Kelly Nikondeha’s Defiant: What the Women of Exodus Teach Us About Freedom is a notable collection of essays that contributes richly to the liberation theology, mujerista, and womanist traditions. Sarah Bessey’s foreword sets the tone for the book and the truth about biblical womanhood. The women of Exodus represent “the resistance, the strength, the civil disobedience, the collaboration, the truth-telling, the drumming, the wit, and the holy liberated power of women who know their God. For too long the notion of biblical womanhood has felt weak and ineffectual.” These women show us the “Exodus Mandate for us all” and the “blueprint for our liberation” (x-xi).
Nikondeha makes it clear that her work is based on biblical scholarship, but she uses a methodological framework that employs “exegesis, meditation, and imagination” (8). Her positionality as a storyteller, theologian, and community development leader enriches her analysis throughout the volume and provides the reader with a refined perspective that is critical to understanding the complexity and sophistication of Exodus women and their sociocultural contexts. Key questions that are central to the narrative include:
- What can the women of Exodus teach us about practicing liberation in Egypt so that we may practice liberation in our own world?
- How might these women empower us as we seek to work in the church and throughout our communities?
- What is our social location (in relation to systems of power) and what does our social position require of us in regard to liberative practice(s) (7-8)?
The volume includes an introduction, ten chapters, and study questions and provides the reader with lessons from both individual women from the Exodus narrative (Moses’ mother, Jochebed; Moses’ stepmother and Pharoah’s daughter, Bithiah; Moses’ sister, Miriam; and Moses’ wife, Zipporah), as well as collectives of women (Shiphrah and Puah, Hebrew midwives; the Seven Sisters of Midian, Zipporah’s sisters and the sisters-in-law of Moses; and the Nile Network of Hebrew and Egyptian women). Nikondeha starts the volume with Twelve men and Twelve women and concludes with a chapter on the Descendants of Miriam. Without these women, Moses would not have survived Egypt and Exodus would not have been possible.
The monograph builds upon the canon of biblical scholars including Wilda Gafney, Lisa Sharon Harper, Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Walter Brueggemann, and many others. As a historian, I appreciated how Nikondeha contextualizes a myriad of cross-cultural contexts in which women are overlooked or pushed to the periphery, but in fact, their contributions are central to liberation work. Her examples include Emilie Schindler, who worked alongside her husband Oskar to save over 1,300 Jewish people during the Holocaust—as depicted in the Oscar-winning film Schindler’s List; Septima Clark, whose leadership in Citizenship Schools mobilized more than 700,000 voters in partnership with civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King; and Dolores Huerta, whose critical work as a cofounder with Cesar Chavez helped establish the United Farm Workers. Nikondeha also highlights the importance of the work of young women in the Exodus tradition. She provides current examples such as Greta Thunberg’s climate change advocacy, Ahed Tamimi’s work for equal rights, and Emma Gonzalez’s leadership on gun violence, including mobilizing over 800,000 people for the March for Our Lives following the mass shooting at her high school in Parkland, Florida. One particular strength of this collection is its kaleidoscopic representation of women from various racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, multi-faith, and socio-cultural global communities.
What also makes this volume distinct and compelling is Nikondeha’s ability to integrate her experience as a theologian, her and her husband’s work in community development in Burundi, and her role as an adoptive mother. Her recollection about the shooting death of Trayvon Martin is piercing. She writes:
A black boy was killed and I watched how the world around me crucified him. . . It woke me up to the painful reality of how people see my black son, and how they see other black sons and how they’ve treated black men for generations. It made me recognize the interconnection and need for solidarity in societies that are often harsh on those with darker skin, those who are foreign born, and those with accents. (102-103)
Nikondeha makes meaningful and deep connections between women in the Exodus narrative and women today through stories interwoven through each chapter. Occasionally, the reader wants to learn more about the Exodus women or the modern “liberation practitioners” (5). However, this can be challenging at times, since the chapters consist of vignettes and related stories, rather than a single, linear storyline.
Overall, this volume provides a significant context for discussion and engagement on women’s roles in the Exodus narrative and the contemporary vestiges of patriarchy, classism, and other forms of oppression. One way the analysis could be enriched is by integrating empirical aspects of the economic, social, and political issues Nikondeha raises throughout the work. For example, numerical data on the glaring disparity regarding intergenerational wealth between black and white families (and why the argument for reparations can be made from a restorative context); the continued underrepresentation of women in leadership in the church, and the over-representation of people of color in the prison industrial complex (especially African Americans, Latinos, and families contending with generational poverty, unemployment, and underemployment) would be instructive.
The women of Exodus provide “an archetype for the work of women in the church and in the world” (6) and leave us a legacy that requires freedom and liberation for all humanity. Like them, “we can defy the pharaohs (and pharaonic politics of today); subvert ordinary tasks for salvific purposes; organize for resistance and work in solidarity to repair our neighborhoods; engage with our neighbors and practice reparations so that we can all be free- and live viable and vibrant lives” (6-7). Exodus women challenge us and inspire us. Ultimately, they leave us with a call to action: Create liberation, freedom, and justice, as well as shalom for all of God’s people.
Dr. Karen Jackson-Weaver is the vice-chair of the Board of Trustees at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Karen Jackson-Weaver
Date Of Review:
December 11, 2021
