B.A. Thesis Chapter 1 Feminism and Womanism
quoted Elizabeth Cady Stanton?s letter to the New York Standard in 1865 in her book Women, Race and Class (1981): “in fact, it is better [for black women] to be the slave of an educated white man, than of a degraded, ignorant black one” (70). The second wave of American feminism still did little “to recognize the interdependence of racism and sexism as symptomatic of a culture of oppression” (Madsen 215). In her book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), bell hooks (sic) criticized the blindness of color in Betty Friedan?s The Feminine Mystique (1963): Friedan?s famous phrase, “the problem that has no name”, actually referred to the plight of a selected group of college-educated, middle and upper class, married white women--- housewives bored leisure, who wanted more out of life. That “more” she defined as careers. She did not discuss who would be called in to take care of the children and maintain the home. She did not speak of the needs of women without men, without children, without homes. She ignored the existence of all non-white women and poor white women. She did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute, than to be a leisure housewife.
In 1973, a special Black Feminist group, the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO), was founded in New York. In 1977, the Combahee River Collective, a Black Feminist group in Boston,
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B.A. Thesis Chapter 1 Feminism and Womanism
announced in the famous A Black Feminist Statement “Above all else, our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that black women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else?s but because of our need as human persons for autonomy. We realized that only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation is us. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work”.
Other female black writers and critics, like Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Huston, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, Patricia Hill Collins, promoted the development of Black Feminism greatly by their vigorous participation and works. Alice Walker especially stood out among them. In her book In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), she put forward a very important icon for black feminist: womanism, which will be discussed in detail in the next part.
1.2 Walker’s Definition of Womanism
Definitely, a womanist should be a woman; however, the point is for which sex a womanist should serve. First, Walker indicates that a womanist should love other women, sexually and nonsexually, which means both lesbians and non-lesbians can be the womanist. It also emphasizes sisterhood. In Walker?s works, the good relationship among
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B.A. Thesis Chapter 1 Feminism and Womanism
women can be found everywhere. As in Meridian, the protagonist, Meridian, helps “Wile Chile” when she hears that “Wile Chile” is pregnant. In The Color Purple, the lesbian love between Celie and Shug, and the friendships among Celie, Shug, Sophie, Nettie and etc. which will be discussed in detail later in this thesis, illustrate the important effect of sisterhood on the liberation of black women. She also emphasizes women?s culture and women?s emotion. When she wrote The Color Purple, Walker lived a very simple life in a mountainous village, but she still did not forget to make the quilt. “I bought a quilt pattern my mama swore was easy. I worked on my quilt . My quilt began to grow” (Walker 1983, 358). Making the quilt also gives some help for her to finish the novel. In The Color Purple, Celie, Shug and Sophie also make a quilt named “sister?s choice”, which symbolizes their friendships. Despite women?s good relationship, Walker never forgets men. The womanist should also love individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually, for the womanist should commit themselves to the entire people, whether they are male or female. The womanist should also be the universalist, which means that they should not work only for the liberation of black people or their own race, but also for all the human beings in spite of their skin color. People with white, beige, black, brown, pink, yellow and any other skin color are all brothers and sisters. Thus although the womanist are the colored women, they should work for all human beings, male and female
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B.A. Thesis Chapter 1 Feminism and Womanism
with all kinds of skin color. The last part of the second interpretation means that the womanist should be brave and be an activist. She is brave and capable enough to fight for and protect her people. “It wouldn?t be the first time”, for the ancestors have fought for many years and it would not be the last time until everyone gets his/her liberation. Walker once stated in one of her essays Silver Writes that: although she valued the Civil Rights Movement deeply, she has never liked the term itself because it had no music and no poetry (336). Therefore, the womanist must be full of love, loving music, loving dance, loving all the creatures and mostly important, loving oneself. In her prose, “In Search of Our Mothers? Gardens”, Walker depicts the lives of many black women, who must be her mothers and grandmothers. They are the sexual objects of men. “They stumbled blindly through their lives: creatures so abused and mutilated in body, so dimmed and confused by pain, that they considered themselves unworthy even of hope” (2374). Under such living condition, however, their creativity still enabled them to be artists. They wanted to paint watercolors of the sunsets or model heroic figures of rebellion in stone or clay, though their time was full occupied with baking biscuits for lazy backwater tramp and their bodies were broken because of bearing so many children (Walker 1985, 2375). The quilt made by an anonymous black woman in Alabama a hundred years ago, hanging in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C., was the best example of
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B.A. Thesis Chapter 1 Feminism and Womanism
black women?s artistic creation (Walker 1985, 2379). Thus, for black and other colored women, their cultural uniqueness lies in the heritage of a11 love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself(sic). Womanist is to feminist as purple to lavender. (Walker 1983, 1) The first interpretation delimits the scope of the womanist, which means that only the black or colored feminist can be called the womanist. This proposition is set against the main-stream white feminism which “has alienated working class and colored women from the liberation struggle” (Madsen 216).
As a black woman, Walker is mainly concerned about the condition of black women, but she does not forget other oppressed colored women. Thus the womanist can not be simply called the black feminist. Walker also gives the origin of the womanist in the first interpretation, i.e. womanish. Thus a womanist must have the characters which the word “womanish” suggests, such as outrageous, audacious, courageous, willful, serious, responsible, grown-up. As a womanist, Walker herself demonstrates these characters thoroughly. At a very young age, she was confident with herself and knew how to “show up”. Girl as she was, she could cry out “I?m the prettiest” in front of her brothers (Walker 1983, 385). When she studied in college, she actively took part in the Civil Rights Movement and the Women?s Movement. She was also the pioneer who opened the course of black women literature in college. Walker
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