Introduction: New Directions in Feminism and Womanism in Africa and the African Diaspora

Introduction

The idea for this special issue grew out of Purdue University's 25th Annual Symposium on African American Culture and Philosophy, which was held November 5-7, 2009. The theme was "New Directions in Feminism and Womanism in Africa and the African Diaspora." We sought a wide range of papers to explore theoretical aspects of Africana womanism, African feminism, black feminism, and womanism, as well as papers exploring facets of black women's lives. The symposium generated rich dialogue around such topics as empowerment, health, mothering, representation, sexuality, spirituality, and black women in the academy. The symposium in many ways responded to the concerns raised by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith in their groundbreaking All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave. The text essentially served as a call for black women's studies, as they noted:

Women's Studies . . . focused almost exclusively upon the lives of white women. Black Studies, which was much too often male-dominated, also ignored Black women. . . . Because of white women's racism and Black men's sexism, there was no room in either area for a serious consideration of the lives of Black women. And even when they have considered Black women, white women usually have not had the capacity to analyze racial politics and Black culture, and Black men have remained blind or resistant to the implications of sexual politics in Black women's lives.

(Hull, Bell, and Smith, 1981, xx-xxi)

Since this watershed publication, much more scholarship has been attuned to the perspectives and concerns of black women. Thus, our symposium was an occasion to look both back and forward with regard to scholarship relating to women of the African Diaspora. While a number of insightful presentations were made, I was able to select only a few papers for expansion and publication in this special issue. These essays include Rosalyn Terborg-Penn's "Migration and Trans-racial/National Identity Re-Formation: Becoming African Diaspora Women"; Amanda Putnam's "Mothering Violence: Ferocious Female Resistance in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Sula, Beloved, and A Mercy"; and Chad Montuori's "Representing Gender on the Move from Africa to Spain: Donato Ndongo's El metro." I was fortunate that BWGF offered "Mentors' Reflections on Developing a Culturally Responsive Mentoring Initiative for Urban African American Girls" by LaShawnda Lindsay-Dennis, Lawanda Cummings, and Susan Crim McClendon; and "Pear Trees and Poetry: Crafting Identity in a Private Boarding School" by Tiffany Simpkins Russell for inclusion, as well. In addition, this tremendous list of articles and essays has been rounded out with Niambi Carter's review of Black Woman's Burden: Commodifying Black Reproduction by symposium presenter Nicole Rousseau. Together, these manuscripts reflect current theoretical debates as well as the increased concern with diasporic issues and perspectives.

Terborg-Penn's essay addresses the topic of identity re-formation as the result of migration and ethnic and/or racial mixing from the perspective of African Diasporic women. Using traditional scholarship as well as new technology, such as social media, Terborg-Penn explores the impact of African Diaspora women's survival strategies on their identity formation and their female offspring. While Terborg-Penn's discussion of how women's survival strategies often impacted their mothering, Putnam takes a very different look at mothering in her discussion of mothering violence. Putnam discusses how Morrison's young characters in The Bluest Eye, Sula, Beloved, and A Mercy learn about violence from their mothers and grandmothers. In her multigenerational analysis of female violence, Putnam argues that this unsanctioned violence forces a redefinition of black femaleness and black motherhood under oppressive conditions. Montuori also uses fiction to offer insight regarding gendered identities. In his essay, Montuori explores the impact of gender roles and expectations with regard to migration from rural to urban locations. Using Equatorial Guinean author Donato Ndongo's novel El metro, Montuori addresses the transformation of masculine and feminine identities of migrant characters. In "Mentors' Reflections on Developing a Culturally Responsive Mentoring Initiative for Urban African American Girls," Lindsay-Dennis...