How would history be different if the stories were told by the women? Cassandra Speaks: When Women are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes answers just that. Provocatively looking at the “What If” of history's oldest stories, author Elizabeth Lesser urges us to reconsider the elements of humanity we've long upheld. Lesser is the co-founder of Omega Institute and a New York Times Bestseller. She’s also a member of Oprah Winfrey’s Supersoul 100, a collection of one hundred leaders who are using their voices and talents to elevate humanity. Cassandra Speaks is Lesser’s third book.
In Part One, Lesser explores storytelling as a concept and how stories have infiltrated and shaped history. Indeed, historian Sally Roesch Wagner says “History isn’t what happened. It’s who tells the story.” Lesser speculates that the reason some stories endure, and why stories exist in the first place, is because:
“Life is hard. It’s confusing. We have enough intelligence to ponder existence, but not enough to really understand what’s going on… That’s why we tell stories. To ease the anxiety of being soft-skinned mortals. To give order to what feels out of control. To guide, to blame, to warn, to shame. To make sense out of why people do what they do.”
Stories provide the foundation for the why and the how of existence, or else some of us would feel particularly aimless. But rarely are we given all of the stories on existence. Instead, especially in Western society, we are taught only a small percentage of the full History; one that leaves out critical events and the voices of women and people of color.
For us, our stories—our innate, cultural understanding, about man and woman primarily through the Old and New Testaments. Boiled down, these documents suggest:
Men are better than women, even wicked men.
A woman’s sense of shame is deserved.
A woman should be silent.
Men dominate women to protect women from other men.
Alliances between women are dangerous.
It is these five concepts that have led us to 2021 where women are still disbelieved for speaking their truths, where we are pitted against each other and considered highly emotional. That our bodies are both sacred and shameful and must be governed by the patriarchy at all times.
Cassandra Speaks flips the narrative. Instead of hearing from Adam, as we have for generations, Lesser extends the spotlight to Eve, let’s her tell her side of the story. Instead of seeing her a sinner, damning humanity eternally, Eve got knowledge and, as Lesser says, “You would say Eve looks awake—curious about everything, at home in her body, and in vibrant communion with nature.” That sounds beautiful.
She goes on, speaking of Pandora and Cassandra, one who plagued mankind with all forms of suffering while the other was never believed for her prophecies and was considered mad. What’s left out of these crude but common retellings are, what Lesser names, feminine traits.
Bridging what women traditionally bring to the table—calmness, mindfulness, cooperation—Lesser examines what she calls Power Stories. She looks at massively important texts like Machiavelli’s The Prince or Sun Tzu (a Chinese military general) The Art of War or Aristotle’s The Politics. These texts, much like the Old and New Testaments, have permeated our colloquial understanding of society. Violence and war, bloodshed, and turmoil are upheld as heroism, while “smaller” and “less-important” values like patience, compassion, collaboration are looked down upon. Aren’t both important to building society? Lesser reminds us that daily we use war metaphors to describe everything like calling an argument a battle.
The book ends with Lesser’s suggestions on how to change the story. She stresses, through what she coins “innervism,” that it is “on the inside where we can discover ways of dealing more intelligently and creatively with the outside world.” She encourages us to try meditation and embody the mantra: “Do no harm and take no shit.”
Cassandra Speaks is a book for anyone interested in the power of storytelling and how history was consistently shaped to disadvantage women. Sexual therapists and educators could use this book to clients as a way to validate the times they feel like Eve, Pandora, or Cassandra—ignored, silenced, and abused. Lesser’s book reveals that history’s stories are to blame for this seemingly ancient mistreatment of women, and while that’s a complicated concept to accept, Lesser reminds us of our power to change the stories, to change history.