Thea's Song: The Life of Thea Bowman
Sister Thea Bowman gained world renown as a scholar, singer, and speaker, promoting intercultural awareness and connectedness in the Catholic Church, which had been fairly cool to African Americans. Born in 1937, she was raised in the small black town of Canton, Mississippi, converted to Catholicism at the age of 10, and joined the Franciscan order at age 15. Despite the culture shock of white La Crosse, Wisconsin, and the racism and sexism within the broader church, Bowman found confirmation of her calling and eventual acceptance of her exuberance and push for inclusion. She was resistant to social injustice and insistent on the healing power of religion and music. As a teacher and a founder of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans, she helped to promote the black Catholic identity movement before she died of breast cancer at the age of 52. Thea’s own writings, interspersed throughout the book, give the reader a sense of her lively voice. Personal stories and family photographs add to the warmth of this recollection of the life of an extraordinary woman. --Vanessa Bush