Amy: Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy! I’m Amy McPhie Allebest. Today’s text is called Killing the Angel in the House, and it’s a collection of lectures and essays written by Virgina Woolf between 1905 and 1941. That phrase, Killing the Angel in the House, and what it represents, has been really, really important in my life so I can’t wait to share it and discuss it with my reading partner today, Rachelle Burnside. Hi, Rachelle! Rachelle: Hi, Amy!

Amy: Rachelle Burnside is a friend of mine from the Stanford Master’s of Liberal Arts program. We have been dear friends all the way through our program, as we not only did our foundations courses together, but then we also kept choosing the same electives! We studied William Blake, Dante and the Sacred Feminine, and very memorably, Rachelle and I had some life-altering (for me) conversations during our class on International Womens’ Health and Human Rights. Rachelle is incredibly well-read and well-spoken, and I’ve learned so much from you through the years, Rachelle, I’m thrilled that you’re here with us today! 

Rachelle: Thank you, Amy. I’m excited to be here to talk about these issues. I love what you’re doing with this podcast. 

Amy: So can I have you start by introducing yourself? Tell us a little about you, where you’re from.

Rachelle: So, I was born and raised in California, and I’ve spent my entire life here, with the exception of a year-long teacher exchange where I taught religion, philosophy, and ethics at a Catholic school in London. That was an interesting experience, on many levels, not the least of which because, like you, I was raised in a Mormon family, although I left the church when I was 18. I came from this really niche Protestant background and a culture where we don’t teach religion in public school and then suddenly found myself teaching not just Catholic theology, but religious practice for Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Sikhism, etc., because that’s part of the required curriculum in England. I found it refreshing, actually, because people were much less dogmatic and were able to have really nuanced, thoughtful conversations around faith and theology in ways that we are unable to have in the U.S.  My mother is adopted, and her adopted parents both have ancestors that were part of the original group of settlers that migrated to Utah with Brigham Young. Her birth mother, who was also Mormon, has family roots in Georgia and Virginia from the original Scotch-Irish settlers. We don’t know anything about my mom’s birth father except that according to her 23andMe results he must have had English, French or German, and Scandinavian ancestry.  My father is from Battle Creek, Michigan. His maternal grandfather came from Glasgow, Scotland to Canada an indentured servant after he was orphaned at 14. His maternal great-grandmother was from Baden-Wertemberg, Germany. The rest of the family is all English, Irish, and Welsh, with the exception of my dad’s father, who we found out through DNA testing was actually illegitimate and biracial, which no one in the family knew-- even my grandfather. So I have tiny 5% of my DNA from West Africa, specifically Nigeria, Cameroon, and the Ivory Coast. Through genealogical research and DNA, we’ve been able to figure out who my grandfather’s paternal family was, and my 2x great grandfather was a man named Franklin Johnson, born in 1850 into slavery in what is now West Virginia, and died in 1945 in Michigan. My father converted to Mormonism when he was in his teens, and my parents met when he was on his mission. I grew up in Sacramento, in an all-white community until I was 13. I then moved to East San Jose when my mom remarried. My step-father was Chinese-American, and my middle school was a majority-minority school. It was a great education in learning that not everyone has the same life experiences as you do. I attended Santa Clara University where I graduated with BAs in English and History....