Book Summary and Reviews of The Lady Imam by Carla Power

Book Summary

The soul-stirring intersectional biography of the most famous Islamic woman theologian working today, from the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist author of If the Oceans Were Ink and Home, Land, Security.

A fierce feminist, single mother of five, an advocate for and member of the LGBTQ+ community, and a respected scholar, amina wadud has led a revolt against Islam's patriarchal establishment that's been felt keenly all over the world, especially in marginalized communities, for nearly three decades. Like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X before her, wadud has demonstrated faith's potential as an engine of liberation and social justice. And yet her story has never been told in book form, until now.

Born Mary Teasley, the daughter of a Methodist preacher, wadud grew up with a rare vantage on the country's socioeconomic divides. As a child in Maryland, she experienced poverty, eviction, and the death of her elder sister from an unsanctioned abortion. A gifted student, wadud was sent to live with a series of white families in the affluent town of Weston, Massachusetts. Following her interest in philosophy, she briefly lived in a Buddhist ashram before officially converting to Islam as a twenty-year-old college student, quickly falling in love with the Quran. She married and became a mother soon after, and the young family traveled to north Africa.

Her philosophies on faith and feminism would grow from her continued scholarship, informed by these lived experiences, whether it be her belief in bodily autonomy inspired by the loss of her sister or her groundbreaking reinterpretation of the Quran's verse 4.34, traditionally read as permitting husbands to beat their wives, formed as she was enduring domestic abuse. wadud declared herself queer in her late sixties because "if God is everywhere, why should humans define themselves in binary categories?"

The Lady Imam chronicles the life of a singular figure not only in Islam, but also in feminism, Black history, and gender studies. With unprecedented access through years of interviews and archival research, Carla Power has written the definitive, deeply personal story of wadud's extraordinary life and sheds light on our deepest questions of faith and belief.