California Medieval: Nearly a Nun in 1960s San Francisco

By Dianne Dugaw

Book Overview

CALIFORNIA MEDIEVAL is an intriguing hybrid memoir, interspersed with poetry, song, and lyrical vignettes. It explores the world of a Franciscan convent during the heyday of the 1960s in San Francisco at the birth of the flower-power era, as seen through the eyes of a novitiate nun, newly arrived in the Bay Area from a rural community in southwestern Washington State. This book is a stylistically and structurally adventurous narrative that forms a literary intersection of music, spirituality, nature, sociology, and sexuality. Written in an engaging, wryly humorous voice, Dugaw's unique story of her early adulthood at a convent is sure to draw readers who are curious about her cloistered life at a time in our country's history that was in the midst of its own spiritual and social awakening.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1639640541
• ISBN13: 9781639640546
• Release Date: October 2024
• Publisher: Schaffner Press
• Length: 172 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.6" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

An intimate look into the life of my high school classmate

I was refused entry by the Franciscan nuns featured in Dianne Dugaw's memoir, so I had a vested interest in glimpsing the details of my classmate's venture behind the doors of Mount Alverno. The author drew me in with her easy-to-read style, her soulful honesty, and the artistry of her words that let me witness her journey, which included ventures into Haight-Ashbury, where I lived unbeknownst to her. Dianne Dugaw was an undeniable star in our high school on the prairie. It is no surprise that she writes so well. I hope she will write a sequel, catching us up on her adventures since she left.