quotes

praxis:

womanist

1. From womanish. (Opp. of “girlish,” i.e., frivolous, irresponsible, not serious.) A black feminist or feminist of color. From the black folk expression of mothers to female children, “you acting womanish,” i.e., like a woman. Usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered “good” for one. Interested in grown up doings. Acting grown up. Being grown up. Interchangeable with another black folk expression: “You trying to be grown.” Responsible. In charge. Serious.

2. Also: A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counterbalance of laughter), and women’s strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally a universalist, as in: “Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige and black?” Ans. “Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented.” Traditionally capable, as in: “Mama, I’m walking to Canada and I’m taking you and a bunch of other slaves with me.” Reply: “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.

4. Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

Alice Walker’s Definition of a “Womanist” from In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose Copyright 1983.

everything is connected

“In West African animist belief, all time is now. We are the living embodiment of our ancestors. We carry their DNA. However it is not just the physical matter of our bodies that is shaped by those who came before us, it is the patterns of our thoughts and the patterns of our cultures and societies. Animism sees this link between the past, present, and future as a constant that exists beyond time; it sees life in everything, and sees all life as equal. Life and death are simply two different states, and what marks a living thing is that it is never static, it is always changing, evolving, and that in every stage of life, life expresses itself, until death allows the cycle to start again. Animism believes that everything in the universe has a spirit, an energy, and everything is intimately and intricately connected. The sun, the earth, air, rain, seasons turning again and again as the world spins on its axis and the planets make their journeys around our distant star. Time moves, the past is present, and nothing can ever halt the cycles that every living thing depends on, not until the end of time. All of life on Earth is a consequence of these subtle interactions.”

from Earth and Leaves by Aboubakar Fofana, essay by Johanna Macnaughtan