Stephanie Golden

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Stephanie Golden

Goodreads Author


Born
Brooklyn, NY, The United States
Website

Twitter

Genre

Influences
Jungian dream analysis; Buddhist meditation

Member Since
January 2012

URL


Got the Girl Scouts' Writer badge (the only one that interested me) when I was 12: that signaled the future. I began writing fiction, but discovered that what really compelled me was literary nonfiction—especially once I developed a way to use a central image as a method of analysis.

An image constrains and focuses thoughts while still allowing great freedom in moving around within it: you can come at your material from many different directions without losing coherence, since the analysis acquires its form from the structure of the image.

I used this method for both my literary nonfiction books:

• For The Women Outside, a study of homeless and marginal women, it was the figure of the witch.

• For Slaying the Mermaid, about women and se

...more

Average rating: 3.99 · 293 ratings · 23 reviews · 18 distinct worksSimilar authors
The Permanent Pain Cure

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4.15 avg rating — 168 ratings — published 2008 — 5 editions
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Slaying the Mermaid: Women ...

3.88 avg rating — 66 ratings — published 1998 — 7 editions
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Where Did All of the Fish G...

4.50 avg rating — 6 ratings
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Mermaid No More: Breaking W...

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The Women Outside: Meanings...

3.50 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 1992 — 4 editions
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More books by Stephanie Golden…

My radio interview: “singular they”

Have I ever mentioned that I ❤ DC,” by Ted Eytan, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped from original


A radio host read my essay on they as a singular pronoun,  so I got to advocate for this usage on KGO ‘s Maureen Langan Show in San Francisco. I explained that in order to know for sure what pronouns someone uses, you need to ask. “That’s a lot of pressure on me,” Maureen objected. She wanted to

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Published on May 29, 2018 13:26
The Empathy Exams
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by Leslie Jamison (Goodreads Author)
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The Brief Wondrou...
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Quotes by Stephanie Golden  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“Bess has been in a mental hospital but is really a holy fool who dialogues with God. She develops a wild sexual passion for her husband, Jan, and when a terrible injury makes him a quadriplegic, she sets off on a series of self-sacrificial sexual escapades with other men, for Jan has said that her telling him about these encounters will keep him alive. “I don’t make love with them, I make love with Jan and it saves him from dying,” she explains. Growing increasingly reckless, she is fatally stabbed by a vicious group of men on a boat. At the inquest her doctor explains that he would describe her not as “neurotic” or “psychotic” but as “good.” And Jan, who has been near death, appears at her funeral, much recovered; later, he walks.”
Stephanie Golden, Slaying the Mermaid: Women and the Culture of Sacrifice

“Sacrifice, of course, is a time-honored way to achieve salvation. In true spiritual sacrifice, the individual self merges directly into an authentic, impersonal source of goodness; the secular version may involve dedication to some work or service perceived as greater than the self. But if, like the mermaid, one simply hands the self over to another limited human being, one sacrifices it without transcending or achieving anything. One does achieve a delusion of transcendence—a voluptuous feeling of noble martyrdom. But this type of martyrdom does not have noble consequences.”
Stephanie Golden, Slaying the Mermaid: Women and the Culture of Sacrifice

“In appropriate sacrifice, the self maintins a solicitude for itself amid caring for others. It also feels a strong connection to other people. Growing out of the balance between caring for self and other simultaneously, it can accept other people as they are.”
Stephanie Golden, Slaying the Mermaid: Women and the Culture of Sacrifice

Topics Mentioning This Author

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500 Great Books B...: This topic has been closed to new comments. Nonfiction Varieties 4 171 Sep 20, 2014 08:07PM  
500 Great Books B...: This topic has been closed to new comments. Decades, Centuries, and Millenia 8 406 Dec 06, 2014 09:46PM  
500 Great Books B...: This topic has been closed to new comments. Underread 500 GBBW 3 161 Dec 10, 2014 01:00PM  
Read Women: This topic has been closed to new comments. Read Women - Author's Challenge 2017 42 242 Jan 01, 2018 05:16AM  
Into the Forest: Recommendations 6 33 Mar 30, 2018 12:25PM  
“Self-sacrifice is a power issue: inappropriate sacrifice is self-defeating and even destructive because it causes you to lose your power.”
Stephanie Golden, Mermaid No More: Breaking Women's Culture of Sacrifice

“In appropriate sacrifice, the self maintins a solicitude for itself amid caring for others. It also feels a strong connection to other people. Growing out of the balance between caring for self and other simultaneously, it can accept other people as they are.”
Stephanie Golden, Slaying the Mermaid: Women and the Culture of Sacrifice

“the impulse toward excessive self sacrifice comes from women's history, not their nature. The reason self-sacrifice seems so natural for women in Western culture is that centuries ago, we were handed the role of sacrificing and suffering for the benefit of the entire society—and we’re still doing it.”
Stephanie Golden, Mermaid No More: Breaking Women's Culture of Sacrifice

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