Alice Walker’s Definition of 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.
Melanie Harris’ Ecowomanist Method
Lyntons Worked the Canal
Taken on site at the Miraflores locks.
The Panamá Canal
The Drowning Jungle
the “artificial heart” of the Panamá Canal.
Canal Heroes
Taken on site at the Miraflores locks.
Caribbean workers are in the top left corner.
How We Story Our Heroes
Where are the Women?
Housing reserved for Caribbean laborers in the early period of American construction
Caribbean Laborers Memorialized
From http://blog.lib.umn.edu/victor/hereandthere/2011/02/building-the-panama-canal.html
Why the Panamá Canal
Taken on site, large boat in foreground.
Why Womanist Ethics
1907 image listed as “washer women carrying tubs.”
Sofia Betancourt’s Definition of Ecocreolization
Ecocreolization is an agential response to the slow violence of neo-imperialism and forced displacement/migration. It is the process of self-definition and meaning making that arises in response to interrelated violence centered on race, class, gender, and the environment. Ecocreolization insists that the formation of African diasporic identities and cultures cannot be fully understood without engaging our relationship to Earth. Through co-constructions of race, class, gender, and the natural world, ecocreolization reveals what it means to be fully human in a time of climate disruption.
Yam Plants