The Book of Longings | Sue Monk Kidd

"All my life, longings lived inside me, rising up like nocturnes to wail and sing through the night." 

   "What is this book doing to me? I keep having to put it down to cry. And I don't mean shed a few tears, but more of the ugly-crying, snot-and-tears-running-down-my-face, sobbing, heaving, piercing pain in my chest kind of crying. It's so painful and yet I can't stop reading it. What is this sorcery?"

    "This book has left me absolutely wrecked. I don't think I am all cried out, but I hope the worst of it is gone. My eyes burn and water as I type this. I'll need a decent amount of fluff and a little break from heavy books for a while. I am not religious. Ans in my considerable contempt for organized religion and its confluence with political and nationalistic rhetoric as well as its use in justifying doing harm to others, I've never given much thought to Jesus, the man. And still, this book sunk its claws into my heart and made me care for him and his Little Thunder so much I ache with it. I cannot explain why this affected me so. I can't remember shedding so many tears over any story before. Reading this felt like a spiritual experience and I don't think I'll be the same person I was before I picked this book up." These are the first words I wrote after closing the final page of this book.

"The birth of a daughter is a loss. Better is the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good.

Offspring of serpents. Bags of rotted foreskins. Decayed pig's flesh."

    Sue Monk Kidd imagines a life in which Jesus ben Joseph, yes, that Jesus, had a wife. Of course, she tackles the historical Jesus, not the man written about in the Bible. She omits the miracles attributed to him, and although she paint the heinous crucifixion in heartbreaking colors, she does not delve into his resurrection. Ana refuses to go back to the cave he's buried in, having said her final goodbyes already. Looking at the societal norms at the time, he would have had to be married to be considered an adult in his community. And that is where Ana comes in. And this is her story, not his. He is a prominent character, and he does change her life, but she is the one whose story is told on these pages. And reading it felt sacred somehow, she felt real and true, and she has remained with me days later. I don't think she'll ever leave me. Nor will he, to be honest. I cannot help wishing I had someone like him, the character in this book, to be a partner through life.

    The book opens in Sepphoris, 16 CE. Ana is fourteen-years-old, a girl from a wealthy family, her father Matthias is head scribe to Herod Antipas. Her aunt Yaltha, who comes from Egypt to live with them, opens Ana’s eyes to a world she had no idea existed. Jewish girls and women in Alexandria, studying with philosophers, writing poetry, and owning houses. By reading the Scriptures, Ana discovers that there were also women there, not only men. In that moment, she knows she wants to be a chronicler of lost stories. And whatever her father allowed Ana in the past, a female, now needs to stop as she gets betrothed to a man and a man she doesn’t want to be with.

    She is being forced to marry an old widower who cannot wait to break her spirit. She wants no part of it. She is different from what a woman is supposed to be at that time, she is "challenging" because she rejects the ideal her family attempts to instill in her. Ana is a writer, and is one of the few women being allowed to learn to write and read as a result of her father's indulgence. She is "racked with longings" and wished to be heard, to write down stories of women, terrible fates and tragedies that unfold behind high walls and are silenced. Stories that are deemed unworthy of writing down. She puts the stories of women from the Torah down on paper to preserve them. And yet when her family's schemings seem to make it all come to an end, when they wish to take her voice away, she meets Jesus, a young man that takes hold of her heart from the moment she sees him at the market. "The longing of my heart was for a man I scarcely knew." The red wool thread he leaves behind is one she ties around her wrist in his absence for years to come and it's a symbol of their unbreakable bond.

"When I tell you all shall be well, I don’t mean that life won’t bring you tragedy. Life will be life. I only mean you will be well in spite of it. All shall be well, no matter what."

    Women were property back then, and Kidd does not shy away from showing all the horrors that entails. This was hell for women as men treated them worse than animals. That's where this book shines. Sue brings the plight of women into our hearts with this story. We see so many stories of terrible fates woven with Ana's. There are good men who treat them well, but even still, you had babies and cooked and cleaned. That was it. And that was the best case scenario. If people want to see what it really looks like to live by the rule 'wives submit to your husbands' this can show you how bad a world that really is. It shows how painful and horrible the patriarchy really is. We need a world not where one gender rules over another, but where we have both genders equal. It's a tough line to make work, because you have to let both people have the openness to bring out their true potential and that has pain attached to it. It comes down to how Jesus and Ana were apart so much. It was so difficult, but they each had to respect the other. There were times they failed, but in the end, they made it work.

    I also adored the community of Therapeutiae, the freedom it afforded to women to express themselves, the freedom it gave to Ana. Though it is heartbreak that leads here there, it still has a healing effect. Yaltha is the one responsible for Ana getting there, encouraging her to go on, to pursue her longing, to find herself, apart from anyone else. These stories of sisterhood made my heart glad, the beautiful bonds between women who saw each other's pain and sought to lessen it. 

    I will be carrying the healing voice of this book within me for a very long time. The Book of Longings speaks to the deepest places of our souls that have been silenced and asks us to be heard. And I keep hoping that someday I'll meet someone who will be to me what Jesus was to Ana. What a beautiful thing they had between them. That I'll once have a community of supportive sisters with me, the way Ana ended up having. That I'll realize what my true longing is, without input from anyone else, and make it a reality. Go read this beautiful story, it may change you a bit as well.

"All my life, longings lived inside me, rising up like nocturnes to wail and sing through the night. That my husband bent his heart to mine on our thin straw mat and listened was the kindness I most loved in him. What he heard was my life begging to be born."