Particular Friendships: A Convent Memoir

About the Book

Particular Friendships: A Convent Memoir offers a rare glimpse inside the walls of a Roman Catholic convent in the late 1960s. The young narrator arrives with gentle visions spawned by The Sound of Music, only to encounter the harshness of life in this secretive society. Her wit, compassion, and musicality foment a rebellion against rules forbidding expressions of joy and intimacy, as she struggles between allegiance to the heart and her vow of blind obedience to flawed and abusive superiors. Recently filed lawsuits against the Church suggest that the timing could not be better for an ex-nun’s memoir. Part mystery, part coming of age story, this narrative seeks neither to damn nor to exonerate but to uncover the truth.

About the Author

Kathleen J. Waites is a full professor at Nova Southeastern University, where she teaches writing, literature, film, and popular culture in the Gender Studies Program, which she co-founded. She has published articles in The Women in World History Encyclopedia, as well as in Auto/Biography, Literature/Film Quarterly, and the College English Association on topics ranging from Lillian Hellman’s memoirs to the Hollywood biopic on screen legend, Frances Farmer. Besides being an avid film-viewer, she is an avid outdoors-woman and enjoys running on the beach and hiking in the mountains. She has two children and three grandchildren, and lives with her partner in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.