Women And Multicultural Mythology: An Analysis

Growing up on the Southwest side of Chicago, while going to public schools my whole life, I was a little worried when I decided to come to a Catholic Institution. Especially when I found out that theology courses were mandatory to take. I, myself, am a Catholic. However, I did not feel ready because I did not feel as if I had enough background knowledge on theology. After taking my first theology course at Marquette, I learned that there is much more to theology than just “religion.” Today, I will focus on Women and Multicultural Theologies: Beauty, Justice & Spirituality. Have you ever wondered how women link up beauty with experiences of suffering while promoting justice, empowering other women, and contributing to women’s spirituality?
Antonia lives in a shantytown in Lima, Peru. This is a place where you expect to find a lot of women who have been forgotten and lost in the universe, which have led them to lose their spirituality. However, women like Antonia, create beauty by creating “cuadros” or canvases which are pieces of artwork that represent the life that these women once knew. For example, the “cuadros, also tell stories of significant events that occurred, such as the phenomenon of El Ninon, the border dispute between Ecuador and Peru, and the violence and terrorism that occurred in Ayacucho” (PAGE NUMBA). The women creating these beautiful cuadros are a perfect example of promoting justice and empowering women, because this provides them to stick together and forget about the tragic past that they once lived and move on to the present. “The women remind us that in our capacity to imagine worlds of human flourishing, we take an important step toward justice” (PAGE). As I started getting closer to the end of the article, it was clear to me that these women regain their spirituality by expressing hope, joy, and their dreams in the cuadros. Like Davis said, “Despite the severity of their grey and barren surroundings, these women bring forth images of the world as a garden - clearly, picturing paradise”
In my opinion, she is one of the greatest examples of a powerful woman. Maathai, was a Kenyan woman who founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977 and who was also the first African-American woman who was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. Her intelligence won her a college scholarship which led to her getting her doctoral degree in biology and her masters in University of Pittsburgh. Later, she became the first East African woman to earn her PhD in veterinary medicine. Eventually, she became the head of veterinary medicine. Her marriage with Mwangi Mathai ended because he said she was “too educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn, and too hard to control” (PAGE). Despite that she went through a divorce, that was not enough to hold her back from her dreams. I believe this helped her become an even stronger individual because she then founded the Green Belt Movement. “The Green Belt movement mobilized women in villages to take part in reforestation programs and to grow in self-esteem and self-confidence through these tree planting efforts. Africa has planted more than 47 million trees”(PAGE#). This really helped with empowering women while promoting their justice because of the fact that African women were always the first victims of environmental degradation. To provide food for their families, these women would walk long distances to attain water and firewood. These women are able to “explain when the