Pentecostal charismatic women: constructions of femininity in Alexandra Township

Abstract

This is a Black feminist autoethnographic study, written from the perspective of an insider in both the Pentecostal community and Alexandra township. The book uncovers the daily lives of women in an African Pentecostal community while relating them to Black/African feminist and womanist theory. Thus, revealing the ways in which the Charismatic women of Alexandra build strong bonds with one another in spite of their differences and contest controlling images of femininity even as they sometimes traffic in problematic heteronormative constructions of social life.

This book examines Charismatic discourses that build the gender identities of women congregants. It also observes and records women churchgoers to give insights into their personal perceptions, embodiments and performances of power and agency within the church and the wider societal spaces that they occupy. It is an intervention into anthropological work as much as one on the internalised oppression of women. Rather than stay within the confines of 'agency versus oppression' discourses, this book offers feminist imaginaries that expose the complexities and contestations that exist in both sermons and the intimate relations that women have with each other.