Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 21:2 (Fall 2016)
Article: A Review Of Amy F. Davis Abdalla ". The Book Of Womanhood." Eugene: Cascade, 2015. 203 Pp. $32.00.
Author: Katie McCoy

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JBMW 21:2 (Fall 2016) p. 65

A Review Of Amy F. Davis Abdalla . The Book Of Womanhood. Eugene: Cascade, 2015. 203 Pp. $32.00.

Katie McCoy

Assistant Professor of Theology in Women’s Studies
The College at Southwestern
Fort Worth, Texas

As an undergraduate music major, I slogged through four tedious semesters of ear training. The goal of the discipline was to cultivate the ability to hear a melody or chord progression and identify it according to the musical key, called the tonic note. As any novice quickly learns, whatever you do, you must not forget the sound of the tonic note. Hang on to the key’s foundation, and you can navigate chromatic changes and deceptive cadences. But lose the sound of the tonic note for but a moment, and the music becomes a collection of notes without the sense of direction or resolution—just guesswork.

Amy F. Davis Abdallah, Associate Professor of Theology and Bible at Nyack College (NY), identifies a dissonance between a woman’s identity and her self-perception in The Book of Womanhood, based on a program she refers to as Woman. In Davis Abdallah’s younger years, she found herself asking the foundational question of what it means to be a woman. (xv) Yet, apart from the “womanly roles” of marriage and maternity, Davis Abdallah believed that she, like many other young women, lacked the framework necessary to define herself as a woman. (xv, 1-3) Thus, the curriculum for the Woman program was born.

Davis Abdallah’s Woman program is a “rite of passage,” a symbolic ritual that marks the transition from girl to woman. For Davis Abdallah, the experience is necessary for a woman’s initiation into adulthood and to avoid the maturational limbo that “[leaves] the person who has adult responsibilities still feeling like a girl and unsure of her womanhood.” (3) The Woman program revolves around four spheres of relationships in a woman’s life: her relationship to God, herself, others, and creation.

What seems to make Davis Abdallah’s Woman curriculum so unique is its fusion of a woman’s life-experiences with her Christian discipleship, creating a spiritually minded perspective of what might typically be categorized as “un-spiritual” facets of existence. She devotes an entire chapter to

JBMW 21:2 (Fall 2016) p. 66

understanding one’s hormonal cycle and specific nutritional needs, as well as the biological rhythm of hormonally influenced anxiety and creativity. (Ch. 6) Elsewhere, she encourages women toward physical exercise, healthy body image, and defining attractiveness in terms of confidence, rather than revealing clothing. (Ch. 7) For Davis Adballah, these are not mere personal habits...

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