I, Magdalena

I, Magdalena envisions the life of one of the most mysterious women of the bible. She features prominently, but without background, into the story of Jesus. Easily dismissed as a prostitute and often confused with a more prominent figure in the story of Christ, little is known of this woman for whom Jesus seemed to show great empathy. Imagining her life as an independent, artistic free spirit struggling to make her way through the patriarchy of her time, Magdalena is seen through a modern sociological perspective. To help Magdalena endure the immurement of a woman's life, her mother created a story of stars that ruled music and dance and chose Magdalena as their own. Driven by this story, and imagination, hope, and her mother's voice, Magdalena faces loss, abuse, and abandonment to find her own advocacy and decide her own destiny.

I, Magdalena, seeks to give fresh life and a modern voice to two significant women in history. Labeling them as harlot and possessed prostitute, for which there is no substantiated historical evidence, these slanders were inserted into biblical records hundreds of years after the death of Christ. This manipulation of text has served to suppress the significance of women in spiritual history and to support a religious patriarchy that still exists today. I, Magdalena, is told through the voice of a young girl who is born to a mother of rare artistic talent and vision. Knowing her fiercely independent daughter will wither and die under the harsh religiosity and patriarchy to which she is born, Magdalena's mother creates a story of magical stars bestowing rare talents and gifts and claiming her as their own. As she escapes the horrors of her life, Magdalena becomes a vagabond and outcast, a sinner in the eyes of legitimate society. With only her story and fierce will, Magdalena endures tragedy, abuse, heartache and abandonment, until she finds, at last, her place among the very stars that guide her.

The author is a physiologist and lifetime student of philosophy and world religions. Beginning her education as a sociologist, she turned to dance and then curative movement and physiology to work primarily with women and women's health for nearly 50 years. Stories in the bible have long been told and manipulated by men, and with a woman's and a sociological perspective, the author imagines the real life of two of the most notorious women in the New Testament. This book explores two such stories.