title: I Am...: Biblical Women Tell Their Own Stories
author:  Athalya Brenner 
description: Athalya Brenner is Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Roslyn and Manny Rosenthal Distinguished Professor-in-Residence at Brite Divinity School (Fort Worth, Texas). She is general editor of the Feminist Companion to the Bible.
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  INTRODUCTION
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  > We are all engaged in the task of peeling off the false selves, the
  > programmed selves, the selves created by our families, our culture, our
  > religions. It is an enormous task because the history of women has been as
  > incompletely told as the history of blacks.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Anaïs Nin
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  When women get together, they tell stories. This is how it has always been.
  Telling stories is our way of saying who we are, where we have come from, what
  we know, and where we might be headed.
  
  
  
  
  
  We have many different kinds of stories. Some we share without a moment’s
  hesitation, like plums from a tree laden with more fruit than we can possibly
  use. Others are like prize roses that we save for special friends. And then
  there are the stories we never tell, the ones we pack away in boxes and shove
  into the very back corner of our psychic basement.
  
  
  
  
  
  Most women find that their sexual stories fall somewhere between the second
  category and the third