Today's post is sort of an obituary, sort of a celebration of life. Beloved Ada Maria passed away today from cancer. As a Hispanic theologian, Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz was an innovator of Hispanic theology in general and specifically of Mujerista theology. Isasi-Díaz also was founder and co-director of the Hispanic Institute of Theology at Drew University. Before I let you know more about her, I have to say that she was one of a handful of women working in the niche of feminist Liberation Theology. Her Mujerista theology is compelling, brave work. A list of her books is here. She definitely helped me understand how we are all connected in the struggle of gender and class and race and sexuality. She was born and raised in La Habana, Cuba. The third of six sisters and two brothers, she received all of her primary and secondary school education at Merici Academy, a school ran by the nuns of the Order of St. Ursula. While she was growing up her father worked in different sugar mills in three different provinces of Cuba and that gave her an opportunity to spend summers away from the capital and to experience widely her country and its people. Brought up in a practicing Catholic home, early on she began to have and nourish a concern for the poor and the oppressed and a love of religious practices. At the same time, particularly from her mother, she learned the importance of struggling (la lucha) for what one believes without ever giving up. She left Cuba and became a political refugee in 1960. She first lived in the USA where she entered the convent (the Order of St. Ursula), and went to college earning a B.A. in European History from The College of New Rochelle in New York. In January 1967 she arrived in Lima, Peru as a missionary and lived there for three years. This experience has marked her for life. She often says that it was there that the poor taught her the gospel message of justice. It was there that she learned to respect and admire the religious understandings and practices of the poor and the oppressed and the importance of their everyday struggles, of lo cotidiano. It was there that she realized the centrality of solidarity with the poor and the oppressed in the struggle for justice. She returned to the USA December of 1969 and taught high-school for several years in Louisiana and lived in Spain for 16 months. Upon return to the USA, she settled in Rochester, New York. Thanksgiving weekend 1975 she became a feminist. It was at the first Women's Ordination Conference in Detroit, Michigan that she began to realize that oppression was caused not only by poverty but also is the result of sexism. For seven years she worked indefatigably in the women's movement focusing on women's oppression in churches, religion and theology. During this time she began to understand the interconnections of sexism, ethnic prejudice-racism, and economic oppression-classism. In 1983 she began to pursue a Master of Divinity Degree at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where she also completed a PhD with a concentration in Christian Ethics in 1990. Her studies and involvement in the feminist theological movement made her see the need to begin to develop a theology from the perspective of Latinas in the USA. Thus she became an activist-theologian and began to elaborate Mujerista Theology. In 1991 she began teaching at the Theological and Graduate Schools of Drew University. Immensely enriched by opportunities to speak with women all around the USA as well as in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, she continued to elaborate Mujerista Theology. She did so in dialogue with other women-centered theologies and liberation theologies which have emerged all around the world. Throughout her life she stayed very close to her family and was very grateful for its on-going support even when they did not agree with her views. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer about a month ago. Today, she has left us to join the spirit world.
2 Comments
8/22/2012 02:15:46 pm
I have read your article, I am very much impressed because you way of explanation quite good and very informative. And one more thing I have got to know that everyone has a different style to write the article, but I must say your article sounds very good.
Reply
10/2/2013 06:35:16 pm
She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer about a month ago. Today, she has left us to join the spirit world.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
DawnWomen's history geek, mom, lesbian, theologian, dreamer. Archives
February 2016
Categories
All
|