Gifts of Power records Rebecca Jackson's spiritual journey as a woman with a divine calling, from her awakening through her discovery of Shakerism and the founding of her own community. She describes a wide variety of visionary experiences, including mysterious prophetic dreams and supernatural "gifts of power" (such as the ability to control the weather by prayer). The dream visions give access to a world in which laws of nature are violated with ease. The physical body left behind, the dreamer soars into the air, and is given flashes of understanding about both the physical universe and the spiritual world. Jackson's visionary dreams also show her confronting fears of racial and sexual violence; working out an understanding of the mother aspect of the godhead; and even resolving conflicts that arose in her relationships with brother, husband, spiritual companions, and Shaker leaders.
Alice Walker has described Gifts of Power as "an extraordinary document," which "tells us much about the spirituality of human beings, especially of the interior spiritual resources of our mothers." Writing of Jackson's relationship to Perot, Walker coined the term "womanism" to distinguish a specifically black feminist cultural tradition that includes women's love for other women but is not "separatist."
