"Kristine Rankka has produced a masterpiece--an insightful analysis of modern feminist interpretations of 'radical' or 'tragic' suffering. Here is a mature work, comprehensive in its breadth, compelling in its argument, moving in its palpable sensitivity, poetic and graceful in its articulation. By invoking the category of the 'tragic, ' Rankka proposes a mystical-political spirituality to move reflection on suffering from the private, to the communal, interdependent realm. Rankka's _Women and the Value of Suffering_ is a creative retrieval of a conversation among women, long in progress, about the meaning of life's suffering. It is eminently readable and thoroughly enriching!" George E. Griener, S.J. Academic dean Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley