California Medieval
Nearly a Nun in 1960s San Francisco
9781639640577
176 pages
Schaffner Press Inc
Overview
CALIFORNIA MEDIEVAL is an intriguing hybrid memoir, interspersed with poetry, song, and lyrical vignettes. It explores the world of a Franciscan convent during the heyday of the 1960s in San Francisco at the birth of the flower-power era, as seen through the eyes of a novitiate nun, newly arrived in the Bay Area from a rural community in southwestern Washington State. This book is a stylistically and structurally adventurous narrative that forms a literary intersection of music, spirituality, nature, sociology, and sexuality. Written in an engaging, wryly humorous voice, Dugaw's unique story of her early adulthood at a convent is sure to draw readers who are curious about her cloistered life at a time in our country's history that was in the midst of its own spiritual and social awakening.
Author Bio
DIANNE DUGAW is a singer-musician, writer, and scholar who publishes in folklore, music, and literary studies with an emphasis on queer topics. Her childhood on a small Pacific Northwest ranch and her early years as a Catholic nun shape her storytelling and scholarship. Her books, which include Warrior Women & Popular Balladry (University of Chicago Press) and ‘Deep Play’—John Gay & the Invention of Modernity (University of Delaware Press), investigate cross-dressing women heroes, ballad origins of musical comedy, and gender and sexuality in history. She has also recorded two CDs, singing traditional British and American folksongs. Professor Emerita at the University of Oregon, Dugaw lives in the Willamette Valley with her wife and wee dog.
