The womanish roots of womanism: a

culturally-derived and African-centered ideal

(concept)
Author: Dorothy Randall Tsuruta
Date: Winter 2012
From: The Western Journal of Black Studies(Vol. 36, Issue 1)
Publisher: The Western Journal of Black Studies
Document Type: Essay
Length: 5,309 words

Abstract:

One of womanism's greatest challenges is resisting attempts to define or redefine it and use it and
its root ideal, womanish, in ways that disassociate it from its cultural context and social reality, This
paper posits that the term womanish, is culturally derived and African-centered and that womanism
and womanish must be preserved and constantly developed as valuable ways of Black women
thinking, asserting themselves and living in the world. As a culturally-derived concept, womanish (
"mannish " for boys) is rooted in the social practice of Black adults, especially Black women, of
setting boundaries for Black girls, but simultaneously recognizing their coming into their own as
women, making clear and steady steps toward maturity.

Full Text:

One of womanism's greatest challenges is resisting attempts to define or redefine it and use it and
its root ideal, womanish, in ways that disassociate it from its cultural context and social reality. This
paper posits that the term womanish, is culturally derived and African-centered and that womanism
and womanish must be preserved and constantly developed as valuable ways of Black women
thinking, asserting themselves and living in the world. As a culturally-derived concept, womanish
("mannish" for boys) is rooted in the social practice of Black adults, especially Black women, setting
boundaries for Black girls, but simultaneously recognizing their coming into their own as women,
making clear and steady steps toward maturity. As an African-centered concept, not only is it
rooted in African or Black culture, but it also affirms the value and validity of African culture and is in
the emancipatory and creative interest of African women and African people as a whole. In other
words, it is a culturally-affirming and transformative ideal of the self-agency and social struggle of
Black women to resist all forms of oppression and assert themselves in freedom, confidence and
creativity.

The central concern of this paper is: (1) to affirm the cultural integrity of the term womanish as
descriptive of a Black girl and thus to argue that it does not become an adjective or noun removed
from that fact in popular parlance; (2) to maintain that the term "womanist" as in African-centered
womanism, is independent of analogy with feminist, and independent of the need for womanism to
replace feminism as a "universal" voice of all or best for all; (3) to argue that this
independence/self-advocacy in Black women is indicative of African-centeredness, works for the
whole, and is opposed to the division of Black people, and; (4) to conclude by way of a cautioning
comparison of the possible fate of "womanish" to that of jazz, given that Walker's definition
snatches womanish from its roots for public consumption--"universal" purposes, i.e., to serve
beyond the community.

To begin with the launching concern of this paper, Alice Walker's widely-referenced definition of a
womanist (In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, 1983, p. xi) locates womanist in the Black American
cultural context from which it comes. Thus, in coining womanist, she in fact drew on the already
existing African American expression "womanish" ("manish" for boys) long in the Black American
vernacular that describes Black girls who evince characteristics of wit, will, grit, smarts, empathy,
curiosity, thoughtfulness, loyalty, risk-taking, trustworthiness, active not passive, pensiveness, and
stubbornness as necessary to remain strong against attempts to undermine her intelligence or kill
her spirit. In her definition, Walker's two descriptives that most capture a womanist girl are
"capable" and "serious." Yet this womanish girl, like the grown up womanist adult, is not all serious
and no fun, for she enjoys having fun, and not simply as respite from the downside of life, but
proactively. Fun within us is self-treating, is positively contagious in community, is medicating. I like
the road along which Grace Nichols' mind moves to arrive at a womanist's sense of fun:

It is true that black women have carried much more than their share of hardships along the way.
But I reject the stereotype of the 'long suffering black woman' who is so strong that she can carry
whatever is heaped upon her. There is a danger of reducing the black woman's condition to that of
'sufferer,' whether at the hands of white society or at the hands of black men. I know too many
black women with a surmounting spirit and with their own particular quirkiness and sense of humor
to know this is not true. (Caribbean Women Writers (1990, pp. 284-285)

Thus, a womanish girl has spunk and has pluck to go along with smarts. And the same goes for the
grown up Black woman, who is self-defined, self-identified. "She is a woman of complex moods
who articulates her situation with vision" (Nichols 1990, p. 288).

