Unearthing New Dimensions of Black “Womanism”: Poetic Resistance and the Journey from Absence to Self-Representation

Mounir Ben Zid

Abstract


Significant headway has been made in investigating white feminist monolithic strategies and exploring how black females have suffered from patriarchal ideology and stereotyping, and how they were placed in an inferior position and treated as slaves and sexual machines. In research conducted on women of color, however, little attention is paid to black females’ new vision of black “womanism” and its means of struggle. With this in mind, the aim of this study is twofold. First, the goal is to elucidate why black women were victims of white prejudice, despotism, and patriarchal practices. Second, we wish to demonstrate how black females set themselves free from racial ideology and Western hegemony by opting for poetic resistance to achieve hypervisibility, seek their own spirituality, worship their black female deities, restore the joy of their motherhood, and assert their identity. The findings yielded by this research provide support for the key argument that black "womanism" and poetic resistance are the means of self-representation and liberation from Eurocentric, dehumanizing, and exclusionary ideology to repossess one's erased self.

Keywords


White Feminism, Black “Womanism”, Poetic Resistance, Visibility, Self-Representation

Full Text:

PDF

References


Angelou, M. (2015). The Complete Poetry. New York, NY: Random House.

Armos, V., & Pratibha, T. (2005). Challenging imperialism feminism. Feminist Review, 80, 44−63.

Best, E. (1992). The Wicked Sisters: Women Poets, Literary History and Discord. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Bethel, L. (1982). But some of us are brave. In G. T. Hull et al. (Eds.), All the women are white, all the Blacks are men, but some of us are brave : Black women's studies

Old Westbury, N.Y.: Feminist Press.

Brooks, G. (1945). A street in Bronzeville. New York and London: Harper & Brothers.

Brooks, G. (1949). Annie Allen. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers.

Brooks, G., & Alexander, E. (2005). The essential Gwendolyn Brooks. New York, NY: Library of America.

Carretta, V. (Ed.) (2004). Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

Collins, M. (2004). Chant me a tune. In D. Decaire (Ed.), Contemporary Caribbean Women's Poetry. New York, NY: Routledge.

Christian, B. T. (Ed.) (1994). Everyday Use. New Jersey, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Davis, A. (1981). Women, Race and Class. New York, NY: Random House.

Davidson, C. N., & Wagner Martin, L. (Eds.) (1995). The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Fanon, F. (1952). Black Skin, White Masks. London, UK: Pluto Press.

Finkleman, P. (Ed.) (2009). Encyclopedia of African American History: 1896 to the Present. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Gargi, B. (1998). Tales of Dark-Skinned Women: Race, Gender and Global Culture. London, UK: UCL Press.

Gates, H. L. (Ed.) (1992). Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Hayes, W. F. (Ed.) (2000). A Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African American Studies. Oxford, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Hill, P. C. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York, NY: Routledge.

Hurston, Z. N. (2008). Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York, NY: Harper Luxe.

Jacobs, H. (2013). The Norton Anthology of American Literature (shorter 8th ed., N. Baym & R. S. Levine, eds.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

Lorde, A. (1997). The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Harper.

Lorde, A. (2007). Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press.

Marchand, M. H., & Parpart, J. L. (Eds.) (1995). Feminism and Postmodernism Development. London, UK: Routledge.

Mirza, H. S. (Ed.) (1992). Black British Feminism. New York, NY: Routledge.

Mohanty, C. T. (2003). Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Peterson, C. (1995). Doers of the World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Powel, S. M. (2003). Spirituality: Redeeming Women Through Faith and Poetry. Retrieved July 21, 2019, from http://www.suite101.com

Purkayastha, D. (2012). Foregrounding 'her' stories: Black women's literary movement. Dibrugarh University Journal of English Studies, 20, 1-14.

Stanley, M. J., & Ebna, B. A. (1994). Theorizing Black Feminism: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women. New York, NY: Busia.

Stasiulis, D. (1992). Theorizing Connections: Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class, Race and Ethnic Relations in Canada. Toronto, Canada: Oxford University Press.

Suleri, S. (1992). Woman skin deep: Feminism and the postcolonial condition. Critical Inquiry, 18(4), 756−769.

Sulter, M. (1991). Echo: Works by Women Artists, 1850–1940. Liverpool, UK: Tate Gallery.

Urubshurow, V. K. (2008). Introducing World Religions (Uma Chakravarti and Kumkum Roy, trans.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Walker, A. (1983). In Search of Our Mother's Gardens: Womanist Prose. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Wisker, G. (Ed.) (2000). Post-Colonialism and African Women's Writing. London, UK: MacMillan Press.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.10n.6p.12

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.




Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2010-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.

Advances in Language and Literary Studies

You may require to add the 'aiac.org.au' domain to your e-mail 'safe list’ If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox'. Otherwise, you may check your 'Spam mail' or 'junk mail' folders.