Silverstein, Marc. “ ‘Any Baggage You Don’t Claim,
We Trash’: Living with (in) History in The Col-
ored Museum.” American Drama 8, no. 1 (1998):
95–121.
Tracie Church Guzzio
womanist/womanish
At the beginning of the collection of essays In Search
of Our Mothers’ Gardens, ALICE WALKER defines the
term womanist. Derived from womanish, this term
refers to “outrageous, audacious, courageous or
willful behavior” (xi). It has roots in the “black folk
expression of mothers to female children, ‘You act-
ing womanish,’ i.e. like a woman” (xi). A woman-
ist, therefore, refers to a responsible woman who
is brave and has triumphed over obstacles to shape
and define her own identity. She is mature, inde-
pendent, and playful. Instead of being exclusively
grounded in achieving freedom from male domi-
nation, as are some feminist theorists, a womanist
critic is “committed to [the] survival and wholeness
of [an] entire people, male and female. Not a sepa-
ratist, except periodically, for health” (xi). Although
she is not a separatist, she “appreciates and prefers
women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility
(values tears as natural counterbalance of laugh-
ter), and women’s strength” (xi). Walker defines
the social and communal interests of a womanist,
who gains her strength from her community and
uses that strength to uplift her people, physically,
spiritually, economically, and politically.
The term womanist can be used to describe
many African-American women who have played
important historical roles. According to Jacqueline
Grant, this includes “Sojourner Truth, Jarena Lee,
Amanda Berry Smith, Ida B. Wells, Mary Church
Terrell, Mary McLeod Bethune, Fannie Lou Hamer
and countless others not remembered in any his-
torical study.” (Grant, 205). Black women often
strive to deconstruct the identity assigned to them
by the dominant culture. Acting in the community,
women have formed women’s clubs, written litera-
ture, produced plays, established women’s place in
uplifting the community and the family, and par-
ticipated in the struggle for equality.
Equally important is the role womanists have
played in defining and developing an African-
American literary tradition. Alice Walker is an
ideal example; her award-winning novel The
COLOR PURPLE is a womanist text. Walker develops
female characters who are womanists; thematically,
the novel goes beyond Celie’s individual iden-
tity formation to explore the complexity and the
importance of community. Similarly, in many of
GLORIA NAYLOR’s works—The WOMEN OF BREWSTER
PLACE, MAMA DAY, and Bailey’s Café—the women
exhibit womanist behavior through their desire
to empower themselves, their voices, and their
communities. JANIE CRAWFORD, the protagonist in
ZORA NEALE HURSTON’s THEIR EYES WERE WAT C H-
ING GOD, exhibits womanist behavior in her inter-
actions with her grandmother, Nanny; her friend
Phoebe; and her husbands, Logan Killicks, Joe, and
Tea Cake. AUGUST WILSON’s Ma Rainey, the central
female character in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, is
an example of a womanist created by a male au-
thor. Ma Rainey truly has control over her music
and thus is able to empower her voice. Womanists
work to create and define their own identities be-
tween oppressive forces and in the margins of the
dominant culture.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allan, Tuzyline Jita. “Womanism Revisited: Women
and the (Ab) Use of Power in The Color Purple.” In
Feminist Nightmares, edited by Jennifer Fleischner
and Susan Ostrov, 88–105. New York: New York
University Press, 1994.
———. Womanist and Feminist Aesthetics: A Com-
parative Review. Athens: Ohio University Press,
1995.
Grant, Jacquelyn. White Women’s’ Christ and Black
Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Woman-
ist Response. American Academy of Religion Series- Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989.
Jamison-Hall, Angelene. “She’s Just Too Womanish
for Them: Alice Walker and The Color Purple.” In
Censored Books, edited by Lee Burress, Nicholas J.
Karolides, and John M. Kean, 191–200. Metuchen,
N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1993.
Kirk-Duggan, Cheryl A. “Justified, Sanctified, and
Redeemed.” In Embracing the Spirit: Womanist
560 womanist/womanish