More Than a Mustard Seed

The Parable was conceived by a group of Dominican women and men who imagined a future of collaboration from a past of cooperation in traditional ministries. The transformative grace of Vatican II and the renewed understanding of the Order as the Dominican Family were catalysts stimulating a new sense of possibilities for the renewal of Dominican life and mission—the possible revelation of “the extraordinary within the ordinary.” For more than thirty years Parable Conference for Dominican Life and Mission generated a vast network of Dominicans coming together to renew Dominican energies for mission and to strengthen the bonds of family. Within those years the prophetic mustard seed grew into an abundant living reality of retreats and conferences, think tanks and publications, and lectures and workshops that welcomed all branches of the Dominican Family.

Walking in Solidarity

This chapter situates religious women such as Dominican Sister Vincent Ferrer as vital players in the history of capitalism in the modern United States. Throughout the New Deal era Ferrer traveled the country to give major addresses about the church’s teaching on economic questions, even as she helped to raise awareness of the same at the Catholic grassroots. Her story speaks to the ways that Dominican women have brought the encyclical tradition to life on the ground, a trend that continues through to the present day, as the chapter explores in two closing contemporary vignettes.

Injured and Suffering Bodies: The Trafficking and Femicide of Dominican Immigrant Women in Puerto Rico

After drug and weapon trafficking, trafficking of women is one of the most lucrative businesses in the world. According to sociologists César Rey Hernández and Luisa Hernández Angueira in People Trafficking in Puerto Rico: The Challenge of Invisibility (2010), fifty percent of the victims are women and minors. This translates to 2.7 million women and girls that are enslaved in this inhuman business. Puerto Rico is no exception. One of its main problems is the slavery of Dominican women who, in search of a better life in Puerto Rico, are lured to illegally migrate to the island for better opportunities. However, once in the new territory, they are imprisoned and forced to become prostitutes. In addition, femicide is another world-wide pressing issue. The World Health Organization (WHO) affirms that violence against women, between fifteen and forty-four years of age, is the leading cause of death, more than cancer, malaria, car accidents and war combined, and the report ‘A Gendered Analysis of Violent Death’, compiled by Small Arms Survey Center, fourteen out of twenty-five countries with the highest rates of femicide in the world are in Latin America and the Caribbean. This essay focuses on Life is a Sexually Transmittable Disease (2014) by Wilfredo Mattos Cintron. In this novel, the enslaved-immigrant girls and women constitute an ‘injured body’, a body that is merely diminished. The third-world prostitute’s body is the material side of male-controlled dominance, subjugation and violence. Mattos Cintron’s text denounces the ‘suffering body of women’—rape, kidnapping, beating, femicide, their exclusion from human rights and sexual relegation. Moreover, along with patriarchy’s power and the socioeconomic variables as responsible agents of creating the injured body, globalization and capitalism objectify and make women’s bodies currency of the system.

Resisting Colonial Ghosts

Through a discussion of Dixa Ramírez’s Colonial Phantoms: Belonging and Refusal in the Dominican Americas, from the 19th Century to the Present (2018), this essay highlights and expands on the ways Dominican and Dominican American women have negotiated, resisted, and refused their historical obliteration in Western imaginaries. Three questions guide the commentary: How have Afro-Dominican women been ghosted from national building projects in both the Dominican Republic and the United States? How have Afro-Dominican women writers and performers refused traditional understandings of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and nationality? How do the works of these women remind us that silences, omissions, and exclusions from dominant narratives are irresolute forms of violence executed and perpetuated by Western powers and constantly replicated by the Dominican intellectual and economic elite?

Sexual Relationship Power and Safe Sex Communication Among Partnered Women in the Dominican Republic

Introduction: Research is needed to identify influences on safe sex communication among specific culture groups. This study aimed to (1) describe sexual behaviors and indicators of sexual power among partnered Dominican women and (2) identify which of these indicators are significantly associated with safe sex communication. Methodology: Cross-sectional surveys, grounded in the theory of gender and power, were conducted with 100 partnered women at a clinic in southeastern Dominican Republic. Linear regression modeling was used to identify significant associations. Results: Self-efficacy (β = 0.48), total personal monthly income (β = 0.21), and history of sexually transmitted infection (β = 0.19) were significantly associated with higher level of partner safe sex communication. Discussion: Nurse clinicians, educators, and researchers should consider self-efficacy, personal income, and history of sexually transmitted infection when addressing communication in HIV prevention efforts among Dominican women.