This Here Flesh: a MockingOwl Review
Book cover image from Bookshop.org
This Here Flesh is the most beautifully written nonfiction work I’ve ever read. The contents are deep and evocative, provocative, and moving, but the writing itself is the first thing that captured my artist’s soul as I read this book on faith, racism, healing, and hope.
I read the book for a class about identity, ministry, and spiritual practice. In the class, we reviewed topics like demanded vs. shared power, what it means to have a true identity in yourself instead of in a job (particularly as a minister), dealing with conflict, and much more. This Here Flesh was an excellent pre-class work book to read.
Cole Arthur Riley does a brilliant job with her topic, weaving incredible imagery, history, memories, and personal stories together to help people of faith (or anyone who’d so wish) to wade through the pond scum of trauma and racism, identity, and personal losses.
Some books on these topics are dry, others difficult to read because of the intense content. However, Arthur Riley helps the reader welcome the discussion on these challenging topics through the beautiful wording and deeply personal, but somehow not overwhelming, insights of her own.
The chapters titles are single words: dignity, place, wonder, calling, lament, justice, joy, among others. Each chapter evokes the stories of her life leading to the moment when she wrote the book in 2020/2021 and invites the reader into those journeys as if being invited into her very life.
And though this book is utterly beautiful, it is not for the faint of heart. There are hard questions, direct challenges, and emotional journeys within the pages that not all are ready to face. If you are, though, you’ll be grateful you read this book of 224 pages. It’s a fast but life-changing journey, if you’ll let it be.
Need more books to read? Check out these reviews from the MockingOwl Roost family.
- The Making of Biblical Womanhood
- The Yoga Prescription
- If God is Love, Don’t Be a Jerk
- What Loss Can Teach Us
Editor-in-Chief of The MockingOwl Roost, Rita Mock-Pike is the granddaughter of aviatrix, Jerrie Mock, first woman to pilot an airplane solo around the world. Rita has found inspiration from her grandmother’s life and flight and pursued many of her own dreams in theatre, podcasting, novel writing, and cooking up delicious food from around the world. She now writes on food, travel, pets, faith, and the arts. She’s happily married to Matt, and faithfully serves the very fluffy kitten queen, Lady Stardust.
