No name woman
China continues to prove itself as a dangerous place to grow up female. Here is a story from the Washington Post about the high suicide rate among young rural women. Uneducated, poor, and with little status in or out of marriage, many find themselves hopeless with no way of escape.
This story reminds me of a work of fiction by Chinese-American Maxine Hong Kingston, entitled “No Name Woman” in her book The Woman Warrior:Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. The narrative set in rural China instructs us on the power of community to shape or destroy us. The ability to just get up and leave, or to determine the course of their lives, is one few women in the world know. Both the daily news and the work of a fiction writer, reminds me yet of another story in Luke 7. Cultural oppression is something that Jesus understood very well and he demonstrated it when he forgave a “no name woman.” A low-status outcast, the woman with the alabaster jar, broke through social niceties to find transgressive freedom at the feet of Jesus. I highly recommend you read these three stories together. It really captures the timelessness of the theme and of Jesus.