On the surface, Daddio is a talker. It's a dialogue-heavy film, an unsurprising fact I suppose considering Hall's creative origins are rooted as a playwright. She also developed the 2020 television series I Am Not Okay With This. Daddio is a hard-sell for audiences, a small motion picture that takes place entirely within a yellow cab driven by Clark (Sean Penn). When a young woman we never know as anything but Girlie (Dakota Johnson) enters the cab at JFK headed for Manhattan, it's obvious we're in for something different.
I still remember the initial days after reading Beth Allison Barr's "The Making of Biblical Womanhood," one of my favorite books in recent years and a transformative yet challenging book that I knew would also meet with resistance. Having had a few social media encounters with Barr, I'll confess to having become concerned about that response and wanting to do what I could to support her as a human being and as a writer.
I found myself feeling somewhat similarly as I wound down my time with Jenai Auman's "Othered: Finding Belonging with the God Who Pursues the Hurt, Harmed, and Marginalized," a profoundly engaging yet vulnerable work in which Auman recounts with truth and grace her experiences of othering as a Filipina woman and staff member at a church where she once found safety and mentoring before experiencing the abuse of power and authority while in her staff position. In "Othered," Auman writes from a foundation of Jesus loving the outcasts and, in fact, recruiting a lowly group as disciples.
