Convent Wisdom
How Sixteenth-Century Nuns Could Save Your Twenty-First-Century Life
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- $ 57.900,00
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- $ 57.900,00
Descripción editorial
'Brimming with fascinating historical details' MELISSA FEBOS, MARIE CLAIRE
'Profoundly useful and pleasure seeking' EILEEN MYLES
'A fizzy joy to read' BETSY CORNWELL
An infectiously edifying manual that mines the lives of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century nuns, offering advice for our modern age and proving one thing: no matter the century, nuns know best.
When most of us think of nuns, we picture solemn shuffles down cloistered halls and hands clasped in prayer. But what about the nuns who erupted into jealous fights over makeup or crushed on their girlfriends? In reality, these women were no one-dimensional martyrs. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century nuns were resourceful, rebellious and refreshingly relatable – and their lives hold surprising lessons for us today.
Convent Wisdom is your guide to navigating the chaos of the modern world with help from history's most fascinating nuns. Struggling with money? Saint Teresa and her fellow Carmelites have some divine budgeting hacks. Drowning in FOMO while scrolling through social media? Mary of Jesus of Ágreda's miraculous ability to be in two places at once might teach you how to finally keep up. Lost in the digital dating pool? Benedetta Carlini's treatise on the seven ways to spot a lesbian nun may offer unexpected insights.
Blending rigorous research with pop culture and personal anecdotes throughout, best friends Ana Garriga and Carmen Urbita lift the veil on monastic life so you can better conquer today's anxiety-ridden, hyper-connected world. From procrastination to imposter syndrome, friendship drama to creativity slumps, the nuns of Convent Wisdom are here to guide you – with a wink and a prayer.
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In this cheeky pop history, Garriga and Urbita, Hispanic studies scholars and cohosts of the podcast Las hijas de Felipe, share modern life advice from an unexpected source: 16th- and 17th-century nuns in Spain and Latin America. "Anything you may be going through right now already happened to a nun" is the book's guiding motto, and each chapter explores a different life challenge like friendship, love, work, or body image. In the section on friendship, the high-profile falling-out of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton is compared to the sudden estrangement between Saint Teresa and her "BFF" Maria de San José. For dealing with work burnout, the authors find guidance in a 1691 letter from poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz to her mother superior that embodies the "exquisite rhetorical juggling act you perform when you need to put your boss in their place." Modern diet culture and body image issues are compared to extreme fasting and ecstatic fitness regimes in convents ("Nothing tastes as good as holiness feels," the authors quip, tweaking the famous Kate Moss line). The book even points to how trends like Taylor Swift–inspired friendship bracelets have a precursor in the 16th-century demand for Saint Juana's blessed beads. With no shortage of such comical but also keenly observed comparisons between past and future, this charms.
