Angela Yarber

Prophetic Publishing, Feminist Publishing: 2024 Goals by Dr. Angela Yarber

Queer Chicana feminist author, Gloria Anzaldúa, once claimed, “The world I create in my writing compensates for what the real world does not give me.” I’ve long connected with the revolutionary Anzaldúa, believing in the prophetic power of the written word to create new worlds, worlds big and wide and just and beautiful enough for all people. Worlds where the perspectives of the marginalized are brought to the center.

This is what I aim to do as a publisher and writer myself. It was a meandering path to get here, but on the cusp of a new year, I find myself finally in place with my calling and vocation where all my skills as an activist, writer, professor, artist, and pastoral presence are coming together.

The World Needs More Feminist Books…And Why You Should Write One of Them by Dr. Angela Yarber

I believe more women—and particularly queer and/or BIPOC women—deserve to publish books. Let me explain why.

It was my first year of seminary. After majoring in religion in undergrad, I had a decent handle on feminist theology, but I hadn’t yet reconciled my strong, feminist upbringing with the faith tradition that held my ordination in their patriarchal hands. A seminary friend recommended I read Sue Monk Kidd’s Dance of the Dissident Daughter and everything changed.

This was twenty years ago. That one book helped me internalize the intersectional feminist theory that had always dwelled outside of me. Decades later, I find myself teaching in my own seminary classrooms and mentoring DMin students, requiring that same text, along with one of my own books, Queering the American Dream, and Christena Cleveland’s God is a Black Woman when discussing the power of feminist memoir in religious leadership.

Queering the American Dream by Angela Yarber

As Florida politicians try to ban teachers from including LGBTQ+ issues in the curriculum, admonishing them, “Don’t Say Gay” at school, I’m shouting “GAY!” from the rooftops. Because I’m celebrating the release of my eighth book and first memoir, Queering the American Dream. It’s my queer family’s story of leaving it all and the revolutionary women who taught us how.

Our story began the day the Supreme Court ruled our marriage legal and ended the moment my younger brother’s addiction spiraled into a deadly overdose. In-between were eighteen months of full-time travel with a toddler in tow. Criss-crossing the American landscape, my wife and I came face to face with jaw dropping natural beauty on the one hand, which contrasted with the politics, policies, and people who continued to discriminate against marginalized families like ours on the other. At each stop along the way, a different revolutionary woman from history or mythology guided our footsteps, reminding us that it’s not simply our family who dared to queer the American dream, but a subversive sisterhood of saints who have upended the status quo for centuries. From Vermont to Hawai’i, and everywhere in between, the beauty of the American landscape bore witness to a queer clergywoman whose faith tradition was not enough to sustain her. But the revolutionary women were.

Subversive Sister Saints by Angela Yarber

As the American Embassy was bombed in 1999, I was hunkered in a Russian Orthodox Church, gazing at the brooding, whitewashed faces of icons, hands raised in endlessly frightening benediction. Hundreds of men met my eye, as I found myself asking, “Where are all the women?” In 2005, the sun peaked over the horizon on Mount Sanai as I entered the chapel at Saint Catherine’s Monastery, which houses the oldest collection of Christian orthodox icons in the world. As a sensory overload accosted my eyes, ears, and nose, I scanned the scene to find only two women crammed among all the icons; one was a nameless daughter sacrificed by her own father. Where were all the women? A few years later, I knelt at the Temple of 1,000 Buddhas in Thailand. Not a woman could be found. Where are all the women?

For over a decade, I’ve painted folk-feminist icons of revolutionary women from history and mythology, a subversively artistic attempt to answer my own question by painting the women who have been ignored, excluded, or strategically erased. From Pauli Murray to Sarasvati, Gloria Anzaldua to Papahanoumoku, this work continues to be a gift, joy, and a tremendous part of the mission of my non-profit, the Tehom Center, which empowers marginalized women by teaching about revolutionary women through art, writing, retreats, and academic courses. Continue reading “Subversive Sister Saints by Angela Yarber”

Coming Out of Quarantine by Angela Yarber

As Pride Month and Black Lives Matter protests co-exist, the spirituality of queer women of color teaches white allies how to listen.

