The Defiant Middle: How Women Claim Life's In-Betweens to Remake the World

Kaya Oakes

Jul 2022 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Johanna Parker

About this audiobook

For every woman, from the young to those in midlife and beyond, who has ever been told, "You can't" and thought, "Oh, I definitely will!"-this book is for you. Women are expected to be many things. They should be young enough, but not too young; old enough, but not too old; creative, but not crazy; passionate, but not angry. They should be fertile and feminine and self-reliant, not barren or butch or solitary. Women, in other words, are caught between social expectations and a much more complicated reality. Women who don't fit in, whether during life transitions or because of changes in their body, mind, or gender identity, are carving out new ways of being in and remaking the world. But this is nothing new: they have been doing so for thousands of years, often at the margins of the same religious traditions and cultures that created these limited ways of being for women in the first place. In The Defiant Middle, Kaya Oakes draws on the wisdom of women mystics and explores how transitional eras or living in marginalized female identities can be both spiritually challenging and wonderfully freeing, ultimately resulting in a reinvented way of seeing the world and changing it.

About the author

Kaya Oakes is a journalist and author of several books, including The Nones Are Alright and Radical Reinvention. She teaches writing at UC Berkeley, and is a contributing writer for America magazine and speaks on topics related to religion, writing, and feminism from coast to coast and abroad.

Johanna Parker, an AudioFile Earphones Award winner, has earned an esteemed Audie Award and three Audie nominations. She has received high praise for her work in all genres, including her portrayal of Sookie Stackhouse in Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire Mysteries series.