Vol. 26 No. 2, June 2007

In God's Image is an Asian Christian women's effort to provide a forum for expressing our reality, our struggles, our faith reflections and aspirations for change.

Editorial

This edition of In God’s Image features the papers from the joint study workshop on Asian feminist re-reading of history held in January 2006 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The papers include presentations at the workshop and those that came out later as application of some learning and reflection on the process and experiences. 

The need to do an Asian feminist re-reading of history came about as part of an effort by the Asian Women’s Resource Centre for Culture and Theology (AWRC) to provide a series of introductory modules on Asian Feminist Theologies. AWRC felt the need to address a big lack in the field: a feminist re-reading and writing of history. This is because while so much has been written that is called history – e.g. of countries and nations, of the church and Christianity – women have to read or re-read it in a critical way knowing that among the suppressed, silenced or missing voices would be those of women and other marginalized groups. In addition, feminist historical scholarship in Asia is a fairly recent development. Not only are there very few Christian women or feminist historians in Asia; the task of uncovering women’s hidden history is simply daunting. 

Thus, the joint study workshop was held with the following objectives: (a) to get an overview of history; (b) to make an attempt at a historical reconstruction of early Christian origins; and (c) to make a critique and reconstruction of early Christian history. All these were done from an Asian feminist perspective. 

Truthful to the feminist way of starting with women’s experience, the process included the telling of one’s life story (herstory) as a woman in Asia. Indeed, the herstory of women participants became the springboard for the critical reading/re-reading of history. The use of the word herstory is not simply to put an alternative word in opposition to history – for a simple play of words does not help to effect transformation. Rather the use of herstory is to highlight the fact that history has been written mainly from the perspective of the dominant, victorious and powerful males. In its focus on conquest, winning the war, and colonizing others, history has obviously ignored, snuffed out, obliterated the voices and contributions of women and the plight of the disempowered groups. Thus, herstory refers to the hidden part of history and to women’s right to claim, recover, and mainstream it. For indeed, how can we really understand and learn from history if we do not know our herstory? 

We are grateful to Robin Morgan who, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, coined the word herstory in her book, Sisterhood is Powerful (1970). It articulates for us an alternative way of looking at history and highlights a need that we must address as women. 

The theme of this IGI edition is “Re-reading History, Making Herstory”. This is to assert the fact that re-reading history from feminist perspective is a process of herstory-making in itself. In a feminist way of telling or sharing one’s stories, we make connections with the stories of other women and other marginalized groups – thereby creating a bigger picture of our shared history.

We are thankful to the resource persons and participants in the joint study workshop who made possible the production of these AWRC modules on Telling Herstory: Introduction to an Asian Feminist Re-reading of History.

Publications Secretary

If articles listed in the table of contents interests you, and you would like to have a copy of this journal, please write to igi@awrc4ct.org.