On womanist/womanish willfulness, Opal Palmer Adisa brings a fun and vivid narrative to "She
Scrape She Knee: The Theme of My Work" (1990). Adisa recounts how "As a girl I often scraped
my knee, not because ! had poor balance, or tripped over my feet, but because I dared to be more
or other than what good girls were supposed to be." As an adult she continued in this proclivity to
scrape her knee, "sometimes," she adds, "without even falling." Maturity no doubt figures in bracing
against a fall, but bracing against a fall does not mean abandoning bravery where bravery is
demanded, especially on behalf of one's people. For clarification, Adisa offers: "Perhaps it is
because I dare to demand that the way be cleared...or that I insist on leading the line at times." She
reflects summarily on the Africana girl to woman mettle:
Now as I reflect, I see the that there is much in
common between the little girl who frequently
scraped her knew and has scars to prove it and
this woman, me, who must often walk stiff-legged
in defiance of the scrapes that are inflicted, often
by the insensitive, the upholders of ... norms ...
that I had no part in setting and by which I will
not abide ... I have found that among my female
friends, knee scrapers tip the scale. We are so
abundant with our songs, our plays, our paintings,
our research, our cameras, and our children, that all
of us continuously scrape our knees and will not
stop, even through we ware not masochistic. (p. 145)

Adisa, therefore proclaims about the women whose lives she captures in her stories:" They stumble
but they continue on" (p.148). She is not romanticizing bravery, or risk-taking; she knows that the
expression "The good die young" can mean emotionally as well as physically; thus bracing oneself
anticipates the danger that must be overcome.

One of the main reasons Walker's term is embraced by womanists is that it is culturally rooted. It,
therefore, resonates with and evolves memories of experiences they had or narratives they have
been told. My interest in this paper, as stated in point one of my thesis, is to reaffirm the cultural-
rootedness and value of the ideal of being womanish, with emphasis on self-agency and
transformative practice. It is also to contribute to maintaining its cultural integrity in resistance to
various attempts to appropriate it by others or define it from within in ways that lift it out of its
communal and cultural context.

For those of us everyday Black women who are unremoved from our Black community regardless
of education, neighborhood, connections, friendships, political allies, relationships or intellectual
conceit, it is the image of the womanish Black girl all grown up, mature, resourceful, and resilient
that pops in the mind's eye at the mention of "womanish and womanist" in the same breath. It is
she who reflects back at us from the looking glass. A womanist has the freshness and zest of a
womanish girl, and the maturity of mind and emotion of a woman. This term womanish traces along
a Black path back beyond memory in Black culture and along a singular cultural route to Black
ingenuity in naming it like it is. In her poem "Mirror," Amiri M. Davis, reflects on this womanist
lineage "from a motherline/of captives and sharecroppers/of Fulani Nomads" (p. 107). Particularly
characteristic of womanist, Davis says: "she has always had gumption/and so have I" (p. 109). This
concept of "gumption" which means common sense, courage, and initiative, points toward the
importance of self-determination in defining womanism and maintaining the cultural integrity of it
and its root ideal, womanish.

The Nigerian writer Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi who self-identifies as "African womanist" says;
"Naming ourselves meaningfully as we have always done in our cultures historicizes our
circumstances and focalizes politics" (p. 116). Womanisms of various kinds invariably uphold the
value of self-determination, which includes practices of self-defining, self-naming, and self-reliance
(Karenga and Tembo, 2012, see in this publication). Therefore, as point two of my thesis maintains,
it is past the time for self-identified "traditionally capable" Black women everywhere to have the
gumption to let "womanist" stand on its own, free of any erroneously perceived need to be validated
or assisted, or protected or comforted by analogy with the term feminism,--mentioned as a last
thought in the Walker definition. The very idea that Black women are dependent on White women
to stand tall violates the principle of self-determination and negates the need for a self-defining term
which womanism was created to provide. Black women who insist on enfeebling the term womanist
by way of analogy with that other term, should see the contradictory character of this practice. It
obviously raises the question of why does a definition of womanist need something it is not to
describe it? This is unnecessary for theoretical formulation and certainly unnecessary for visual
imagery. Moreover, there is a need for some Black women claiming the Womanist title, to be careful
about the tendency to find glee in feigning a "primitive" and emotional core in deference to
mistaken White assumptions, and concealing the critical consciousness and intellectual
engagement womanism involves. The colonial mask of the African past has never been and is not
now a fashion statement. Nor does a womanist need to be royal in reverse conceit, but rather
should evince a self-conscious dignity and insist on an equality that makes her second to none. In
sum, womanist defined usefully and correctly has no need for synonym, antonym, analogy, or
disguise to define itself.

