Drawing on the biblical figure of Hagar-mother of Ishmael, cast into the desert by Abraham and Sarah, but protected by God-Delores Williams finds a prototype for the struggle of African-American women. Through Hagar's story of poverty and slavery, ethnicity and sexual exploitation, exile and encounter with God, she traces parallels in the history of African-American women from slavery to the present day. What emerges from this shared interplay of race, sex, and class, is a new 'womanist' theology that promotes survival and wholeness as well as liberation.
