Raise Your Voice: Why We Stay Silent and How to Speak Up by Kathy Khang

There is a cost to keeping silent, but speaking up carries risk and consequences. In Raise Your Voice, Kathy Khang explores the ways family, community, and culture cause people, especially women, to withhold or be denied their voice. Khang boldly unfolds how having no space to speak is not only a justice issue but a limitation on what it is to experience the fullness of imago Dei—being an image-bearer of God.

Khang speaks out of her own experiences as a Korean-American, evangelical Christian, and immigrant on behalf of all women, but more specifically for women of color within the American landscape.

As she names her own privileges of education and opportunity, readers should consider their own privilege based on gender, race, religion, status, or other associations. Khang considers Moses, an Israelite in the princely courts of Pharaoh; Esther, challenged to speak for such a time to King Xerxes; and the unnamed woman in Mark 5 who touches Jesus’ garment. She brings these stories together with contemporary examples of speaking truth to injustice and power, standing up and standing out for one’s convictions, and creating space for diversity within our unity rather than conformity or assimilation.

One chapter deals specifically with the power of social media, its temptations for power, and our personal responsibility when participating. Khang intersperses prompts and opportunities for self-reflection. This is an important book for women of all colors to raise their voices; it also challenges people to make room for more voices than just their own. (IVP Books)