by Jani Farrell-Roberts
This book is a weaving. It tells the story of a person who travelled from priestly rank in the Catholic Church in an Orlando-like journey to become a parent, a woman and an international investigative journalist who testified at a US Congressional Hearing on conflict diamonds after being smuggled into many diamond mines
Born with a physically female-type brain in a deep disguise, she has enjoyed a very rich life both in her youth in the male role, and in the 33 years she has since enjoyed as a woman
She tells of joining a strict religious order where women were not to be seen, and of escaping from patriarchy - despite the personal intervention of Mother Teresa of Calcutta - before changing her gender role while working with Aborigines in the Outback. She describes with humour her fall to female status and of enjoying her newly awakened sexuality. She weaves into this a deeply researched story of what happened to hermaphrodites and women once honoured as priestesses, of how Sophia, once the female side of divinity, became genderless as Holy Ghost - and of how sex became the issue that split apart, again and again, the Christian World - as it is still splitting it today.
If you wish to buy this gloriously written book - readers say it is very hard to put down despite being 600 pages in length - it is now available from the publisher's bookshop at Iuniverse - probably the fastest way to get it.
Also it can be purchased and from the Barns and Noble online bookshops. (If you live outside the US, it is cheaper to order it from the US - even after paying mailing cost - because of exchange rate changes.)
(Note - Re Author's Name for this book, in honour of her mother, she uses her full birth name of Farrell Roberts; for her other human rightsbooks on Aborigines and Blood diamonds, and for her journalism, she writes as Janine Roberts
Free extracts from a draft of this book are below
Samples of the Personal Journey.
What it is to like to be a child born between the genders. (from Monday)
The Warrior - Learning to be a female warrior ( from Saturday)