Formación continua

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Unit 2

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experienced simultaneously. We know that there is such a thing as a racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely racial nor solely sexual, e.g. the history of rape of black women by white men as a weapon of political repression ...We struggle together with Black men against racism, we also struggle with Black men about sexism.

The core themes of black feminist and womanist writings revolve around the history of struggle of black womenfolk in the United States. In attempting to analyze the position of the black woman, Zora Neale Hurston depicts the black woman as "de mule of the world” Nanny, a character in Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937:16) states:

de white man is the ruler of everything as far as Ah been able tur find out. May be its someplace way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don't know nothing but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell the nigger man tur pick it up. He pick it up because he have to but he don't tote it. He hand it to his women folks.

De nigger women is de mule uh the world so fur as ah can see.

Also central to womanist writings is the focus on family relationship and the importance of motherhood. Feminism, on the other hand, tends to derogate the women's role as mothers.

Radical feminism views motherhood as a limiting imposition on women. Womanists celebrate motherhood while insisting that women be treated with more respect and that motherhood be valued rather than derogated. Alice Walker's In Search of our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (1987:237) is an attempt to "look at and identify with our lives the living creativity some of our great-grandmothers were not allowed to know".

Family relationship in African American womanist writingsis seen not only in the light of the nuclear family, but the entire community is considered as a family unit. The slave trade in the Americas affected the stability of family relationships. Very often, black children were sold off as slaves to far places at a very tender age. Many of them were too young to know their

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biological parents or form any relationship with their parents before being sold off. As a result of this and the carryover of the traditions from Africa where the whole community is usually regarded as a family unit, African Americans developed a sense of communal living where every member of the society is considered a family member.

In addition, womanism is aimed primarily at achieving self-definition and self-actualization for black women. As a result of centuries of racial and sexist oppression black women have been abused. Williams Fannie (1984: 150) opines that “the colored girl... is not known and hence not believed in. She belongs to a race that is best signated by the term 'problem' and she lives beneath the shadow of that problem which enveloped and obscures her.”

Hudson Weems' (1998:1815) agenda for Africana womanism is an apt description of the aims of womanism as an ideology. Weems contends that “the Africana womanist names and defines herself and her movement... She is family centered. The Africana womanist is more concerned with her entire „family^‟ than with just herself and her sisters even though genuine sisterhood is also very important to her reality.” Since womanism is accommodationist in nature she continues: that “the Africana womanist also welcomes male presence and participation in her struggle as her destiny is often intertwined with his in their broader struggle for humanity and liberation for Africans people. She has demonstrated and continues to demonstrate enormous strength both in a physical and psychological sense. Moreover the Africana womanist desires positive male companionship.”

Hudson Weems further affirms the centrality of motherhood in her ideology. She writes about the Africana womanist that “her role as homemaker, as it has always been is much relaxed. She demands respect and recognition in her incessant search for wholeness and authenticity The

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Africana womanist is committed to the art of mothering and nurturing her own in particular and humankind in general.”

The search for a black female ideology brought about womanism. Womanism is still essentially aimed at alleviating women's multiple oppression. This feature it shared with feminism.

However, the issues addressed in womanism concerns mainly black womenfolk. Womanism differs from feminism because as we have mentioned earlier on, it recognizes the triple oppression of black women. Racial, classist and sexist oppression are identified and fought against by womanists as opposed to feminism which is concerned mainly with sexist oppression.

Womanism makes it clear that the needs of the black women differ from those of their white counterparts.

By recognising and accepting male participation in the struggle for emancipation, womanism again differs from feminism in its methodology of ending female oppression. Womanism is rooted in black culture. This fact accounts for the centrality of family, community and motherhood as key issues in womanist discourse. These features of black culture differentiate womanism from feminism.

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Unit 3