Voices Rising: Women of Color Finding & Restoring Hope in the City
Shabrae Jackson Krieg & Janet Balasiri Singleterry, Editors
Voices Rising: Women of Color Finding & Restoring Hope in the City is a compilation of essays by fourteen women of color serving in impoverished communities around the world. In these stories, themes of belonging, identity, calling, loss, and privilege emerge. The authors share some of the joys and difficulties that are found in cross-cultural urban poor missions. They also share vulnerably about challenges they have overcome as women and people of color, and the challenges they continue to face on the field. The authors’ stories of embracing God’s invitation into the complexities of mission among the poor traces the discourse of intersectionality, margin, colonialism, and Scripture. Readers are invited into the journey, and into sharing their story alongside this compelling community of servant-leaders.
Shabrae Jackson Krieg and Janet Balasiri Singleterry, Servant Partners staff and editors of Voices Rising, share about this amazing collection of stories came to be:
What inspired you to bring together a book highlighting women of color in missions?
Shabrae: In mission or history books, you don’t often find stories about women, and even less about women of color. There is a need to bring together women who are working in places of service and mission around the world to share their stories with others.
Who are these women, and what do their stories speak of?
Janet: Voices Rising is a collection of essays from the perspective of women of color from diverse backgrounds. All of these women are serving in cities around the globe, living incarnationally among their neighbors. Voices Rising is about their callings, their journeys in ministry, their families, and their struggles in the midst of the call to find and restore hope in the cities where God has placed them.
What makes Voices Rising unique, important, and relevant?
Shabrae: If you look at the choices in books on mission, many—perhaps most—of the authors are Anglo and male. But missional context for the most part is not primarily Anglo and male. We need different expressions, we need a diversity of voices in the areas of mission and service. Voices Rising brings a new message to the table; the message that there is space for everyone, including women and people of color, to bring what they have to the table. Although we did write the book specifically for our fellow sisters—for other women of color—the stories that are shared here are universal stories that everyone can learn from.
Learn more and pre-order the book at www.servantpartnerspress.org/voicesrising