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| Authors Rev. Dr. Georgia A. Hill (left) and Diane Proctor Reeder (Right) |
Rev. Dr. Georgia A. Hill and Diane Proctor Reeder, two African American authors from Detroit, Michigan are on a mission: to combine their faith, their Black-ness and their female-ness to tell a unique story that combines those three aspects of their lives.
“Black women are everywhere: in the courtroom and the kitchen in churches, in classes teaching kids, in pulpits preaching sermons, in countries serving as missionaries, and in business as CEOs—and yet the next generations will not be able to read about them unless the books are written,” says Rev. Georgia.
Diane comments, “The amazing women of the Bible, we find, have stories just as compelling, just as dramatic, just as difficult, and just as deeply spiritual as the men. They are just largely unsung and underexplored.”
Combine these two groups of underappreciated, underrecognized women and you have their book, A Cloud of Women: The Powerful Connection Between Black Women and Women of the Bible (published in January 2024 by Our Daily Bread’s African American VOICES Collection).
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nZinga Austin is also the Co-publisher of Our Black News Scoop and Southeast Queens Scoop. The documentary of about 1/2 hr long is getting rave reviews.
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Diane, a business owner and Rev. Georgia, Pastor of LifeChurch Riverside Detroit, both grew up in the church and were exposed to the traditional Bible stories in their youth; and both went on to study even deeper, especially the biblical women featured in the book.
The book covers ten women in the Old and New Testaments in these comparisons to Black women, telling their eerily similar stories in parallel.
“So Eve is the first woman,” explains Diane, referring to the first chapter of the book. “She is the genesis, the prototype of so many magnificent Black women firsts, from pilot Bessie Smith to now the first Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris.”
She continues, “Like Eve, the first woman, so many African American women firsts had to endure insults and disrespect. Think about it: all we remember about Eve is that she caused the downfall of humanity. Vice President Harris’s experience is eerily similar. Like Eve, she has been a target of hate.”
Diane and Rev. Georgia are both excited that Vice President Harris now has her comeuppance as her presidential campaign took off almost immediately. So much so that they’re conducting a national Black bookstore campaign that pledges 10% of royalties to the Harris-Walz campaign between now and September 30th.
In one of the chapters, Rev. Georgia compares two unlikely subjects: the biblical Queen Esther, who spoke up to save the lives of her people, with Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, poll workers who gave Congressional testimony about the harassment and death threats they received around false accusations from Trump loyalist Rudy Guiliani that they were falsifying votes in Georgia during the 2020 presidential election. “In both cases, these women spoke truth to power,” explains Rev. Georgia. “And they risked their lives in that truth-telling.
The book is based on Diane’s play of the same name, which has been produced and seen in theatres, women’s conferences, and college campuses in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois.
“In making these comparisons,” Rev. Georgia continues, “we achieve dual ends: we elevate the stories of biblical women, whose powerful, influential voices and impact have been muted over centuries; and we elevate Black women past and present, for whom the very same thing is true.”
A Cloud of Women is published by Our Daily Bread Publishing. The Harris campaign pledge does not reflect the views of the publisher. For more information, visit ACloudofWomen.com, @ACloudofWomenBook on Instagram, or the official web site of Our Daily Bread Publishing.
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