Description

One woman's search for the meaning of faith when the foundations of her beliefs are tested to the limit

Waiting for the Call takes readers from the foothills of the Appalachians—where Jacqueline Taylor was brought up in a strict evangelical household—to contemporary Chicago, where she and her lesbian partner are raising a family. In a voice by turns comic and loving, Taylor recounts the amazing journey that took her in profoundly different directions from those she or her parents could have ever envisioned.

Taylor's father was a Southern Baptist preacher, and she struggled to deal with his strictures as well as her mother's manic-depressive episodes. After leaving for college, Taylor finds herself questioning her faith and identity, questions that continue to mount when—after two divorces, a doctoral degree, and her first kiss with a woman—she discovers her own lesbianism and begins a most untraditional family that grows to include two adopted children from Peru.

Even as she celebrates and cherishes this new family, Taylor insists on the possibility of maintaining a loving connection to her religious roots. While she and her partner search for the best way to explain adoption to their children and answer the inevitable question, "Which one is your mom?" they also seek out a church that will unite their love of family and their faith. Told in the great storytelling tradition of the American South, full of deep feeling and wry humor, Waiting for the Call engagingly demonstrates how one woman bridged the gulf between faith and sexual identity without abandoning her principles.

Praise for Waiting for the Call

"Well-written, absorbing, and a great pleasure to read...will appeal to Christians struggling to square their traditional beliefs with acceptance of homosexuality as well as to all those interested in adoption, lesbian marriage, and the changing shape of America's families."
—Elizabeth C. Fine, Virginia Tech University

"This deeply moving story of a lesbian Christian's journey to self-acceptance is a rare celebration of life. I found myself alternately weeping and then laughing out loud at Jacqueline Taylor's memoir of her staunch Southern Baptist father and clever but sometimes manic mother, of her missteps on the road to a long-lasting, committed relationship, and of the wit and wisdom of her adoptive daughters."
—Reverend Mel White, author of Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Rightand cofounder of Soulforce

"Especially compelling is the way in which the author never completely abandons religion, either for herself or for her children, and shows that fundamentalists and evangelicals cannot be painted with one brush. With a fascinating and gripping narrative, Waiting for the Call engages with current debates not only about homosexuality but about definitions of family, of mother and father, of child rearing, of education, of community."
—Linda Kintz, author of Between Jesus and the Market:The Emotions That Matter in Right-Wing America

"We have deeply needed a book that shows an intelligent LGBT person as a Christian—this is that book."
—Louise A. Blum, author of You’re Not from Around Here, Are You? A Lesbian in Small-Town America

Extended Copyright Information

Copyright 2007 by the University of Michigan Press. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Previously published by the University of Michigan Press.

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About the Author

Jacqueline Taylor is Dean of the College of Communications and a Professor at DePaul University. She teaches in the areas of performance studies, women's studies, and gender and communication. She is also the author of Grace Paley: Illuminating the Dark Lives. Her essays have been published in Text and Performance Quarterly, Southern Speech Communication Journal, and Women's Studies in Communication.

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Opening Lines (Experimental)

It’s Pentecost, June 8, 2003. The front of our sanctuary, in commemoration of this particular day in the life of the Christian church, is swathed in red. A rich red cloth drapes the altar, puddling onto the floor. Red ribbons wind in and out of the bricks that form a rough-hewn cross over the ...

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Copyright

Copyright 2007 by the University of Michigan.

All Rights Reserved.

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