The Garden Undefined: A Black Creative on Womanism
Written by Soteria Thomas
I’ve spent a big bulk of my life having things pertaining to me defined by someone else— my Blackness, my womanhood, my humanity, or some mix of the three.
Whether it was my mother, grandmother, a high school ex, or hundreds of people who don’t even know me personally — I have lived a life distinguished by the expectations of those who will never live a second in my body. I say this knowing that all people live under a cloud of someone else’s assumptions or confidence, but I’m referring especially to this eerie phenomenon where my mere existence is seemingly molded to fit a statistic. As a Black woman, I should look, act, dress, think, and dream a certain way. It was as if I was given a patch of weedy earth at birth, had a few seed packets thrown at my feet, and told, “This is your lot in life and you can only grow that which I see fit for you to grow, which isn’t much.” Meanwhile, an endless meadow of possibilities rolls out beyond my pitiful garden, a true Eden of raw potential that I hope to prove isn’t limited by this Black and feminine body I inhabit. To prove in fact that it is only enhanced by my experiences.
Writing has always been a way for me to explore this meadow and to expand my lot in life. There's a cathartic joining between the literal act of creating the stories that I’d like to see in the world and the symbolic act of ‘writing my own story’. Being a Black femme creative has never been the ‘practical’ choice, it’s never been the easy route, and it doesn’t ensure success — perhaps the opposite in many cases. Yet it is the path I have committed myself to nonetheless, however shortsighted or audacious it may seem. Lucky for me, being audacious is just one of the hallmarks of a budding Womanist.
A Garden Called Womanism
Womanism is this very new, very fluid, very beautiful theory that works to eradicate oppression and inequalities of all forms for all people, celebrate Black culture, myth, orality, spirituality, history, and spotlights the efforts and beauty of Black women. The woman behind it is Alice Walker, author of the critically-acclaimed novel The Color Purple. If you’re at all familiar with Womanism, you might have heard her famous quote, “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender”. She first coined the term in her 1979 short story Coming Apart, then again in her 1983 book In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, where she defined being a ‘Womanist’ as:
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 non-sexually. 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 non-sexually. 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.
When I first found out about Womanism in March 2016, I felt this sense of belonging from simply having learned about it: a social theory created by a Black woman creative for Black women creatives. It was almost a dream to have stumbled onto the article that led to my revelation. I hope to pay it forward with this article to help any curious readers out there.
Those Who Sowed
I believe that Womanism has existed, without much note, within the Black community since our very emancipation, embodied by women like Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, and Anna Julia Cooper. Interestingly enough, in 1892 Cooper said, “Only the Black woman can say ‘when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole [...] race enters with me’”. But I’d be remiss not to acknowledge the nameless Black women who worked to build a better future for their descendants. The timeless strength and perseverance of those women have echoed throughout the generations, whether or not they knew themselves to be Womanists.
The Women Who Rose
The beauty of a definition as long as Walker’s is that it allows a lot of wiggle room: not everyone is going to be the ‘textbook’ Womanist, so it serves to know that there is no true rigidity to overcome. Given the origins of the theory, it’s not surprising that so many Black women creatives manifest what the essence of Womanism is:
Poet and civil rights activist Audre Lorde was a vocal Womanist who strove for inclusivity in the Feminist Movement. Like me, she felt the overwhelming need to be the architect of her own destiny as evidenced by this quote, “If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.”
Octavia Butler, award-winning African-American sci-fi author and the great dame of science fiction, made it a point to write about Black people in a way that was practically unheard of at the time. She carved out a place for herself in an industry not looking for a genius like hers and blazed a trail for generations of Black creatives to follow, even if she may have felt a bit out of place in the crowd. In an autobiographical moment found in her book Parable of the Sower, Butler wrote, “Who am I? I am a forty-seven-year-old writer who can remember being a ten-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an eighty-year-old writer. I am also comfortably asocial — a hermit.… A pessimist if I’m not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.”
More modern ‘womanish’ Black creatives include Janelle Monáe, who has been a fervent supporter of women’s’ rights and the Black Lives Matter Movement, Ava DuVernay, who uses film to tell stories for and about Black people, and noted Nigerian feminist scholar and novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
A Garden Undefined
While trying to come up with an appropriate conclusion, the thought of a rose came to mind. We adore roses for their beauty, and in our admiration, we seek to organize that beauty in a way to suit us aesthetically. We trim its natural thorns, snip it from its home source, we wax and compare physical human beauty to it until it wilts in an impersonal glass vase. I wonder if anyone else gets that whispering melancholy when they see a rose dying in a jar on a dining room table. Or, if they wonder with regret what would’ve become of it if they’d let the rose go undefined.
Womanism exists, not as an effort to categorize Black women, but to help us strive for the opportunities to script our own narratives. As times grow more and more uncertain, I feel it’s even more imperative that we do what we must tell our stories the way that we best see fit so that they make a resounding impact on those who hear them. Just as wind bends trees and water moves mountains, it will be those stories that urge someone else to step outside their lots in life and take a walk through that endless meadow of possibilities.
Author bio
Soteria Thomas is a lifelong writer, natural born Southern Belle, and a newly converted ailurophile. Follow her on Instagram @soteriawrites to see more of her work.
