[.ca] Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence and ... (ISBN 0814793355)

READ IT! Important for the church, community, and academia !:
Traci West accomplished something very difficult and very rare: she wrote a book that is very readable yet extremely smart; it is well researched, well argued, and engages current scholarly discussions, yet it is timely and has great political significance. "Wounds of the Spirit" engages deep and painful social and cultural structures and systemic injustices and does a very good job at showing some of the connections between the possibilities for resistance that already exist and some that may become possible in the future. This is a book about the cost of sexual violence that is written with intelligence, compassion, and a strong and clear activist intent. It benefits greatly from the author's relentless refusal to be pigeonholed as either too "churchy" or too "academicy" and her self-conscious reliance on the voices and wisdom of the women she interviewed and whose stories centrally inform her study. The result is a highly relevant study, written with the conviction that black women's lived reality can and does tell all of us something incredibly important about society, religion, and culture. Do read this book!

Groundbreaking Book:
This book successfully attempts to do three things: (1) look at the impact of violence on black women, (2) shows the ways in which society and church covers up this problem, and (3) gives and ethic in order to create change with the church and society. First using narrative, West chronicles the lives of Black women as they struggle with various forms of violence. Especially troubling is the idea that violence does not exist for black women. This silence is enforced not just by men but by the structures in society which place how white women are affected by violence as the norm for how all women are affected. West analyzies how this happens in our society. She then outlines an ethic as to how the community can create change so that the issue og violence against black women can be understood and made to change. A must read for all church workers and those concerned about violence against women.