Alice walker's womanist theory: crossing racial, cultural. gender and sexual lines in the literary text of women of color., 1996

This study examines Alice Walker's womanist theory as a cultural and literary philosophy based on two formidable ideals: a dedication to the condition and upliftment of women of color, as well as a refusal to be confined within traditional feminist aesthetics. A type of feminist protest literature, woman ism does not seek to segregate, but to integrate, women of color into a sisterhood that respects cultural diversity. Three criteria are also established in this text upon which Walker's womanist ideology rests: Tuzyline Allan's selfhood ideology, Fox-Genovese's concept of the ideal self, and Marcia Riggs' four tasks of womanism. In addition, as progenitors to the Women's Suffrage and Feminist Movements, Frances E.W. Harper and Zora Neale Hurston, are two African-American women of the past who exhibited characteristics similar to those in Walker's theory. Therefore, their lives and texts are studied from a womanist perspective in order to give historical foundation to Walker's ideology. Furthermore, African-American women writers, Mae Gwendolyn Henderson and Sherley Anne Williams; Latin-American women writers, Judith Ortiz Gofer and Gloria Anzaldua; Native Lloyd 2 American women writers, Marcie Rendon (Awanewquay) and Kate Stanley; and Asian-American writer Amy Tan are critiqued for their respective conceptualized ideologies that correlate with Walker's womanist theory. These cross-cultural perspectives are used to demonstrate how Walker's womanism can be used as a platform upon which women of color can commune on issues of race, culture, qender, and sexuality