After nearly eighty days of sheltering in place, I feel like I’ve stepped out and found the world on fire. June isn’t supposed to be this way. It’s Pride Month, after all, and I’m queer, eager to dance alongside my favorite drag queens, albeit reticent to embrace capitalism’s commodification of our beloved rainbows.

Most of our annual Pride events have been cancelled due to concerns of social distancing amid a global pandemic. I support these cancellations, though my first family outing since quarantine was a Black Lives Matter protest in Hilo, Hawai’i; we all stood six-plus feet apart, wore masks, and waved our signs beneath the King Kamehameha statue. As my six-year-old was complimented on how he wrote his own sign, I adjusted my three-year-old daughter’s face mask and thought about how queer BIPOC started the Stonewall riots only 51 years ago. I thought about how we queers would have every right to demand our Pride celebrations, storming capitals with glitter bombs, and demanding our civil liberties, not completely dissimilar to the myriad gun clad white dudes demanding haircuts only weeks ago. But we don’t. Continue reading “Coming Out of Quarantine by Angela Yarber”

Reimagining the Classroom: Embodied Ecofeminism and the Arts Course on Hawai’i Island by Angela Yarber

“The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.”-bell hooks

Like many academics, my “in the box” dream was to be a professor. The full-time, tenured kind. Like many queer feminist academics, I know that such dreams are rarely reality. When you’re also an artist and activist with a strong penchant for wanderlust, these dreams are simply unattainable fairytales. Never one for “in the box” living, I left the traditional academy and traditional church years ago, wandering over the garden’s walls with Lilith as my intrepid guide. I’ve told the story before. My wife and I left our jobs, sold our home, traveled full-time with our toddler, and turned the Holy Women Icons Project into a non-profit while building an off-grid tiny house on the television show Tiny House Nation in Hawai’i. It’s become old news. But since we’ve been doing this for several years now, those faraway dreams are finally starting to become reality. The academic classroom, the activist’s platform, the artist’s studio, the feminist’s megaphone, and the farmer’s orchard are fusing into one creative, life-giving, empowering space for teaching. The Holy Women Icons Project’s first academic course, “Embodied Ecofeminism and the Arts,” is actually happening. Seminarians and doctoral students from Berkeley join us in January. They’re soon followed by undergraduates from New York and seminarians from Atlanta. And I’m reaching out to more and more schools interested in creatively, subversively, and sustainably decolonizing the classroom with us for one week on the Big Island.

Continue reading “Reimagining the Classroom: Embodied Ecofeminism and the Arts Course on Hawai’i Island by Angela Yarber”

Holy Woman Within: A Hawai’i New Year’s Retreat for Spiritual Creatives by Angela Yarber

I was a pastor for 14 years. Yes, a queer, feminist, Baptist pastor. We exist. Simultaneously, I completed a PhD and was a professor, both at divinity schools and in a Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Dept. I could never find full-time, tenure-track work as a professor, which was my “in the box” dream. And my job as a pastor became incredibly toxic. Between the thick file folder full of hate mail and the sexist and heterosexist microaggressions, it was ultimately the microaggressions that did me in. I experienced a brief reprieve when I went to a little retreat center designed specifically for activists and artists. There, I began to heal. In healing, I discerned that it was time for me to leave. Not just that church, but perhaps the Church altogether. That little retreat center was a balm that gave me the space I needed to turn inward, recharge, examine the power systems designed to disempower queer women like me, and leave feeling inspired and empowered. Continue reading “Holy Woman Within: A Hawai’i New Year’s Retreat for Spiritual Creatives by Angela Yarber”

Holy Women of Pride: Queer Spirituality and Worship Resources by Angela Yarber

As we enter Pride month, do you ever finding yourself wishing there were unabashedly queer resources to aid clergy and people of faith in nurturing spirituality, celebrating queer families, or offering liturgies that celebrated revolutionary queer women? Look no farther! The Holy Women Icons Project—a non-profit seeking to empower marginalized women by telling the stories of revolutionary holy women through art, writing, and special events—has created three such resources. Thanks to a generous grant from The BTS Center, these affordable and accessible online retreats and resources are available for clergy and laity alike. Check out these three offerings, along with the revolutionary seven queer women of color who inspired them!

