Barbie and the Easy Man

Barbie You Can Be Anything

As we celebrate Women’s History Month, conversations about gender, power, and representation take center stage. While history often focuses on real-world trailblazers, fictional storytelling has long been a powerful tool for examining societal norms and challenging assumptions. Two summers ago, one film, Barbie (2023), explored gender norms and societal expectations by portraying an encounter with…

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Reading the Right Books in Narnia

Narnia Dawn Treader

Read or Listen In the third book of the Narnia chronicles, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we get a new human character, Eustice. And Eustice lacks the creative education to keep up with the wonder of Narnia. His obsession is with science and observation rather than with fantasy. Eustace criticizes Edmond and Lucy for…

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Religion in Narnia: Tashlan, the God We Create

Religion in Narnia

Read or Listen to this blogcast I have just completed my recent reading of The Narnia Chronicles, and it has been quite a long time since I remembered the story C. S. Lewis wrote in The Last Battle. This finalé to the series is a remarkable commentary on modern theology that is simple presented as…

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The Left Hand of Darkness, Right Hand of Light

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Read or Listen to the Blogcast “Light is the left hand of darknessand darkness the right hand of light.Two are one, life and death, lyingtogether like lovers in kemmer,like hands joined together,like the end and the way.”― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin was an award-winning sci-fi author.…

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Liminality in Butler’s Kindred

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Read or Listen to the Blogcast One of Octavia Butler‘s first novels has been recently made into a graphic novel. Kindred is a twentieth-century novel that explores the intersections of mid-twentieth century life for an African American woman living in Los Angeles with the life of her ancestors in nineteenth-century Maryland. Dana, Caught Between Two…

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Apocalypse & Parables by Octavia Butler

Butler

I have only just discovered the amazing storyteller and author Octavia Butler. I’m writing this blog to ensure that you don’t miss out on the Parable of the Sower and Parable of Talents. The latter won the Nebula Award for Best Novel (1999). Despite the Parable series being published in the 1990s, the books did…

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Lady of the Underworld, an Evil Queen in Narnia

Narnia Evil Queen

Read or Listen to this blogcast In C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia‘s The Silver Chair, we meet some new characters, like Puddlegum the Marsh-wiggle and a new human character, Jill Pole. The unlikely pair of a sensible girl and the Narnia-born marsh dweller end up taking part in a rescue expedition, along with…

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The Magician, The Witch, and the Fall of Humankind

Narnia Tree of Life

Read or Listen I have just completed reading, rather re-reading, The Magician’s Nephew, the penultimate book in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series. I have to admit, this is my favorite book. I always look forward to meeting the stubborn Diggory and the ambitious, wise, and cautious Polly. I anticipate the moment that the…

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