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Womanism: Alice Walker's Civil Rights Movement

1126 Words5 Pages
ABSTRACT
Alice Walker the feminist deals with the oppression of black women and men. Her quest is a new identify for black women, a self–awareness which will make them self dependent socially, emotionally and spiritually. Racial oppression, general violence, history and ancestry, Civil Rights Movement – all these form the sum and substance of her work. It was Alice walker who coined the term ‘Womanism’ a form of black feminism that affricates and prefers women’s culture, women’s flexibility and women’s strength. ‘Womanism’ according to Alice Walker is not narrowly exclusive; it is committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. In all aspects Alice walker is the brightest star in a galaxy of black American women writers.
Keywords: Womanism, Civil Rights Movement, Black feminism, Women’s strength
AFRICAN WOMANISM
The growing influence of the post-colonial agenda since the 1980’s has resulted in the creative expression of voice which was till now silenced by the Western master narratives. The painstaking efforts of non-white women from the margins has brought cross-cultural and inter-racial discussions into the arena of academic feminist theorizing which was till now based on gender. One of the primary aims of third-world feminism was to reject homogenizing impulses of Western feminists who analyzed women issues purely with regard to gender. The prominent black theoretician Bell Hooks criticizes her contemporaries Betty Friedman (whose book The Feminine
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