Books

Coyote’s Council Fire: Contemporary Shamans on Race, Gender, & Community
By Loren Cruden

Highly recommended reading for any woman attempting to negotiate the confusing and contradictory world of contemporary shamanism. In addition to Cruden’s essays and exercises to help one obtain clarity and focus about each issue addressed, the book contains essays by several contemporary shamans on several aspects of contemporary shamanism that need to be addressed, such as gender issues, reverse prejudice, and various ways shamanic communities function.

Daughters of Copper Woman
By Anne Cameron

“Daughters of Copper Woman” is Anne Cameron’s re-telling of Northwest coast Indian myths shared with her by a few loving Native women of marvelous story-telling and most treasured for its shining vision of the social and spiritual power of women. For countless readers Daughters of Copper Woman is an uplifting revelation – a gift to be celebrated.”

– From back cover of book

The Power in Softness – A Guide to Personal Protection and Empowerment for Women
Charly Flower, England
www.facebook.com/FlowerSoldier

Charly is an author and teacher of women’s ways.
“This boos on personal protection starts where most finish: in it, the more practical side of personal protection is only the beginning. Charly Flower presents the whole issue of personal protection for women as both an outer process and an inner one. Once the reader opens to the power in softness on a physical level, they will want to use it on all others. Softness, at its highest and most subtle level, eventually becomes a gateway, not only to safety but to health, feminine power, and the divine. If you are a woman wondering how to stay safe and reclaim your feminine power in a man’s world, this book is for you. It can save your life, it can help you to heal on every level, and it can show you the path to becoming a true feminine presence – where you get to live as a woman on your own terms.”

Medicine Women, Curanderas and Women Doctors

This book is a must-read for all women and all medical personnel interested in integrating the Feminine into their healing work. The life stories and healing ways of the ten women healers the authors interviewed and sometimes studied with as they researched this book are written with great clarity and sensitivity regarding how the women wished to be presented, making the book a richly textured read. Equally important are the author’s explorations of what they term “The Dark Side of Healing,” and the personal essays with which they conclude the book, in which they offer both philosophical and practical guides for balancing and enriching the medical patriarchy with women healers’ ways and wisdom.

The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions
by Paula Gunn Allen

I highly recommend this book as an aid to understanding the ways in which the colonial government of the United States systematically attempted to break the power of the tribal nations by breaking the power of their women within those cultures, an assault on the power and status of Native American women that still reverberates throughout tribal cultures in this country.

Paula Gunn Allen was a Native American poet, author and PhD scholar of Native American studies who was raised at Laguna Pueblo. In 2001, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writer’s Circle of the Americas; in 1990, she received the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation in 1990 for Spider Woman’s Granddaughters: Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing; she also was awarded the Susan Koppelman Award from the Popular and Literature. As a postdoctoral fellow in American Indian Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, in 1981 she received a postdoctoral fellowship grant from the Ford Foundation-National Research Council.
for the Arts.
– Amazon description

The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion, and Power in Celtic Ireland
By Mary Condren

Must reading for women of Celtic ancestry who are unaware of the impact of patriarchy on their ancestral cultures.
“Exploring the exciting by largely neglected terrain of myth, history, literature and theology, Mary Condren provides a startling account of Brigit, and Mary, she documents the development of patriarchal consciousness and analyzes its implications for today’s women and today’s Catholic Church.
Mary Condren, a former editor of Student Christian Movement Publications, is the author of many articles on feminist liberation theology. She has taught in the Women in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School.

From back cover of book.