Raise Your Voice - by Kathy Khang (Paperback)

About the Book

It can be hard to speak up when power dynamics keep us silent and marginalized, especially when race, ethnicity, and gender are factors. Activist Kathy Khang roots our voice and identity in the image of God, showing how we can raise our voices for the sake of God's justice. We are created to speak, and we can both speak up for ourselves and speak out on behalf of others.

Book Synopsis

It can be hard to speak up when power dynamics keep us silent and marginalized, especially when race, ethnicity, and gender are factors. Activist Kathy Khang roots our voice and identity in the image of God, showing how we can raise our voices for the sake of God's justice. We are created to speak, and we can both speak up for ourselves and speak out on behalf of others.

Review Quotes

"If you've ever wrestled with when or how to speak up, then you'll be excited to hear about this . . . book from author Kathy Khang. 'You have a voice, ' the book's description reads. 'And you have God's permission to use it.' Khang explores how we find our unique voices in the imago Dei, and how to raise our voice as God has called us to."

"In these days of intense political division, online vitriol, and alternative facts, we desperately need these perspectives and stories to help us see the whole picture of God's coming kingdom. For the sake of the gospel, we should each be willing to undergo the costly, yet ultimately redemptive process of sharing our voice with the world. And we should each seek out opportunities to call out this gift in others. That's what Khang does wonderfully in Raise Your Voice. She is both mentor and advocate, challenging each of us to add our unique voices to the God-honoring chorus and speak up."

"Kathy has spoken up and spoken out with wisdom at great cost to herself. Learn from her expertise. Since there are lessons we can't learn in theory, I urge you to read this book and learn to use your authentic voice in meaningful, authentic ways."

"Khang brings a bold and challenging perspective on 'voice' to the evangelical Christian lifestyle and a refreshing approach to the convergence of religion and culture. . . . Khang details how the perception of one's own personal safety versus the safety of the community at large can make it challenging to speak up for oneself and for others. . . . [This] book will appeal to Christian readers looking for ways to unify the church through community and acceptance."

"The book works so well, I think, in part because Kathy Khang's unique perspective grounds her reflections in real stories, while still making space for others to have different experiences. This remarkably human and dialogic mode acts as an invitation for other voices to join in the discussion, which is one of the secrets of assertiveness. Khang's voice is not one that seeks to dominate-and yet it is definitely not passive. On the contrary, her voice assertively and persistently sticks up for her own needs and those of others, using her own individuality and idiom to do so while fully acknowledging the challenges of those acts and that position."

"The time is right for Raise Your Voice. In our real lives and our digital ones we need to identify our voice and raise it for the sake of justice. Kathy Khang's contribution will almost surely be a powerful and lasting catalyst for change."

"Raise Your Voice is a powerful call to action. The book is full of moving personal stories, excellent writing, and judiciously scattered solid theology. This delightfully written book summoning us to courageous action to promote racial, gender, and economic justice could not come at a better time. Khang calls us to speak out. And she helps us see how to do it."

"As a reporter and church leader, Kathy Khang has spent her life lending her voice to other people's stories. This book is essential reading for those who wonder about the spiritual power of saying hard truths out loud."

"As I read Raise Your Voice I remembered the times I needed a book like this! I needed its invitation to discover my voice when I felt invisible and voiceless. I needed its mentoring when I started out in leadership, wondering if I could lead in the way I was wired to, rather than fit uncomfortably into a more culturally acceptable mold. I needed its wisdom to help me discern the cost of having a voice and daring to use it, and then its comfort when using my voice ended in hurt. Raise Your Voice is here now, and I still received all the things I'd once longed for and more-challenge and empowerment in equal measure. Kathy Khang has crafted a gift for us-receive every page she offers you!"

"From the first chapter, Khang's book Raise Your Voice brings you in. She masterfully uses her story, biblical passages, and wisdom of the everyday to create an insightful and practical tool. Leaders, artists, writers, and anyone who feels that God has put something in them (everyone!) will be refreshed, challenged, and spurred on. This book is a compass, instead of a map, that helps you navigate terrain that has no roads. Khang's book provides an essential tool for navigating the tricky pathways of following Jesus in real life-evolving social media, racial land mines, and increasingly polarized communities. Raise Your Voice is an honest, funny, and utterly practical book. You will want it on your shelf to refer to over and over again."

"In a time of social division growing wider every day, so many of us struggle with how to engage in all that is happening around us. Often it's easier to retreat and ignore the chaos and confusion rather than to try to wrestle with how God might have us respond. Kathy Khang challenges us to see that our trust in God's sovereignty is not independent of our responsibility to act. She guides us through why it is biblical for us to learn to use our voice for good, and imperative to stand against injustice in order that our silence might not become complicit."

"Khang's Raise Your Voice is a powerful call to use our voices-whether in print, artistic, or social media form-for God's kingdom and glory. As a powerful advocate of justice, her own story is a testament of overcoming one's imposter syndrome, one's cultural inhibitions, and one's gendered expectations. Put together with scriptural insights and Khang's unique dry humor, this book is a great read. It offers practical, loving, and wise lessons on how each of us can speak out and be heard."

"Our voices are paramount to our faith and witness! If you've ever found yourself questioning, doubting, or squelching your voice, this book will intimately speak to you. Raise Your Voice illuminates the forces-social, cultural, and familial-that seek to silence us and guides us through the wilderness of finding, claiming, and using our voices to seek the kingdom first and live into our created purpose. Kathy uses the story of Esther and her own growing pains as concrete examples of how we learn to raise our voices in the face of the fear, coercion, and the powers that be which all too often cause us to question, soften, and mute our voices. This book is compelling, empowering, and instructive."

"There have been a number of books in the past several years about the need to speak up. What Khang accomplishes in Raise Your Voice is a significant addition. The book explores the motivations behind silence, deconstructs them, and suggests ways to rebuild them into motivations for prophetic speech. Khang is a builder and careful arguer who engages and challenges readers to notice not only their own fears of speaking up, but ways in which they might contribute to silencing others. Raise Your Voice comes at an imperative time and the church would do well to listen."

About the Author

Kathy Khang is a speaker, journalist, and activist. She has worked in campus ministry for more than twenty years, with expertise in issues of gender, ethnicity, justice, and leadership development. She is a columnist for Sojourners magazine, a writer for Faith and Leadership, and a coauthor of More Than Serving Tea: Asian American Women on Expectations, Relationships, Leadership and Faith.