African-centered womanism is proactive and culturally confident in its exclusively Black embrace. In
this it diverges from the variety of womanism argued for by Lyli Phillips (2006). In her "Introduction"
to The Womanist Reader Phillips states that "contrary to the way it which it has been characterized,
womanism's main concern is not Black women per se; rather, Black women are the place where
this particular form of thinking ... originates" (p. xxv). African-centered womanism, in contrast, is not
simply the core of something, rather it is that something in every respect. Other than the part
Phillips says about where womanism originated, her thrust is quite the opposite of the case made
for African-centered womanism. African-centered womanists are unencumbered of a self-
obliterating sense of benevolence, no matter how nuanced to appear otherwise. African-centered
womanism is not slavish attendant to the world. African-centered womanism does not nuance
apology where none is needed. Molefi Kete Asante posits that "The Afrocentric Method insists that
the researcher examines herself or himself in the process of researching a subject" (p. 88), which I
embrace in embarking upon this subject of integrity of Black culture. On this James Stewart (1997)
speaks of "peoples of African descent continuously striving to achieve sufficient power to maintain
their cultural identity" (p. 115).

Whether or not there is adherence in every respect to Walker's definition, all benefit from her
womanist proclivity to go where none had gone before in coining womanist out of womanish.
Equally so, in true womanist proclivity, Black women throughout the Diaspora bring constructive
deliberation to how they think and feel about the entirety of Walker's definition. For instance
Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi observes, that "the womanist praxis in Africa has never totally
identified with all the original Walkerian precepts (p. 10). In regard to "feminism" and "womanism"
Ogunyemi brings Flora Nwapa into the discussion. She reports that Nwapa, during a London Book
Fair in 1984, "bristled at labels, but being African-centered, if pushed to self-identify with a label,
she absolutely preferred womanist" (p. 133) to feminist. This is also the position ultimately taken by
Valethia Watkins (1997) in her brilliantly explored study, "Womanism and Black feminism: Issues in
the manipulation of African Historiography."

For her part, Walker describes a womanist as a woman of color instead of specifically a Black
woman. I know from experience how in the early 1990s, that variety of womanism was wonderfully
instrumental in organizing students of color--African American, American Indian, Asian American,
Latina American--into a purposeful collective whole to protest racism at Mills, a then feminist ruled
college for women in Oakland, California. Singularly, each group of color was small in number;
collectively, while still a small percentage of the student body at Mills, in 1994 they organized
themselves formally into a viable force as "Womanists Against Institutional Racism" (WAIR) at Mills.
The battle was on with the White feminist toughs in positions of power whose brand of feminist
vanity demanded that White is right: in the classroom, in the faculty meetings, in the chapel; in the
advisory and dean of students offices, as in the highest administrative office. So quite naturally, no
woman of color with any racial consciousness/self-respect was going to indulge that nonsense--
which explains why no American of color (female or male) before our fight had ever been tenured
at that then over 100 year-old peculiar institution. Some had fled as soon as an opening elsewhere
miraculously appeared, or left rejected and dejected. Thus, Alice Walker's coining of womanist,
which up front limited womanists to women of color, served a strong and proud proactive role, as
the collective women of color held ground in the face of the objectionable White "feminist" militia in
positions of power/privilege at that college. Of a like mind with the African women who Ogunyemi
explained had "never totally identified with all the original Walkerian precepts," were the women of
color in that fight at Mills. What failed to resonate was that last part of Walker's definition that
veered off character to succumb to dependency on analogy with feminism. Two years earlier in
1992, five students of color and I had founded the The Womanistjournal, and sought and was
graciously granted permission by Waiker to use the word she coined for the name of the journal,
and to simply leave off the part of her definition that we could not embrace. The design of the
journal included on the inside front cover a grateful dedication to Alice Walker, giving credit where
credit is due. The Womanist (the first publication with womanist in its title) lives on today. However,
as stated, African-centered womanism is culturally contextualized, specifically Black. It is the
cultural reality of womanish as rooted in Black life and ingenuity in naming. African-centered
womanism comes to the rescue of that, which like jazz, is in as much danger of being given away
as of being appropriated by Eurocentric others whose actions historically have flaunted "Mine for
the taking!"

