Cassandra Speaks: Cassandra

This week we will discuss the fate of Cassandra, who was blessed with knowing the future but cursed so that no one believed her. For the third class in our three-part series, we will be focusing on this month's book, Cassandra Speaks by Elizabeth Lesser. Using her book as a starting point, we will be engaging in a discussion on Cassandra through a critical feminist lens.

Elizabeth Lesser believes that if women’s voices had been equally heard and respected throughout history, humankind would have followed different hero myths and guiding stories—stories that value caretaking, champion compassion, and elevate communication over vengeance and violence.

Cassandra Speaks is about the stories we tell and how those stories become the culture. It’s about the stories we still blindly cling to, and the ones that cling to us: the origin tales, the guiding myths, the religious parables, the literature and films and fairy tales passed down through the centuries about women and men, power and war, sex and love, and the values we live by.  Stories written mostly by men with lessons and laws for all of humanity. We have outgrown so many of them, and still they endure. This book is about what happens when women are the storytellers too—when we speak from our authentic voices, when we flex our values, when we become protagonists in the tales we tell about what it means to be human. You can support our organization by grabbing your copy from our online shop and we will ship it to you same-day!