Audiobooks by Kaya Oakes

Not So Sorry: Abusers, False Apologies, and the Limits of Forgiveness

It's time for a nuanced discussion about forgiveness. From religious communities to therapeutic spaces, the importance of forgiving those who've wronged us is often enshrined as an unqualified good. But what about horrifying cases of abuse, predatory behavior, or systemic wrong? Too often, when predators or abusers are exposed, the chorus comes immediately: 'What about forgiveness?' In these cases, forgiveness places the onus on victims, diminishes real hurt and anger, lets perpetrators off the hook, and prevents justice from being done. In Not So Sorry, journalist and culture critic Kaya Oakes tackles these questions with intelligence, nuance, and a bit of righteous anger. Ranging effortlessly from Christian theology and world history to psychology and pop culture, Oakes takes us on a whirlwind tour of the many abuses of the concept of forgiveness, including the abuse scandals of the Catholic church, the outing of high-profile abusers like Larry Nassar, and white America's obsession with false narratives of marginalized peoples granting forgiveness to oppressors. Ultimately, Oakes dares us to ask the necessary question: Is it ever better not to forgive?

Kaya Oakes (Author), Andrea Gallo, Tbd (Narrator)

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The Defiant Middle: How Women Claim Life's In-Betweens to Remake the World

For every woman, from the young to those in midlife and beyond, who has ever been told, 'You can't' and thought, 'Oh, I definitely will!'-this book is for you. Women are expected to be many things. They should be young enough, but not too young; old enough, but not too old; creative, but not crazy; passionate, but not angry. They should be fertile and feminine and self-reliant, not barren or butch or solitary. Women, in other words, are caught between social expectations and a much more complicated reality. Women who don't fit in, whether during life transitions or because of changes in their body, mind, or gender identity, are carving out new ways of being in and remaking the world. But this is nothing new: they have been doing so for thousands of years, often at the margins of the same religious traditions and cultures that created these limited ways of being for women in the first place. In The Defiant Middle, Kaya Oakes draws on the wisdom of women mystics and explores how transitional eras or living in marginalized female identities can be both spiritually challenging and wonderfully freeing, ultimately resulting in a reinvented way of seeing the world and changing it.

Kaya Oakes (Author), Johanna Parker (Narrator)

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