430 - Inheriting Our Mothers' Gardens: Feminist Theology in Third World Perspective

Inheriting Our Mothers' Gardens: Feminist Theology in Third World Perspective
Edited by Letty M. Russell, Kwok Pui-lan, Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, Katie Geneva Cannon
Philadelphia, Westminster, 1988. 181 pp. $12.95.

In a time when gender analysis is prolific and a vital area of interest in church and academy alike, more than one kind of scholarship should be welcomed on this fascinating subject. On the one hand, claims about

431 - Inheriting Our Mothers' Gardens: Feminist Theology in Third World Perspective

gender require complex and patient sorting out of definitions of femaleness and maleness and their use in different cultures to place persons in relation to power and resources. While this kind of work is characteristic of feminist scholarship done largely outside of theological communities, the increasing use by theologians of the work of such scholars as Carol Gilligan, Gerda Lerner, Barbara Christian, and Elaine Showalter indicates that psychological, cultural-historical, and politicalliterary analyses will become more significant to future theological discourse. The fact that class, race, and ethnicity are grids that must figure in any respectable scholarly definition of women's experience only underscores the need for this work.

There is, on the other hand, a need for literature that speaks directly and evocatively of these complexities so that the personal dimensions behind discourses about gender are not lost. Racism, poverty, and cultural imperialism were realities in women's lives long before the academy made them credible as scholarly subject matter. Hearing about these first hand is a necessary part of attending to the full reality of women's lives. For the church, not only must a new group of subjects be heard, but the varieties of Christian faith resulting from women's constructions must be brought into relation with more formal definitions of the theological task.

It is just this second kind of literature that is offered by the authors of this book. Dealing with the critical recovery of the roots of African, Asian, Hispanic, Black, and North American white women of faith accomplishes something important precisely by its use of personal narratives rather than theoretical analysis, a strategy that accounts for its shortcomings as well. Connected by various networks, Letty Russell, Kwok Pui-lan, Ada Marie Isasi-Diaz, and Katie Cannon bring together writings about their matrilineal heritages. What ties these stories together is a definition of feminist theology as two tasks-the search for and pruning of each individual's heritage, figuratively termed the mother's garden, linked with the cooperative yet inevitably critical dialogue with the other, figured as the creating of a global garden.

The book is most successful in its display of the first task. With narratives from very different gardens, constructive theological issues are evoked rather than analyzed. Assuming the urgency for recovering women's histories-the lost gardens of Alice Walker's moving essay about her foremothers-these writers find reason for celebration and confession in their pasts. They recover foremothers' uses of native religions to create oases of faith in which to survive the "blight" of racism, poverty, and the dehumanizing hierarchies of marriage arrangements. Refusing to romanticize these journeys, they tell also of the damage and compromises that have been inevitably a part of their inheritance. Letty Russell offers a moving piece on the dilemmas brought by her heritage of white privilege; Chung Hyun Kyung tells of the corrosive effect on Korean women of class conflict.

These are fascinating stories of the chemistry of folk Buddhist traditions, polytheistic sensibilities, and African, Asian, and Hispanic

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culture and religious practices mixed with Western Christianity. Kwok Pui-lan tells of the maze of choices facing a Chinese Christian feminist, for whom the power of her own culture calls into question exclusivist themes in Western Christian orthodoxy, even as appeal to Jesus challenges patriarchal Confucian traditions. More than once, the stories show the courage and survival techniques used by women in third world cultures, including the forging of a religion of resistance by the Black women of Katie Cannon's past out of the experience of slavery.

What is useful about these strategies of writing is the way they enable us to see such theoretical issues as "Christianity and other religions" or "theology and culture" as lived dilemmas. New discourses of faith appear inevitable for survival. The explicit theme of the book, however, is less clearly conveyed by its form. The definition of feminist theology included a second task, a contribution to the creation of global justice for women by beginning a "global garden" of inheritances, a liberating dialogue. Yet surely the inevitable conflict of these very different stories is more serious than the mere juxtaposition of separate narratives would imply. Feminist theology even on the important terms defined here (and, I suspect, as lived by these women) is left unfinished.

If such personal narratives are to claim their rightful place in the creation of theology, and I think this book shows their forcefulness, more exploration of certain issues is needed. Feminist theology demonstrates repeatedly that all theological discourse is a social production. Now social production must be made a more specific subject of analysis along with continued clarification of its theological sense, lest it be assumed that hearing stories and the resulting change of consciousness is enough. This means more cultivation of other kinds of scholarship. For that larger garden, Inheriting Our Mothers'Gardens contains seeds of much promise.

Mary McClintock Fulkerson
Duke Divinity School
Durham, North Carolina