Narrative Desire And The Book Of Ruth

Stephanie Day Powell illuminates the myriad forms of persuasion, inducement, discontent, and heartbreak experienced by readers of Ruth. Writing from a lesbian perspective, Powell draws upon biblical scholarship, contemporary film and literature, narrative studies, feminist and queer theories, trauma studies and psychoanalytic theory to trace the workings of desire that produced the book of Ruth and shaped its history of reception. Wrestling with the arguments for and against reading Ruth as a love story between women, Powell gleans new insights into the ancient world in which Ruth was written. Ruth is known as a tale of two courageous women, the Moabite Ruth and her Israelite mother-in-law Naomi. As widows with scarce means of financial or social support, Ruth and Naomi are forced to creatively subvert the economic and legal systems of their day in order to survive. Through exceptional acts of loyalty, they, along with their kinsman Boaz, re-establish the bonds of family and community, while preserving the line of Israel's great king David. Yet for many, the story of Ruth is deeply dissatisfying. Scholars increasingly recognize how Ruth's textual “gaps” and ambiguities render conventional interpretations of the book's meaning and purpose uncertain. Feminist and queer interpreters question the appropriation of a woman's story to uphold patriarchal institutions and heteronormative values. Such avenues of inquiry lend themselves to questions of narrative desire, that is, the study of how stories frame our desires and how our own complex longings affect the way we read.

Stephanie Day Powell illuminates the myriad forms of persuasion, inducement, discontent, and heartbreak experienced by readers of Ruth. Writing from a lesbian perspective, Powell draws upon biblical scholarship, contemporary film and literature, narrative studies, feminist and queer theories, trauma studies and psychoanalytic theory to trace the workings of desire that produced the book of Ruth and shaped its history of reception. Wrestling with the arguments for and against reading Ruth as a love story between women, Powell gleans new insights into the ancient world in which Ruth was written. Ruth is known as a tale of two courageous women, the Moabite Ruth and her Israelite mother-in-law Naomi. As widows with scarce means of financial or social support, Ruth and Naomi are forced to creatively subvert the economic and legal systems of their day in order to survive. Through exceptional acts of loyalty, they, along with their kinsman Boaz, re-establish the bonds of family and community, while preserving the line of Israel's great king David. Yet for many, the story of Ruth is deeply dissatisfying. Scholars increasingly recognize how Ruth's textual “gaps” and ambiguities render conventional interpretations of the book's meaning and purpose uncertain. Feminist and queer interpreters question the appropriation of a woman's story to uphold patriarchal institutions and heteronormative values. Such avenues of inquiry lend themselves to questions of narrative desire, that is, the study of how stories frame our desires and how our own complex longings affect the way we read.

Respectful of traditional biblical scholarship, this collection of essays aims to move beyond it. It brings together two communities that have read their Bibles in isolation from one another, in ignorance of the richness of the other's traditions.

The post-exilic book of Ruth is celebrated by queer and feminist scholars for its ostensibly affirmative depiction of woman-identified, erotic love. Yet, while the story foregrounds an interethnic, female partnership, the patriarchal and heteronormative institutions of marriage, motherhood and nation are all reinforced at the narrative's conclusion. Moreover, Ruth is one of the most ambiguous books in the Hebrew Bible, rendering the relationship between its female characters exceedingly complex. How then should woman-identified readers approach Ruth, a book that appears to exploit the very woman-identified relationships they seek to lift up in order to reinscribe the very invisibility they seek to overcome? With these matters in mind, this dissertation offers a critical paradigm for reading Ruth through the lens of "narrative desire." Steeped principally in the ideas of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, narrative desire brings together insights from narratology, feminist theory, psychoanalytic theory, philosophical studies and queer theory. As an interdisciplinary way of reading, narrative desire provides a versatile approach to indeterminate texts, highlighting the erotic interplay between a narrative's structure and content, and the reader's response. Through exegetical analyses with several contemporary intertexts, I investigate the workings of desires that shape the text's formation and its reception and trace ways of negotiating the book of Ruth that deny, limit or affirm the subjectivity of woman-identified readers. Deryn Guest's principles of woman-identified hermeneutics form the methodological backdrop for my exegesis. Drawing on the principles of resistance and rupture, I read Ruth alongside Fanny Flagg's novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café and John Avnet's film adaptation, Fried Green Tomatoes, in order to interrogate the ambiguity that shapes Ruth and Naomi's relationship and to uncover what Leah Ceccarelli calls "strategic ambiguity," a form of polysemy intended to appeal to divergent audiences. Next, I offer a reclamation of the text, drawing on Jeanette Winterson's treatment of the relationship between a lesbian daughter and her mother in the novel Oranges are Not the Only Fruit to argue for an alternative interpretation of the character of Ruth as a woman-identified daughter in search of both autonomy and ongoing connection to "the mother's house." Finally, I turn to the critical question of re-engagement. Reading Ruth alongside Amos Gitai's film Golem, The Spirit of Exile, I examine the hidden presence of heterosexual and racial melancholia, terms coined by Judith Butler and Anne Anlin Cheng, David Eng and Shinhee Han respectively. Shedding light on the forestalled grief that attends the exilic experience and shapes the thwarted eroticism between Ruth and Naomi, one discovers a history of loss that continues to touch readers in the present. Drawing historical gleanings from each of these readings, I conclude that an expanded woman-identified perspective on Ruth is both viable and crucial to understanding the complex negotiations of identity and communal boundaries in the ancient context of Yehud.

