Cassandra Speaks

What story would Eve have
told about picking the apple? Why is Pandora blamed for opening the box? And
what about the fate of Cassandra who was blessed with knowing the future but
cursed so that no one believed her? What if women had been the storytellers?

Elizabeth Lesser believes
that if women’s voices had been equally heard and respected throughout history,
humankind would have followed different hero myths and guiding stories—stories
that value caretaking, champion compassion, and elevate communication over
vengeance and violence.

Cassandra Speaks is about the
stories we tell and how those stories become the culture. It’s about the
stories we still blindly cling to, and the ones that cling to us: the origin tales,
the guiding myths, the religious parables, the literature and films and fairy
tales passed down through the centuries about women and men, power and war, sex
and love, and the values we live by. 
Stories written mostly by men with lessons and laws for all of humanity.
We have outgrown so many of them, and still they endure. This book is about
what happens when women are the storytellers too—when we speak from our
authentic voices, when we flex our values, when we become protagonists in the
tales we tell about what it means to be human.

Lesser has walked two main
paths in her life—the spiritual path and the feminist one—paths that sometimes
cross but sometimes feel at cross-purposes. Cassandra Speaks is her
extraordinary merging of the two. The bestselling author of Broken Open and
Marrow, Lesser is a beloved spiritual writer, as well as a leading feminist
thinker. In this book she gives equal voice to the cool water of her meditative
self and the fire of her feminist self. With her trademark gifts of both humor
and insight, she offers a vision that transcends the either/or ideologies on
both sides of the gender debate.

Brilliantly structured into
three distinct parts, Part One explores how history is carried forward through
the stories a culture tells and values, and what we can do to balance the
scales. Part Two looks at women and power and expands what it means to be
courageous, daring, and strong. And Part Three offers “A Toolbox for Inner
Strength.” Lesser argues that change in the culture starts with inner change,
and that no one—woman or man—is immune to the corrupting influence of power.
She provides inner tools to help us be both strong-willed and kind-hearted.

Cassandra Speaks is a
beautifully balanced synthesis of storytelling, memoir, and cultural
observation. Women, men and all people will find themselves in the pages of
this book, and will come away strengthened, opened, and ready to work together
to create a better world for all people.