Awake

Christian memoirs by evangelical women are a distinct literary sub-genre that blends personal narrative with spiritual testimony. These autobiographical accounts offer an intimate glimpse into the lived experience of religious faith. Rooted in the evangelical tradition’s emphasis on personal conversion and the transformative power of God’s grace, these memoirs often trace the author’s journey toward a deeper relationship with God. Through candid storytelling and reflective prose, evangelical women use the memoir form to articulate their spiritual awakenings and bear witness to God’s presence in everyday life.

Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place (1971) and Elisabeth Elliot’s Through Gates of Splendor (1957) are classic examples of Christian memoirs. Ten Boom’s narrative recounts her family’s decision to hide Jews during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and their subsequent imprisonment. Eliot’s memoir tells the story of how her husband and four other missionaries were killed while attempting to evangelize the Waorani people of Ecuador. Both texts center on acts of faith and sacrifice in the face of suffering, using personal narrative to testify to God’s providence amid human tragedy. In The Hiding Place, ten Boom frames her family’s efforts and her subsequent survival of a concentration camp as evidence of the courage and compassion God’s grace inspires. Similarly, Elliot interprets her husband’s martyrdom as an exemplar of Christian sacrifice. Both authors transform their private experiences into public testimony of the redemptive power of God’s will. Their emphasis on surrender, faith under persecution, and the divine significance of earthly trials illustrates how Christian memoirs typically present suffering through the lens of divine purpose. These authors aim to inspire readers to develop a deeper trust in God and the authority of scripture. Both works are models of how steadfast faith can illuminate even the darkest circumstances. Although these memoirs recount personal experiences, the ultimate protagonist is God.

Awake both participates in and subverts the tradition of the Christian memoir. Intertwining a personal narrative of crisis with spiritual reflection, Hatmaker replicates the intimate tone that ten Boom and Elliot created. However, she rejects the theology of redemptive suffering, conveying how the dissolution of her 26-year marriage undermines rather than reinforces her Christian faith. Hatmaker sees no divine meaning or greater purpose in her suffering, which she ultimately believes has its origins in harmful religious indoctrination, such as purity culture and patriarchal authority. Her memoir centers on finding spiritual wholeness beyond the boundaries of institutional religion, focusing on inner transformation rather than a specific deity. Hatmaker’s redemption arises from questioning divine authority and developing self-trust. The memoir’s title, Awake, underscores its author’s subversion of the traditional Christian memoir’s message. Playing on the trope of “awakening” as a moment of spiritual conversion or renewed faith, the author reclaims the concept to convey an emergence from organized religion’s institutional control.

Awake expands the Christian memoir into a broader spiritual autobiography that resonates with readers who are reevaluating their faith after disillusionment. Given the memoir’s critique of the author’s church for its lack of empathy toward LGBTQIA+ and Black communities, the book reflects broader cultural movements within US Christianity. Awake conforms to the “exvangelical” phenomenon in which former evangelical Christians reject purity culture, patriarchal doctrine, and political conservatism to pursue more inclusive spiritual lives. This situates Hatmaker’s memoir alongside works such as Alice Greczyn’s Wayward: A Memoir of Spiritual Warfare and Sexual Purity and Jessica Wilbanks’s When I Spoke in Tongues: A Story of Faith and Its Loss, which use personal narrative to challenge the theological and gender hierarchies of orthodox Christianity.