In Sister Outsider Audre Lorde (1984) says that "In this country Black woman traditionally have had
compassion for everybody except ourselves" (p. 62). Of course, history shows this to be true of
some Black men as well as of some Black women, especially as Lorde goes on to say: "We have
cared for whites because we had to for our survival" (p. 62). Perhaps some of us just got so used to
doing that, as to internalize the role. The beloved Bill Bojangles comes to mind. I recall with what
anger my parents would seethe in disgust, not at him, but at the television set (and there is
difference) when on the screen flashed his famous staircase dance with Shirley Temple, teaching
her how to dance (The Little Colonel 1935), Bojangles' big smile gives the appearance of being
pleased to serve up his talents to a patronizing White child, who already had mastered how to look
sweet when talking down to a Black adult. Utterly unfettered by the fact that she is being given
something to enrich her life, Shirley Temple is directed in the film to make it look like she is doing
Bojangles a favor--his beaming smile encouraging that stunt in White growth. Of this sort of thing,
Grace Nichols says: "I think that white people have to be aware of this in their psyche and question
whether they want to be trapped in this cliched vision." To Black people in the business of slavish
relish playing that old time role with Whites, Nichols' offers words to the wise: "I feel we also have to
come up with new myths and other images that please us" (p. 287).

My third point of discussion, here, that independence/self-advocacy in Black women is indicative of

African-centeredness, and works for the whole, is in agreement with that part of Walker's definition
where she says a womanist is "committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and
female," JoAnne Banks-Wallace's (2009) reading is worth noting:
Walker's definition provides a space to (1)
recognize the uniqueness of African American
women's experiences, (2) articulate the similarities
and differences between these experiences and
those of other women of color, and (3) address
explicitly the important bond between African
American women and men. (p. 316)

Brenda Verner, a Black Chicagoan activist and educator, explains:

Womanism reflects the cultural mindset of Africana
women, a thought mechanism ... of centuries ...
of self actualization ... the way we view the world
from inside Africana culture and ... principles upon
which we base our decision--making.... womanism
in essence says ... we value human life ... we are not
at war with our men. (p. 3)

Interestingly, this cultural independence that breaks with a mainstream insistence on division, is
also a position made by some Latina theorists, such as Anna Castille, Chicago writer and activist
who coined the term Xicanisma for Latinas, explaining:
Xicanisma is an ever present consciousness ...
specifically rooted in our culture and history.... It
is.... based on wholeness not dualisms. Men are not
our opposites our opponents, our 'other." (p. 226)
Of course, this is not to deny that there are serious issues of male sexism that women of diverse
races, ethnicities, and cultures are challenging--just about every place under the sun. African-
centered scholar, Lynda Myers, on the question of sexism, says, "sexism is a serious problem that
we as [Black] people have not really addressed or solved" (qtd in Karenga, 2010, p. 413). Thus,
work continues in a joint effort of women and men. My emeritus colleague Oba T'Shaka (1995)
brings his voice to this effort in the vision he puts forth that a "just society" is one in which "males
and females are equally empowered to govern every phrase of society" (p. 305).

