Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach Us about Wisdom, Persistence, and Strength
By Kat Armas (Brazos Press)
As Grandmother Kitty to three and Abuela Kitty to four, Kat Armas’ Abuelita Faith seemed a logical book choice to me. As director of a library and archives documenting the fight against religious persecution under communism and totalitarianism, the subtitle What Women on the Margins Teach Us about Wisdom, Persistence, and Strength appealed even more since generations of marginalized women have imparted spiritual wisdom, passed down biblical truth and modeled faith and faithfulness across the world.
Armas, a Fuller Theological Seminary graduate, addresses the subject as a woman of color, the granddaughter of Cuban immigrants, and one who grew up on the margins of Miami’s Little Havana. Blending Spanish and English words with Cuban references, she shares her often joyful but occasionally painful journey from her childhood to a seminary hermeneutics class, where the only interpretive lens excluded Kat and those like her to a deep understanding of God’s all-encompassing compassion and love.
The author gracefully weaves together personal narratives, scriptural stories, contemporary examples and meticulous research. She offers fresh insights into familiar women like Miriam, Hannah, Mary and Lydia, as well as more obscure individuals such as Shiphrah, Puah, Achsah and Rizpah—not to mention Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah. She places readers in unfamiliar spaces and cultures and provides opportunities to shift points of view and perspectives.
Kat Armas’ Abuelita Faith should be on the must-read list of anyone who desires to become wiser, more persistent and stronger through thoughtful understanding of the “sacred endeavor” of those whose sometimes “Christian calling is simply survival.” Whether met in the leaves of the Bible or the pages of Abuelita Faith, these women teach powerful lessons. And for those who want more, Armas includes an extensive bibliography.
Kathy Robinson Hillman, former president
Texas WMU and Baptist General Convention of Texas
Waco
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