Of Women Borne

Cynthia R. Wallace is assistant professor of English at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan.

• Preface: If We Could Learn to Learn from Pain Acknowledgments 1. History (Herstory) and Theory, or Doing Justice to Redemptive Suffering 2. Adrienne Rich and the "Long Dialogue Between Art and Justice" 3. Love and Mercy: Toni Morrison's Paradox of Redemptive Suffering 4. Ana Castillo, Mexican M.O.M.A.S., and a Hermeneutic of Liberation 5. Silent (in the Face of) Suffering? Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Postcolonial Cultural Hermeneutics Conclusion: Learning to Learn Notes Bibliography List of Credits Index

Of Women Borne is an articulate, sophisticated, and creative work that explores responses to a literature of suffering in relation to recent debates on ethics and literature and the ethical significance of 'reading.' Because she foregrounds issues of gender, location, and identity and engages in close readings of texts that ethical critics do not often engage with, Cynthia R. Wallace makes a significant, distinctively feminist contribution to the interdisciplinary field of literature and theology. -- Heather Walton, University of Glasgow Of Women Borne provides a profound, interdisciplinary consideration of the ethics of redemptive suffering. Cynthia R. Wallace breaks important new ground in literary ethics by insisting on the previously overlooked or neglected components of gender and theology in discussions of literary representation and readerly attention. -- Susan VanZanten, Seattle Pacific University This graceful book is by turns meditative and personal, critical and analytical. Through interdisciplinary conversation with theology and critical theories, Of Women Borne advocates an ethical reading practice of openness, receptivity, attentive care for detail, interpretative humility, and generosity tempered by a suspicion of the capability of our reading and writing to reinscribe the very ills we seek to eradicate. -- M. Shawn Copeland, Boston College