Longing for Running Water

Gebara's succinct yet moving statement of her principles of ecofeminism shows how intertwined are the tarnished environment around her and the poverty that afflicts her neighbors. From her experiences with the Brazilian poor women's movement she develops a gritty urban ecofeminism and indeed articulates a whole worldview. She shows how the connections between Western thought, partriachal Christianity, and environmental destruction necessitate personal conversion to "an new relationship with the earth and with the entire cosmos."

Ivone Gebara, a Brazilian Sister of Notre Dame, is one of Latin America's leading women theologians. She holds doctorates in philosophy and religious studies and has taught for many years at the Theology Institute of Recife (ITER). Among her half-dozen books are Trinity: A Word on Things New and Old (1995) and Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation (Fortress Press, 1999).