Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, When Momma Speaks: The Bible and Motherhood from a Womanist Perspective (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press), 2016

I am always interested in serious scholarly Biblical exegesis from a unique perspective. Stephanie Crowder delivers with a series of explorations of Biblical mothers. Hagar, Rizpah, Bathsheba, Mary, the Canaanite woman and Zebedee's wife all inform present families through Crowder's exegesis. I found the first two examples especially engaging, both in what I learned about the perspective of the Biblical mothers and of what I learned about mothers in contemporary African American homes. The book was a challenge for me, but well worth it.

It does seem, however, that Crowder lost a bit of steam on the project. It might just be my perception, but it seems to me as if the early chapters are a bit more engaging and more thoroughly presented than later chapters. Nonetheless it is an important work and especially important for people like me who have had a distinctly white and distinctly male education.

This book would be an especially good book for small group study in a church setting.