This gets pretty rambly.

The tension between the writings on women in American Methodism and Jarena Lee's experience is particularly relevant today, in that both women and especially women of color are continually marginalized. In Methodism they fall from active and equal participant to "preacher's wife" (which especially felt pointed) to relief and war efforts as the role of "mother" to "their boys." Yet black women were again segregated into their own groups, often unnamed and unappreciated for their work. What's more is that the idea of "mothering" became synonymous with jobs that did go unappreciated and unnamed. By 1901 we see the list of female ministers rise to 97, which is... great. But Jarena Lee's account, wherein she outlines the many ways and times she sought to kill herself, struck me as not an unfamiliar battle (like in The Awakening) that women in particular suffer ("that I knew not what ailed me") an unknowable depression pertaining to their ultimate role or mission in life. Jarena, obviously, had much more to deal with in that regard than the average white woman. Perhaps, like with other great leaders, it may have been her propensity for creative and passionate moods that made her a dynamic and convincing leader. At any rate, I'm not sure that I'm saying anything specifically helpful here, but that there seems to me a line running through these accounts of women and how spectacularly un-helped they are throughout their journeys. That determination to go and do is in some ways summed up at the end of Jarena's account, where she mentions that her manuscript may have errors because she was self-taught (read: because of both race and gender) but that she knows she's a CHAMP because she's the first black Methodist preacher. Thank god for her self-awareness, otherwise the readings would have just been depressing.