Convent Wisdom: How Sixteenth Century Nuns Could Save Your Twenty-First Century Life

In this cheeky pop history, Garriga and Urbita, Hispanic studies scholars and cohosts of the podcast Las hijas de Felipe, share modern life advice from an unexpected source: 16th- and 17th-century nuns in Spain and Latin America. “Anything you may be going through right now already happened to a nun” is the book’s guiding motto, and each chapter explores a different life challenge like friendship, love, work, or body image. In the section on friendship, the high-profile falling-out of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton is compared to the sudden estrangement between Saint Teresa and her “BFF” Maria de San José. For dealing with work burnout, the authors find guidance in a 1691 letter from poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz to her mother superior that embodies the “exquisite rhetorical juggling act you perform when you need to put your boss in their place.” Modern diet culture and body image issues are compared to extreme fasting and ecstatic fitness regimes in convents (“Nothing tastes as good as holiness feels,” the authors quip, tweaking the famous Kate Moss line). The book even points to how trends like Taylor Swift–inspired friendship bracelets have a precursor in the 16th-century demand for Saint Juana’s blessed beads. With no shortage of such comical but also keenly observed comparisons between past and future, this charms. (Nov.)