Pagan Babies : and Other Catholic Memories

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 160 pages
• Published by: Washington Square Press May 20, 2003
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0743453271
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0743453271
• Book Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Weighs: 4.8 ounces

From Publishers Weekly
During the nine years she spent at St. Lucy's Catholic School, Cascone, a children's author, gathered enough pithy observations and opinions to fill this short memoir. Enrolled against her will (she protested by hiding in a closet, under a bed and behind a sofa, all to no avail), Cascone endured her years at St. Lucy's by imagining what the nuns' legs looked like and other lofty thoughts. Seen through her not-so-impressionable child's eyes, Catholic school was a comedy of contradictions and questionable practices, including baptism, to which she cavalierly refers as throwing water on the non-consenting. Cascone writes with little fondness for praying Rosaries, kneeling through the stations of the cross and adopting "pagan babies," the practice of giving money to foreign missions so non-Catholic children could be raised Catholic. Her sole happy memory appears to be that of Father Joseph, who went easy on children in the confessional and always asked them to say a prayer for him. Given her own experiences, Cascone decides against baptizing her own child, fearing that to raise her daughter Catholic would subject her to the same education her mother had, even though the church has changed radically since her youth. Cascone's irreverent and often funny recollections would surely be pronounced as impertinent by the sisters who taught her. For that, they will delight many readers who underwent Catholic education as reluctantly as she did and considered graduation an escape from earthly purgatory.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Review
Sacramento Bee Delightfulfunny, steeped in nostalgia, wisdom, and good humor. -- Review

Reader Reviews
I had the pleasure of meeting Gina Cascone in SF at Books by the Bay - and she's as engaging and funny in person as she is when she's writing. I didn't go to Catholic schools myself, but all my neighborhood friends did as I was growing up in Cleveland and Chicago - and many of the scenes in Pagan Babies (including the adopting of the pagan babies themselves) ring absolutely true. Until her most recent book, Life al Dente, Cascone has been a children's author, and that voice comes through in Pagan Babies, which I think high school girls who have at last escaped the clutches of the nuns in their elementary schools could easily relate to. Irreverent to the point of blasphemy, Pagan Babies is a loving if scathing memoir of growing up Catholic. I thoroughly enjoyed it.