If you could spend a few minutes with biblical heroines Ruth, Sarah, Mary, and others, what valuable lessons would they share with you? In the tradition of Running with the Giants and Learning from the Giants, John Maxwell shares wisdom on life and leadership inspired by the Bible-this time focusing solely on the stories of nine incredible women. Learn how God blesses the promises you keep to Him, why you should follow your heart to find your hope, and how not to miss your moment with God. Read on your own or study with a group using the provided faith-building questions. You'll enjoy the journey with Maxwell as he imagines what it would be like to visit heaven and meet giants of the faith who had their lives transformed by God. You'll gain insights from: Ruth...for when you must make a decision but don't know what to do. Sarah...for when you can't understand God and impatience threatens to overwhelm you. Mary. . .for when God asks you to do something outside of your comfort zone. The women who influenced Maxwell inspired this book, and he includes the perspectives of those closest to him in this volume. They and the giants of the faith who continue to inspire them will encourage you to fulfill your destiny and leave a lasting, positive impression on your family and the world.

The ancient book of Ruth speaks into today's world with astonishing relevance. In four short episodes, readers encounter refugees, undocumented immigrants, poverty, hunger, women's rights, male power and privilege, discrimination, and injustice. In Finding God in the Margins, Carolyn Custis James reveals how the book of Ruth is about God, the questions that surface when life falls apart, and how God reaches into the margins and chooses two totally marginalized women who, in the eyes of the patriarchal culture, are zeros. Against the backdrop of disturbing issues in today's world, this bracing narrative puts on display a radical gospel way of living together as human beings that shouts the Kingdom of God, foreshadows Jesus' gospel, and raises the bar for men and women, then and now.

The Birth of Obed (4:13-17) -- Notes -- Comments -- The Generations of Perez (4:18-22) -- Notes -- Comments -- Index of Subjects -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- W -- Index of Modern Authors -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W -- Y -- Z -- Index of Ancient Sources

Robert Seydel's Book of Ruth presents an assemblage of collages, letters, journal entries and other artifacts from the life of Seydel's fictional alter-ego, Ruth Greisman--spinster, Sunday painter and friend to Joseph Cornell. Drawing on the inherent seductiveness and intrigue of archives, the volume is conceived as a gathering of fragmented materials by Greisman unearthed from a storage space in the Smithsonian and a suburban family garage, which are presented as a mosaic portrait of a reclusive artist. The New Yorker described the project thus: "Burrowing into the pop-detritus archive somewhere between Ray Johnson's mail art and Tom Phillips' Humument project, Seydel's serial collage Book of Ruth describes an allusive fantasy about his aunt and alter ego Ruth Greisman, her brother Saul, and their escapades with Joseph Cornell... unfold[ing] in novelistic rhythms." Over the past decade or so, working almost exclusively in notebook form, Seydel has produced hundreds of works in multiple ongoing and interrelated series that move freely between lyric and narrative modes. (Poet Peter Gizzi notes that "so many of his tools are a writer's: whiteout, pencil and pen, erasers, tape, type and newsprint.") Book of Ruth constitutes his masterpiece to date. In Seydel's hands the detritus from which Ruth makes her art and narrates her inner life shines like pages from an illuminated manuscript.

Recommended by O Magazine * GMA * Elle * Marie Claire * Good Housekeeping * NBC News * Shondaland * Chicago Tribune * Woman's Day * Refinery 29 * Bustle * The Millions * New York Post * Parade * Hello! Magazine * PopSugar * and more! “The Kindest Lie is a deep dive into how we define family, what it means to be a mother, and what it means to grow up Black...beautifully crafted.” —JODI PICOULT "A fantastic story...well-written, timely, and oh-so-memorable."—Good Morning America “The Kindest Lie is a layered, complex exploration of race and class." —The Washington Post Every family has its secrets... It’s 2008, and the inauguration of President Barack Obama ushers in a new kind of hope. In Chicago, Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy-League educated Black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man. He’s eager to start a family, but Ruth is uncertain. She has never gotten over the baby she gave birth to—and was forced to leave behind—when she was a teenager. She had promised her family she’d never look back, but Ruth knows that to move forward, she must make peace with the past. Returning home, Ruth discovers the Indiana factory town of her youth is plagued by unemployment, racism, and despair. As she begins digging into the past, she unexpectedly befriends Midnight, a young white boy who is also adrift and looking for connection. Just as Ruth is about to uncover a burning secret her family desperately wants to keep hidden, a heart-stopping incident strains the town’s already searing racial tensions, sending Ruth and Midnight on a collision course that could upend both their lives. Powerful and unforgettable, The Kindest Lie is the story of an American family and reveals the secrets we keep and the promises we make to protect one another.

One of Israel’s most celebrated novelists—the acclaimed author of A Pigeon and a Boy—gives us a story of village love and vengeance in the early days of British Palestine that is still being played out two generations later. “In the year 1930 three farmers committed suicide here . . . but contrary to the chronicles of our committee and the conclusions of the British policeman, the people of the moshava knew that only two of the suicides had actually taken their own lives, whereas the third suicide had been murdered.” This is the contention of Ruta Tavori, a high school teacher and independent thinker in this small farming community who is writing seventy years later about that murder, about two charismatic men she loves and is trying to forgive—her grandfather and her husband—and about her son, whom she mourns and misses. In a story rich with the grit, humor, and near-magical evocation of Israeli rural life for which Meir Shalev is beloved by readers, Ruta weaves a tale of friendship between men, and of love and betrayal, which carries us from British Palestine to present-day Israel, where forgiveness, atonement, and understanding can finally happen.