Africana Womanism
The sixth edition of Africana Womanism provides important updates to the classic text in which Clenora Hudson (Weems) sets out a paradigm for women of African descent. Differentiating itself from the problematic theories of Western feminisms, Africana Womanism allows an establishment of cultural identity and relationship directly to ancestry and land.
Introduced in the mid-1980s, Africana Womanism offers a new term and paradigm for women of African descent, a family-centered concept, prioritizing race, class, and gender. This new edition includes an Africana Womanist reading of Angie Thomas’ twenty-first-century novel, The Hate U Give, continuing existing Africana Womanist readings of twentieth-century novels by Hurston, Bâ, Marshall, Morrison, and McMillan; a Prologue, a previously unpublished interview with the author; a revised conclusion; updated bibliographies; an updated annotated bibliography; and a new section outlining key questions, clarifications, considerations, and commentaries surrounding Africana Womanism in relation to other female-based theories.
Africana Womanism remains an important work and essential reading for researchers and students in women and gender studies, Africana studies, African American studies, literary studies, and cultural studies.
Clenora Hudson (Weems) coined the concept of Africana Womanism in the 1980s. She has written several books on the subject, in addition to significant works on Emmett Till—being the first to establish him as the true catalyst of the Civil Rights Movement in her 1988 Ford doctoral dissertation, “Emmett Louis Till: The Impetus of the Modern Civil Rights Movement”—and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison. She was distinguished Honoree for the First International Africana Womanism Conference at the University of Zimbabwe, and the Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa 50th Anniversary of African American Studies, delivering the Keynote Address, “Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison as a Model Africana Womanist Artivist for Social Justice”. She also delivered the Opening Keynote Address, “Why Africana Womanism? Authenticity and Collectivity for Social Justice” at the Conference on Women at the University of Zimbabwe.