Voices of Resilience: Documenting the Foremothers of Asian American Feminist Theologies is an oral history project that commemorates and continues the celebration of PANAAWTM's 40th anniversary, which was marked in 2024. The project aims to preserve and amplify the histories and narratives of five influential PANAAWTM co-founders, foremothers, and elders who are also significant shapers of Asian American feminist theologies in their respective fields: Rita Nakashima Brock, Jung Ha Kim, Kwok Pui Lan, Su Yon Pak, and Gale A. Yee.

The project team members are: Jin Young Choi, kristine chong, Ban Htang, Grace Y. Kao, and Ahyun Lee.

They are PANAAWTM members who have been shaped and mentored by the PANAAWTM trailblazers they interviewed.

The project multimedia designer is Janet Chen (Ma).

This project was funded by a APAARI Working Group Grant.

Rita Nakashima Brock

Rita Nakashima Brock was born in Fukuoka, Japan in 1950 and raised in a Jodo Shinshyu Buddhist family until the age of 6, after which her family moved to different military bases in the U.S. and Germany. Though originally pre-med, her involvement in socio-political activism in college and the influence of an Old Testament professor led to her getting a masters degree at Claremont School of Theology (1975) and then writing a feminist dissertation under the direction of John Cobb at Claremont Graduate University (1988).

She served as faculty at different institutions, including holding the Endowed Chair in the Humanities at Hamline University (1990-97) and a research faculty appointment at Starr King School for the Ministry (2002-2010); she also directed the Radcliffe Fellowship Program at Harvard University (1997-2001) and was the senior editor in religion at The New Press (2006-08). She is a world-renown feminist theologian, awards-winning author, organizational founder, movement chaplain, and public voice. She is best known in the latter part of her career as an expert on moral injury in combat veterans given her extensive academic and public scholarship on the topic, director role at the Soul Repair Center at Brite Divinity School after founding the Center (2012-2017), and service as Senior Vice President for Moral Injury Recovery Programs at Volunteers of America (2017-2025).

Rita Nakashima Brock’s foremother path to PANAAWTM began with West Coast AAPI women gatherings under the aegis of the Pacific Asian Center for Theology and Strategies (PACTS) in 1978. She convened the session debuting the presence of Asian women theologians as a group at the AAR in 1985, wrote the introduction to their panel’s publication 2 years later in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, and has rendered service to PANAAAWTM in numerous ways ever since (e.g., co-editing PANAAWTM’s first anthology, organizing moving rituals at annual conferences).

Jung Ha Kim

Jung Ha Kim is a sociologist, organizer, and feminist scholar-practitioner whose work bridges the academy and community. She was raised in a multigenerational and interreligious family that migrated from North Korea to South Korea as refugees. She spent her early childhood in Tokyo and returned to Korea for schooling before immigrating to the United States in the early 1970s. After her father’s death, she moved to Atlanta in 1985 and has made the American South her home ever since.

She earned an M.A. in Theological Education from Princeton Theological Seminary (1985) and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Georgia State University (1992). At the Center for Pan Asian Community Services, Inc. (CPACS), she founded the Asian/American Community Research Institute (2010–2015) and later served as CEO/President (2021–2022).

A founding foremother of PANAAWTM, she was president (2019–2022) and helped guide the
network’s transition to nonprofit status. Today she serves as President of the Community Resource Corporation (CRC) and as Partner & Director of Community Research at Community Resource Center, LLC; she is also co-investigator on UCLA’s NIH-funded BRAVE study (2023–2027).

Kwok Pui Lan

Kwok Pui Lan was born in 1952 in the former British Colony of Hong Kong. She was raised in a working-class family and grew up in an interreligious environment. When she was a teenager, her neighbor brought her to an Anglican church in Hong Kong, and she became an Anglican. She was fascinated by the richness and complexity of the Christian theological tradition. She studied Christian theology in college at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, pursued her graduate studies at the Southeast Asia Graduate School of Theology, and completed her doctorate at Harvard Divinity School. She discusses her interest in studying theology/religion and her commitment to building communities that advocate for gender justice, Asian women's agency, and intra- and interreligious engagement. She is a co-founder of PANAAWTM and has played an indispensable role in its development.

Kwok is a Distinguished Scholar and the former William F. Cole Professor of Christian Theology and Spirituality at Episcopal Divinity School and has taught at the school for 25 years. She also taught at Candler School of Theology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Union Theological Seminary, and Yale Divinity School. A past president of the American Academy of Religion, she has held leadership roles in the Association of Theological Schools, the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning, and the Asian Theological Institute. Kwok has received awards for research, teaching, and mentoring and authored and edited numerous books on Asian and Asian American feminist theology, Anglicanism, and postcolonial theology.

Su Yon Pak

Su Yon Pak was born in 1960 on the Korean peninsula. In 1971, at the age of 10, Su immigrated to New York with her family members, including her mother, father, older brother, and 2 younger sisters. Su completed her BA at Cornell University in 1982, her MA at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1985, and her EDD in Religion and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary in 1999. Su joined PANAAWTM in 1985 and played an active role throughout its four decades, serving as Treasurer when PANAAWTM transitioned to become a 501(c)3 organization.

Su is the Vice President of Academic Affairs, and Dean and Associate Professor of Integrative and Field-Based Education at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. She is the Board Chair of United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, and a spiritual director grounded in contemplative traditions. She and her partner, Kathy, are the grandmothers of two amazing granddaughters and one sweet grandpuppy.

Gale A. Yee

Gale A. Yee is the Nancy W. King Professor of Biblical Studies emerita at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, where she taught from 1998 to 2017. Before her time at EDS, she served as a professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN, from 1984 to 1998.

Yee was born in 1949 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to second-generation Chinese American parents, and grew up as the eldest of twelve children in Chicago in an economically marginalized neighborhood. She obtained a BA in English Literature (1973) and an MA in New Testament (1975) at Loyola University Chicago. She spent five years of her doctorate in New Testament at the University of St. Michael’s College (Toronto School of Theology), but she saw the light in the Hebrew Bible and earned her PhD there in 1985.

Yee has authored six books, edited or co-edited ten volumes, and published over sixty articles across edited collections, scholarly journals, and biblical commentaries. In 2019, she made history as the first Asian American and the first woman of color to serve as president of the Society of Biblical Literature. Yee received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Virginia Theological Seminary in 2020. Since 1998, she has served as a dedicated faculty advisor for PANAAWTM.