Womanist Dictionary

Womanism as a Second Language

Thao Chu, Ngan Vu

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781532688232
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ethics & Religion

The linguistic aspect of Womanism offers learners values as any other social language. While most French learners get a glimpse into the history of Napoleon and many Chinese speakers are familiar with an Asian lifestyle, English non-native speakers like us need to understand the language in a broader scope. Since English is our shared method of communication, we have to adapt to not just one culture, but also variants in accents or vocabularies from multiple English-speaking countries. Similarly, Womanism serves the same purpose among the black community. By speaking Womanism, they are able to understand and embrace each other's values and virtues, while making their history known to the rest of the world.

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Introduction

Why Womanism?

As our academic tracks both involve a lot of science, figures, and calculations, we tend to neglect multidisciplinary approach to humanity, history, and social science. Our lack of experience is further exacerbated by having grown up in a rather homogenous culture, of which racial diversity and discrimination are nothing but a mere concept of the foreign land. When we were first introduced to the term Womanism in the Christian Ethics class, we asked each other the question that most people who are unfamiliar with this new concept would: How is Womanism different from Feminism; and, why do I need to know about Womanism? Coming from a country where religion, race, and social justice have never been in the curriculum, we were confused, yet curious about this new concept. We know about Feminism as a political ideology to establish and achieve social equality of sexes by providing equal rights and opportunities for both men and women. What we didn’t know was how closely this social movement is tied primarily to white women. After the first few days of class, Womanism stood out to us as the useful solution for this oversight racism. Womanism is not taking parts of racism and feminism and putting them together. It is rather a completely transcendental experience that put together the fragmented identities and souls resulted from the multilayered oppression. Because black women’s identities, stories, voices, and experiences were dismissed in the society, there was a need to establish their own movement to empower their own people. Womanism was then created as a new affirming space fighting for racial, gender, and class equality. Womanism focuses on black women but also includes men, plants, and animals. Because of its empowering and inclusive nature, Womanism has grown to have an extensive range of definitions. According to Alice Walker’s definition, a womanist is “committed to the survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female” and “Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.”

One of the biggest challenges and concerns we encountered while writing this book was how to deliver the information effectively so that the readers do not only understand Womanism but also take initiatives to do justice. Therefore, the goal in writing this book is to bring an easier approach to Womanism by explaining the meanings and stories behind its concepts. To understand Womanism, we need to first acknowledge the historical racism that is deeply-rooted in feminism. Secondly, as we talk about history, we will keep an open mind and learn to understand the experiences through the lens of the minority, the oppressed, the women of color. This book is written from our sincere care and empathy to the underprivileged communities, and we hope all of us, the privileged or the underrepresented, will grow to appreciate and nurture the strength in the solidarity and inclusiveness that Womanism foremothers have built.

From Feminism to Womanism

Feminism is the social movement first appeared in the 1800s to seek equal rights and opportunities for women. First-wave feminism, mainly in Britain and United States, campaigned for women’s political rights including the suffrage. After World War II, the second wave of feminism (1960s-1980s) fought for workplace, sexuality, family, and reproductive rights. The third wave (1990s-early 2000s) was when feminism became broader and focused on truly understanding the own definition of feminism and what it meant for each woman. Although the fourth wave, which began in 2012, was not as popular, it reached the global audience by utilizing social media and the internet to spread awareness about sexual assault, body positivity, and harassment. The feminism movements were undeniably necessary and have contributed tremendously to the power of women. However, these gender-oriented social movements were developed based on concerns, viewpoints and social issues of primarily white women as black women’s opinions were not listened but were assumed to be the same as that of white women. The fact that feminism only prioritizes the struggle of white women along with the history of slavery and oppression explained why it was incredibly hard for black women to identify themselves as feminists. Kimberlé Crenshaw, an American civil right advocate, coined the term intersectionality- that black women deserve a movement that reaches beyond its gender-specific lens and takes into account their overlapping identities and multi-sources struggles to fully understand the convergence of their oppression. Therefore, history is crucial to womanist methods as it explains and represents the untold stories, the experiences, the struggle and the facts that were ignored for many years. Taking into consideration the social circumstances, we will delve into black persons’ literature to analyze their stories while examining the derived womanist methods and its agenda throughout the history to reflect on the importance of wholeness and radical inclusivity.

Africana Womanism

Africana Womanism is a unique agenda established by Clenora Hudson-Weems in 1987 that is distinct from White feminism, Black feminism, African feminism, and Womanism of Alice Walker. Hudson-Weems is an English professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and during her time at University of Iowa in 1985, she started and maintained the debate that Africana women were not feminists given the natural differences in their history and experiences. Her reasons are that none of these movements could deliver all the meanings she desired, and therefore she coined the term Africana Womanism. “Africana” names the women ethnicity, their African ancestry, and cultural identity. “Womanism,” according to Hudson-Weems, recalls a speech “And Ain’t I A Woman” of Sojourner Truth, an African-American militant abolition spokesperson and universal suffragist, in which she debated the accepted idea of a woman through her struggle as an Africana woman. According to Hudson-Weems, “female” can refer to plants and animals while “woman” specifically refers to a woman in a human race, and therefore the term Womanism is more appropriate to use. It is important to note that Hudson-Weems’ “Womanism” is different from that of Alice Walker. In Alice Walker’s definition, a womanist is:

A black feminist or feminist of color . . . who loves other women (sometimes individual men), sexually and/or non-sexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture . . . Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female . . . Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.1

Alice Walker definition focuses on the women sexuality but doesn’t make feminism more distinct from the darker skin color of women. Because there was more than just the skin color, the majority of Africana women could not resonate with these movements and rejected to be categorized as feminists. Feminist movement was also originally not designed with Africana women in mind as Catherine Clinton, a White feminist said “feminism primarily appealed to educated middle-class White women, rather than Black and White working-class women”2. Hudson-Weems refers to Feminism as an apartheid, which was said to be dismantled, but in fact, still “masquerading under different guises and exerting the same or even greater level of oppression on the Africana masses”3. Therefore, Hud...