Faith, Feminism, and Scholarship pp 73-87 | Cite as
A Solidarity-Talk among Women of Color: Creating the “We” Category as a Liberative Feminist Method
Abstract
As a first generation Korean immigrant and Christian feminist social ethicist, I have focused my academic research and social activism on the various experiences of “women of color” or “third world women” caused by U.S. military expansion. In spite of inspiration from these women’s stories, theories, and practices of liberation, I often feel uncomfortable with the term women of color, personally and academically. On a personal level, women of color seems to be an identity category given to me upon my arrival in the United States, or perhaps even long before I was born or conscious of this identity category. This category also seems to define various women’s identities based on essential differences—whether they be racial, cultural, religious, or academic training—between white women and “other” women. Furthermore, critically analyzing my own privileges based on national background, heterosexuality, education, occupation, financial resources, Episcopal Church affiliation, and so on, I have become more conscious of multiple layers of oppression and privileges that women of color experience.
Keywords
Asian Woman Korean Woman Feminist Scholar Korean American Woman Business WomanPreview
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Notes
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- 12.The center-margin relation and the margin’s challenge for the center are well articulated by Letty Russell. See Letty Russell, Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretation of the Church (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), 192–208.Google Scholar
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- 32.Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993). For Kwok Pui-Lan’s reading of William’s work also see Kwok, Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology, 36.Google Scholar
For Further Investigation
- Primary resources of Kwok Pui-lan, Chandra Mohanty, and Emilie Townes used in this essay:Google Scholar
- Kwok Pui-lan, Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005).Google Scholar
- Chandra Mohanty, Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Emilie Townes, Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil. (New York: Palgrave, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- For Asian/Asian American feminist theology: Off the Menu: Asian and Asian North American Women’s Religion and Theology, ed. Rita Nakashima Brock, Jung Ha Kim, Kwok Pui-Lan, and Seung Ai Yang (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007).Google Scholar