Womanism or Black Feminism
Essay
Afro-American Literature
Womanism or Black Feminism?
Black women started to speak up in 1970s and during the 1980s and 1990s black womanhood started to be an important point of debates and since then African American women´s thoughts and ideas are a very significant part of literature. Gender studies are taught at universities and black women writers are known of. Their books are studied and researches done. They took a long and hard journey from slavery until today and it was not easy. Despite all disadvantages, critiques, obstacles and problems, they managed to get a word in the world which had only three categories: White men, White women and Black men. In this essay I would like to deal with two terms which are topical in current debates: Womanism and Black Feminism. Womanism is described in the first paragraph, Black feminism in the second followed by the conclusion. First I will focus on Alice Walker´s multiple definitions of “womanism“ in In Search of Our Mother´s Gardens. She offers several meanings. She sees the term as rooted in history which was full of racial and gender oppression. “You acting womanish“ taken from the black folk tradition meant that the girls acted in outrageous, courageous and willful ways – it freed them from conventions. They behaved like white women could not, they wanted to know more than was good for them. To understand what she means we have to know that the history of black women and white women is different. Not only as a history of events but history of language. The conventions for black women were different, they were supposed to behave differently and the society took them less serious. But Alice Walker in her definition says that “womanish“ is also being serious, grown up, responsible – which is an opposite to white understanding of black women. Walker somehow implies that black women are superior to white women because of black folk tradition. Also Walker´s much cited phrase “womanist is to feminist as
Afro-American Literature
Womanism or Black Feminism?
Black women started to speak up in 1970s and during the 1980s and 1990s black womanhood started to be an important point of debates and since then African American women´s thoughts and ideas are a very significant part of literature. Gender studies are taught at universities and black women writers are known of. Their books are studied and researches done. They took a long and hard journey from slavery until today and it was not easy. Despite all disadvantages, critiques, obstacles and problems, they managed to get a word in the world which had only three categories: White men, White women and Black men. In this essay I would like to deal with two terms which are topical in current debates: Womanism and Black Feminism. Womanism is described in the first paragraph, Black feminism in the second followed by the conclusion. First I will focus on Alice Walker´s multiple definitions of “womanism“ in In Search of Our Mother´s Gardens. She offers several meanings. She sees the term as rooted in history which was full of racial and gender oppression. “You acting womanish“ taken from the black folk tradition meant that the girls acted in outrageous, courageous and willful ways – it freed them from conventions. They behaved like white women could not, they wanted to know more than was good for them. To understand what she means we have to know that the history of black women and white women is different. Not only as a history of events but history of language. The conventions for black women were different, they were supposed to behave differently and the society took them less serious. But Alice Walker in her definition says that “womanish“ is also being serious, grown up, responsible – which is an opposite to white understanding of black women. Walker somehow implies that black women are superior to white women because of black folk tradition. Also Walker´s much cited phrase “womanist is to feminist as
Bibliography: Aldridge, Delores P. “Towards Integrating Africana Women into Africana Studies”. Out of the Revolution: the Development of Africana Studies. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, Inc., 2003. 191-203 Cannon, Katie G. Black Womanist Ethics. Scholar Press, 1988. Collins, Patricia H. “What´s in a name?” The Black Scholar, 2001. Gordon, Vivian Verdell. “Black Women, Feminism, and Black Studies”. Out of the Revolution: the Development of Africana Studies. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, Inc., 2003. 165-75 Hudson-Weems, Clenora. “Africana Womanism”. Out of the Revolution: the Development of Africana Studies. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, Inc., 2003. 205 – 217 Hull G., Scott P., Smith B. But Some Of Us Are Brave: All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men: Black Women 's Studies. The Feminist Press at CUNY, 1993.