Ogunyemi who, as stated, self-identifies as "African womanist," coined the term "wo/man palava"
(palava: a word for conversation) to indicate African women (wo) and men (man) coming together
to work out their "troubles" and the problems facing Nigena together. Attentive to gender matters,
Ogunyemi defers to Flora Nwapa:

Nwapa's womanism attempts to get rid of the

innuendos attached to feminism. In the face of
continuous gender divisions, it constantly seeks
consonance, sometimes at a price. In a difficult
situation, it prefers to maintain the status quo while
it bides its time for the inevitable compromise in
the relationship between man and women. (p. 116)

In this meaning is her highlighting the obvious--that women and men are family. And their
"resources must be pooled together for survival"(p. 116). This pooling together is of course not
without conflict, as any Black woman anywhere will tell you. Ogunyemi makes clear Nwapa's
position on this, that family or not, "compromise does not preclude ... confrontation between men
and woman. After all, family members are liable to fall out only to be reconciled. What counts is the
nature of the palava and the spint of the ensuing palava for conciliation" (p. 134). Pertinent here, as
posted Saturday, 25 March 2011, during Women's History Month, Maulana Karenga, says:
This is the month for celebrating the miracles and
wonders we call Black women, that other hall of
our community which makes us, as a people, whole,
these equal and most worthy partners in life, love
and struggle to bring good in the wodd. This does
not mean we don't celebrate Black women any
other time or all the time in the vaned ways we do.
It simply means this is a special month of marking,
intentionally set aside to remind us and them of the
great and indispensable good they have brought and
bring in the world. It is a special time to reinforce
the rightful attentiveness we owe them, to reaffirm
the great value we find in them, and to express
in countless ways the profound respect, love and
appreciation we have for them. In a word, it is a time
to think deeply about and appreciate the meaning

and responsibility, the glory and burden, the joy and

stress, and the wonder and work of being African

women in the world.

African-centered womanism's commitment to the survival with dignity of the entire race of Black
people, female and male, is essence to the present construct.

The old fashioned expression for this commitment is "race man"/"race woman." A race woman is
best defined by example, as found in an article by Regina Freer (2004), "L.A. Race Woman:
Charlotta Bass and the Complexities of Black Political Development in Los Angeles":

Whether she was protesting discriminatory hiring at

the Southern California Telephone Company or in
the war industries, seeking to stop production of the
racist film Birth of a Nation, or decrying residential
segregation, Charlotta Bass put a premium on
racial fairness and equity. Very much a "race
woman, "she set aside class privilege to militantly
advocate on behalf of the entire black community,
prioritizing and evaluating issues based upon their
relationship to the advancement of the downtrodden
of the race. (pp. 602-603)

Today, African-centered womanists are of the inclination of the Black race women and men of the
first half of the twentieth century.

In 'Africana Studies and Epistemology: A Discourse in the Sociology of Knowledge," James E.

Turner (1997) brings John H. Clarke into his discussion, to make the point that African-
centeredness "relates you to a land, history, and culture. No people is spiritually or cultural secure
until it answers to a name of its own choosing--a name that simultaneously relates that people to its
past, present, and future" (p. 92). My emeritus colleague Wade Nobles (1984) speaks of people
"interpreting their reality in terms of its ideology, ethos and worldview" and that "its "manifestations"
consist of behavior, values and attitudes" (p. 103). On this point us well, during an interview with
Zulu and Carroll (1980), James Stewart explained:

The African worldview consists, in part, of

the values and beliefs developed and used by
people of African descent to shape inter-personal
relationships, relationships with other peoples, and
relationships to the environment. This conception is
not meant to deny the wide variation in values and
beliefs among various African peoples. However,
the construction implies that viewed collectively,
there are shared elements of values and beliefs
that can be distinguished from those developed by
groups in other parts of the world. (p. 86)

These observations are important to keep in mind, for as stated at the onset here, one of
womanism's greatest challenges is resisting attempts to define or redefine it ... outside its cultural
context and social reality. This dilemma can have amplification in what has happened in the
ongoing attempts by Whites to utterly appropriate jazz--and model that bad behavior for uninformed
or uncaring non-Black people of color globally, who uncritically follow that White privileged lead.

