Like many disaffected, alienated youths, Louise Omer found belonging in church. Then, like many Christians, she married young – it’s the pathway to sin-free sex. She even rose through the ranks of her Pentecostal church to become a preacher. But, like many female Christians, Omer then realised that the church is predicated on a patriarchal world view and she wondered if the only position available to her as a ‘good Christian wife’ was one of permanent subservience. In the form it took, the marriage couldn’t last.
The book is divided into chapters covering events before and after the separation. Omer cleverly subverts the upper-case ‘He’. In this narrative, ‘He’ refers not to the holy trinity but to her husband – the ultimate earthly authority. This is a concrete example of the church’s insistence on, and consequent dangers of, male headship.
This memoir is part personal theological deconstruction and part travelogue. As her marriage unravelled, Omer traversed the globe seeking interviews with female religious figures (mostly Christian, but also Muslim and Jewish), trying to delineate a female identity in the church. This is her search for the divine feminine, the goddess, the holy woman. Omer finds women who have forged their own place, from female church leaders to those preaching the trinity in gender-neutral terms.
Her penultimate destination is Morocco. She’s there to speak with Islamic women, but a feverish sexual relationship exposes the levels to which she’s willing to submit herself. This is raw, uncompromising and very difficult to read. Her subsequent renewal – via a cleansing ‘reverse’ baptism – signals a new life independent of male dominance. It’s written with forthright intelligence and gut-wrenching honesty.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
ABOUT LOUISE OMER
Louise Omer is a writer and artist born on Kaurna Country with journalism, criticism, stories and poems published in Australia, Ireland and the UK. publications include The Guardian, The Australian, The Saturday Paper, and more. Holy Woman is her debut memoir.
She has read at events in Edinburgh, Dublin, Catalonia, Melbourne and Adelaide, and her projects have been funded by Arts SA and the Irish Arts Council. She was a panellist at Emerging Writers’ Festival, the Bali Emerging Writers Festival, and was a Hot Desk Fellow at The Wheeler Centre.
As an artist she has participated in residencies and group exhibitions in Spain, Bulgaria, and the UK. her mixed-media poetry zines have featured in Dublin Art Book Fair in 2020 and 2021, experimenting with collage and lino-printing.
She is currently exploring goddess worship as a way to heal and regain sovereignty, and will meet you at the intersection of shamanism, psychology, and magic.
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