The Mary Daly Reader - (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Makes key excerpts from Daly's work accessible to readers who are seeking to access the essence of her thought in a single volume.

Outrageous, humorous, inflammatory, Amazonian, intellectual, provocative, controversial, and a discoverer of Feminist word-magic, Mary Daly's influence on Second Wave feminism was enormous. She burst through constraints to articulate new ways of being female and alive. This comprehensive reader offers a vital introduction to the core of Daly's work and the complexities secreted away in the pages of her books. Her major theories--Bio-philia, Be-ing as Verb, and the life force within words--and major controversies--relating to race, transgender identity, and separatism--are all covered, and the editors have provided introductions to each selection for context.

The text has been crafted to be accessible to a broad readership, without diluting Daly's witty but complicated vocabulary. Begun in collaboration with Daly while she was still alive, and completed after her death in 2010, the chapters in this book will surprise even those who thought they knew her work. They contain highlights from Mary Daly's published works over a forty-year span, including her major books Beyond God the Father, Gyn/Ecology, and Pure Lust, as well as smaller articles and excerpts, with additional contributions from Robin Morgan and Mary E. Hunt.

Perfect for those seeking an introduction to this path-breaking feminist thinker, The Mary Daly Reader makes key excerpts from her work accessible to new readers as well as those already familiar with her work who are seeking to access the essence of her thought in a single volume.

Review Quotes

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"Brings us face to face with the radical, groundbreaking work of a feminist philosopher whose expectations for women were only exceeded by her commitment to them. I still vividly remember my first encounter with Mary Daly's work, the exhilaration of her wordsmithery, the sense of freedom and clarity that came from having the evils of the world named and condemned, and the ensuing commitment sparked to do something with these insights - to work to dismantle structures of injustice at the root. We need these kinds of transformative encounters today and this book is up to the task... This painstakingly crafted reader invites our engagement (new or continuing) with one of the sharpest thinkers of our time, challenging us to leap into Mary Daly's originally brilliant work and to transcend beyond it."

"--Xochitl Alvizo, California State University, Northridge

"In sum, this anthology is an intellectual gift to feminists everywhere. It reminds us to be fearlessly feminist, to uphold our diverse feminist intellectual traditions, and to collaborate with each other in ways that encourage feminist resistance to the technocratic, necrophilic, and neo-fascist threats, laws, and practice harming those performing as women."-- "Reading Religion"

"She was a great trained philosopher, theologian, and poet, and she used all of those tools to demolish patriarchy -- or any idea that domination is natural -- in its most defended place, which is religion."--Gloria Steinem "Boston Globe, January 2010"

"Tide-like, social and cultural movements flow and ebb--as do the reputations of their founders. This reader puts Daly on display in all of her life-long radical transformations, personal, theological, philosophical, rhetorical."-- "The Pomegranate"