years ago, and speaks using sign language, but is the REASON for her vow of silence that she has kept a closely-guarded secret for decades. Another sister is hiding the fact that she joined the convent under false pretenses. And a third sister has been keeping up a secret correspondence that could have a huge impact on her faith and her choices.

All of these things come to head in the climax of the story, when a distress signal calls them back to the colony they had just blessed weeks before. When they arrive, they must face many things: the consequences of their actions, the hypocrisies of the Catholic Church, and the renewed strength of the Earth Central Government.

To understand why I loved this little book so much, you’ll need a tiny bit of personal background info. I was raised in a very devout Catholic family until the age of thirteen, when my mother had an enormous crisis of faith and left the church. She became agnostic, and finally atheist, while I lingered in the faith for a very long time. Up until about the age of sixteen, I was pretty sure I was going to become a nun later in life. Even in college, by which point I had started to learn doubt and become angry with the hypocrisies of the Church, I still minored in theology. Nowadays, I don’t know what I would classify myself as, religiously-speaking: spiritual but not religious, uncertain and ambivalent and more than a little angry? But I still hold a deep fascination with and love for the saints, and my Patron Saint is, in fact, Saint Rita. 

Because of all this, Sisters of the Vast Black speaks to me on quite a few levels. First of all: I love a good space opera, and this is definitely a good space opera despite its small size. The science fiction elements are precise and well-written, and the ending was satisfying. But more importantly, the way the story deals with faith and doubt, with the contradictions of believing in God and messages of the Catholic faith while acknowledging and despising the evils of the Catholic Church, and with the inevitable blending between the Church and imperialist governments… all of this punched my right in the gut. All of the sisters were deeply sympathetic and complex characters that I could recognize and identify with myself or family and friends.

I do believe that anyone who enjoys a good space opera, or the compactness of a well-executed novella will like this book. But I think it will be ESPECIALLY potent for people who come from religious backgrounds in general, and the Catholic Church specifically. It will likely speak to you on a deep, perhaps even existential level. And if so, I hope you will share your thoughts with me sometime!