HWIP’s 7-Day Online Queer Spirituality Retreat is an opportunity to subversively queer your spirituality, and for the LGBTQ+ community to celebrate our spirituality without having to translate it through the lens of heteronormativity. Open to everyone, the Queer Spirituality Retreat features seven different queer women of color: Pauli Murray, Frida Kahlo, Perpetua and Felicity, the Shulamite, Marsha P Johnson, Guanyin, and Gloria Anzaldúa. The most important part of the retreat is, of course, the revolutionary queer women who make it possible. So, allow me to briefly introduce you to seven queer women of color… Continue reading “Holy Women of Pride: Queer Spirituality and Worship Resources by Angela Yarber”

Embracing Lost Vocation: Painting Mother Goddess by Angela Yarber

The awakening occurred at 1:27am with the pterodactyl-cry only uttered by toddlers. It continued around 2am when said pterodactyl joined weary moms in bed. Stinging tears splattered pillows with a swift headbutt to my nose, later accompanied by footied talons jabbing my ribcage as this tiny person became the human crossbar of a giant “H,” vertical moms arching precariously on either edge of the overstuffed bed. 5:30am came all too soon as both children arose, crows louder than any rooster, tired moms stretching their aching backs. Navigating this whole feminist parenting thing is complicated, y’all. As an artist, author, activist, and academic, I thought I had a handle on my identity and vocation; now I feel like motherhood is the only moniker defining my exhausted reality.

I was recently given the opportunity to speak at a conference for artists, academics, and activists, the so-called spiritual weirdos who think and create and do at the intersections of art, scholarship, spirituality, and social justice. It was enlivening and inspiring. What struck me, though, were the asides that often occurred when anyone asked whether I had children, and if so, what ages. Throughout my travels and during the conference, the consistent reaction upon sharing that I’m a mother of a two and five-year-old was, “Woah. You’re in the thick of it.” “Don’t worry. It gets easier.” “This, too, shall pass.” Rarely have I felt so validated. Continue reading “Embracing Lost Vocation: Painting Mother Goddess by Angela Yarber”

Celebrating Pride: Honoring the Spiritualities of Queer Holy Women of Color by Angela Yarber

With rainbow colors erupting from even the big box stores, I find my super queer-feminist-self scratching my head at the way Pride has transformed into a capital enterprise. I mean, I’m pretty stoked that the cultural climate seems to be slightly more affirming of queer people, but as queer culture is commodified, I cannot help but think of what is being lost or forgotten. And I want to shout from the rooftops that the rich spiritual history of Pride rests firmly on the shoulders of queer women of color who have marched and meditated, prayed and protested long before rainbow Pride headbands were available at chain stores across the land. It is for this reason that, in honor of Pride Month, the Holy Women Icons Project (HWIP) has launched a 7-Day Online Queer Spirituality Retreat that celebrates seven different queer holy women of color.

HWIP’s 7-Day Online Queer Spirituality Retreat is an opportunity to subversively queer your spirituality, and for the LGBTQ+ community to celebrate our spirituality without having to translate it through the lens of heteronormativity. Open to everyone, the Queer Spirituality Retreat features seven different queer women of color: Pauli Murray, Frida Kahlo, Perpetua and Felicity, the Shulamite, Marsha P Johnson, Guanyin, and Gloria Anzaldúa. Each retreat day takes about 20 minutes and includes an inspirational quote, an icon image, a reflective essay, a guided writing exercise, a ritual exercise, and a closing blessing. The most important part of the retreat is, of course, the revolutionary queer women who make it possible. So, allow me to briefly introduce you to seven queer women of color who should make us all proud…

Continue reading “Celebrating Pride: Honoring the Spiritualities of Queer Holy Women of Color by Angela Yarber”