In the example of Jazz, we see what can happen when European-centered Whites, and their
imitators, exert White privilege to claim jazz, supported in this by those benevolent Blacks of a
universalistic bent who find the pat on the head sufficient reward for giving it away. Thus my fourth
point of discussion in this essay is to caution that the fate of jazz not become that of "womanish and
womanism," given that Walker's definition is vulnerable to being interpreted as no more than the
grinning core to which others help themselves--as if in so-doing, they compliment the source high
jacked.

Of course, non-Blacks of every hue, continent, and island, have a long history of imitating and
appropriating Black music, of all genres, to give themselves cool or hip or genius extension. We
must take lesson from that development in jazz, as we define ourselves as womanists. Imitation
may be a form of flattery, but flattery at that price is an insult. Such an insult was committed by
Yoshi's in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Not long ago in 2007, Yoshi's, considered a premiere jazz club in the United States, celebrated its
ten years in the Bay Area, by releasing a compilation CD without even one Black artist on it. This
CD included tracks of Marian McPartland, Joe Pass, Joey DeFrancesco, Poncho Sanchez,
Madeleine Peyroux and Robben Ford, and left off Black jazz musicians who have performed at
Yoshi's over those ten years: Oscar Peterson, McCoy Tyner, Anthony Braxton, Elvin Jones,
Mulgrew Miller, Bobby Hutcherson, Wallace Roney, Joshua Redman, Branford Marsalis, Sonny
Fortune, Taj Mahal. According to Undercover Black Man blog, "What's silly about that--as the San
Francisco Chronicle noted, is that the tracks chosen for the 10th Anniversary disc had little to do
with 'the content of their artistry.'" The cool Bay Area Black jazz community of artists and fans threw
cool to the wind and raised a collective angry voice about the Blacklessness of Yoshi's 10th
Anniversary disc. Radio host Greg Bridges wrote to Bay Area Jazz critic Jim Harrington:

What I immediately felt when checking out this CD was disrespect and insult, for again this majestic
music that was created by Black musicians from their own life experiences and ideas is being
presented us if there's not even been a contribution from black musicians. (quoted in
UndercoverBlack Man blog)

Only upon the outcry did Yoshi's announce it was pulling the CD off the market and would overhaul
the mix.

Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle (June 2, 2007) an article titled "Shamed, Yoshi's pulls CD,
apologizes / Club hit sour note with lack of black musicians on record" Jesse Hamlin and Steven
Winn said:

The managers of Yoshi's jazz club said Friday that issuing a 10th anniversary CD with no African
American musicians was "a huge mistake" and "a major oversight." In the wake of complaints by
some African American musicians and community leaders, the club issued an apology and
withdrew the disc. With "Live at Yoshi's: Anniversary Compilation" off the market, the club plans to
create a new recording that more accurately reflects the musicians who play the 340-seat venue at
Oakland's Jack London Square, said Joan Rosenberg, marketing director for the club.
(SFGate.com)

Again, James Stewart's point, previously here referred to, about "peoples of African descent
continuously striving to achieve sufficient power to maintain their cultural identity"

Just as I straighten out offenders on this matter of Jazz being Black music, whenever a flyer comes
in the mail for an ethnic-of-color-specified, non-Black, jazz concert, I return the card with the polite
notice: "Please indicate on your flyer that jazz is Black American music as you would indicate, for
instance, that Kabuki is Japanese." The issue is not with non-Blacks appreciating Black music, but
the issue is their convenient obscuring of a Black cultural reality. Perhaps among the young
generations, there is true ignorance, given the multitude of non-Black aficionados and appropriators
of Black music over the decades, and globally at that. While I am unaware of any such thing as an
African American appropriation of music, conversely speaking, I am aware that African Americans
do sing and play music in the European classical tradition, but we don't make Africana claim to it-
Well, the genius musical innovator Beethoven is of African heritage (as is Pushkin, brilliant poet of
Russian literary renown). I mention Beethoven and Pushkin here in playful gesture, in the manner
of Mohammad Ali's playful boasting to educate a contender for his crown. But to bring this
discussion back to the fact that some among us are bent on dibbing out "Womanism," I find it
unwise to rest my case.

In Womanism and African Consciousness, Mary E. Modupe Kolawole (1997) shares that, "Many
African women scholars are unfolding the visibility of the African woman as an important step in
speaking out. Self-healing entails correcting the representation of African women as if they exist in
some subterranean world, tongue-tied and demobilized" (p. 25). Let this be a warning to those
among us who would put us on a path to demobilization, tongue-tied from being bombarded by
fame-struck Black scholars speaking out of both sides of their mouth.

With this cautionary tale about jazz to brace us, we must not allow womanism to endure a similar
fate. We must keep in mind that jazz was not simply appropriated to convenient oblivion by others,
but was, and still is, skimmed of cultural integrity by some benevolent Black jazz musicians,
yesterday and today, who were and are of the thinking that Black culture is theirs for the dibbing
out, simply because they were born gifted artists. The same goes for gifted Black scholars who will
go just so far in cultural assertion, before trying to make up to Whites in power positions by denying
they meant to do anything independent of them. Lets not go there. Lets not wait until we have to
reclaim "womanism" when today we can proclaim, without shame or false pride, that womanism--
culturally rooted in womanish--is ours in the first place. Nina Simone said, "Jazz is not just music,
it's a way of life, of thinking (quoted in Night of the Living Vinyl, May 6, 2011, par. 1). August Wilson
said, "My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history (quoted in Patricia Law
(2008), par 7 online). And as Opal Palmer Adisa says, "I am the work, and the work is womanish"
(p. 150).

My intent on first sitting at the computer to write this paper was to attempt at constructing a
theoretical paradigm for African-centered womanism. I found myself at the onset intent on insisting
on making sure we keep womanist in its womanish Black cultural context: Its African-centered
context. My sense of urgency about this has much to do with what history teaches us about how
Black culture can be appropriated to the point that to fight for it after the fact, is a high blood
pressuring exercise. While to protest appropriation does not put us physically in harm's way, as did
freedom marches and lunchroom sit-ins, it is a killer, and I don't mean a killer-diller, for there is
nothing cool, as in jazz, about it. What is "copacetic" (a term Bill Bojangles' famously claimed to
having coined) is that African-centered womanists, African womanists, and Black women who
prefer no labels, are everywhere self-confident and independent of analogy in being ourselves.

References

Adisa, O. P. (1990). "She scrape she knee; The theme of my work." Caribbean Women Writers.
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Asante, M. (1997). "Afrocentricity and the Quest for Method." Africana Studies: A Disciplinary Quest
for both Theory and Method. (ed.) James L. Conyers, Jr. Jefferson, N.C. McFarland and Co., pp.
69-90.

Banks-Wallace, J. (2006). "Womanist Ways of Knowing: Theoretical Considerations for Research

and African American Women." In L. Phillips (Ed), The Womanist Reader. New York: Routlege, p.
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DOROTHY RANDALL TSURUTA--SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY

Dorothy Randall Tsuruta PhD, Professor/Chair Africana Studies, San Francisco State University:
Selected works: "Cultural Memory in the Works of Langston Hughes as Art for Life's Sake" Memory
and The Narrative Imagination In the African and Diaspora Experience; "Womanish: Verve, Viable
and Visible: Implications for Africana/Black Studies" International Journal of Africana Studies;
"Regal and Royal: Chicago's Extraordinary Maud Martha" Gwendolyn Brooks' Maud Martha: A
Critical Collection; "When Service is treated as Help" Concems: A Publication of the Women's
Caucus of the Modern Language Association; two in-progress: (1) A Black Canon: Elmer Augustus
McLaughlin 1889-1994; (2) Yet untitled chronicle of 1990s successful challenge to institutional
racism at Mills college, where she co-founded The Womanist and the Women of Color Resource
Center.

Tsuruta, Dorothy Randall

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 The Western Journal of Black Studies

http://www.wsu.edu/~wjbs/
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Tsuruta, Dorothy Randall. "The womanish roots of womanism: a culturally-derived and African-
centered ideal (concept)." The Western Journal of Black Studies, vol. 36, no. 1, 2012, p. 3+.
Gale Academic OneFile Select, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A291497205/EAIM?
u=mlin_oweb&sid=bookmark-EAIM&xid=ce705f3a. Accessed 12 July 2021.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A291497205