Forum on Public Policy

Black Women Writers as Dynamic Agents of Change: Empowering

Abstract
Black women have a long history and tradition of activism that can be traced to pre-colonial Africa.
Women of African descent who are writers have challenged the status quo in the cultural, political, and
spiritual realms of their communities by using their craft to present women who defy traditional roles and
resist strictures of oppression. Using a cross-cultural analysis, I will establish how the Senegalese writer,
Mariama Ba (So Long a Letter); the African American writer, Alice Walker, (The Color Purple) and the
Zimbabwean writer, J. Nozipo Maraire, (A Letter to My Daughter), all give voice to women who had long
been silenced and devaluedwomen who, according to Zora Neale Hurston, have the status of a mule.

A principal question guides the papers examination of activism and leadership: How can we use these
rich, dynamic literary portraits and knowledge of Black women to model qualities necessary for activism
and leadership to empower women to foster social change in contemporary African and African American
communities, as well as in other communities ?

Introduction

Black women have a long history of activism that can be traced to pre-colonial Africa.

Those women who are writers have challenged the status quo in the cultural, political,

and spiritual realms of their communities by using their craft to present women who defy

traditional roles and resist strictures of oppression. Using a cross-cultural analysis, I will

establish how the Senegalese writer, Mariama Ba (So Long a Letter); the African

American writer, Alice Walker, (The Color Purple) and the Zimbabwean writer, J.

Nozipo Maraire, (Zenzele: A Letter to My Daughter), all give voice to women who had

long been silenced and devaluedwomen who, according to Zora Neale Hurston, have
1
the status of a mule.

A principal question will guide the papers examination of activism and

leadership: How can we use these rich, dynamic literary portraits and knowledge of

Black women to model qualities necessary for activism and leadership to empower

1
Hurston, Zora Neale, Their Eyes Were Watching God, (New York: Harper and Row, 1937/1990), 14.

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women to foster social change in contemporary African and African American

communities, as well as in other communities ?

A sense of community exists among African and African American writers:

Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga says that the black American female writers

offer more relevancy for her than does white Western feminism. 2 Generally, African

women embrace African American women writers and vice versa: South African writer

Bessie Head had established friendships with several African American writers, including

Alice Walker, Nikki Giovanni, and Toni Morrison, all of whom admired her writing.

Whether writers or from Africa or American, they have common interests and goals.

According to Jayne Cortez, poet and president of Organization of Women Writers of

Africa, Black women writers from around the globe have been struggling against
3
racism, exploitation, gender oppression, and other human rights violations." She

continues, The psychological and physiological consequences of globalization have

been a major part of the subject matter of the contemporary African writer. In relation to

Africa and African culture, the international slave trade and colonialism forced

significant contact with globalization in its early manifestations. What Black women

writers want is to participate in global decisions concerning survival and the future of
4
humanity. They need access to the progress of globalization.

2
Veit-Wild, Flora, Women Write about the Things That Move Them: A Conversation with
Tsitsi Dangarembga, Moving Beyond Boundaries: Black Womens Diasporas, Vol. 2.
Ed. Carol Boyce Davies (New York: NYU Press, 1995), 30.
3
Cortez, Jayne, Remarks given at Yari Yari Pamberi Conference, New York University, October 12-16,
2004.
4
Cortez, 2004.

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African women seem to embrace Walkers womanist tradition and have created

fictional characters reflecting this tradition. However, in looking specifically at

womanism as defined by Walker, some African women argue that Walkers concept of

womanism applies mostly to African Americans, and does not adequately fit African

women. According to Chikwenye Ogunyemi, African American womanism overlooks

African peculiarities. Areas which are relevant for Africans but which Blacks in America

cannot deal with include extreme poverty, in-law problems, older women oppressing

younger women, women oppressing their co-wives, or men oppressing their wives. 5

Walker offers a four-pronged definition of womanist:

1womanistfrom womanish.Usually referring to outrageous, audacious, or

willful behavior.

2Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender

3Loves music. . . Love the Spirit. . . Loves struggle.. .

4woman who loves other women sexually and/or nonsexually .

Committed to survival and wholeness of entire peoplemale and female. 6

Drawing from her rural Georgia background, where people would label a girl

womanish, if she acted mature beyond her chronological age, writer Alice Walker

captures the spirit of the womanist whose frivolity allows her to have an affinity for

music, the spirit, and struggle, all characteristics that fictional characters created by the

5
Arndt, Susan, African Gender Trouble and African Womanism: An Interview with Chikwenye
Ogunyemi and Wangari Muthoni, Signs 25, no.3, (2000), 714-715.
6
Walker, Alice, In Search of Our Mothers Gardens: Womanist Prose, (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1983).

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Black women characters featured in this paper possess in some form or fashion. Her

definition is robust enough to account for the complexity of the Black feminist

represented by a deep shade of purple, when compared to the white feminist associated

with the lighter shade of lavender. Elements of her definition will be examined in light of

their applicability to components of leadership and activism conveyed in the works of the

Black women writers whose ideas are evaluated in this paper.

In the activist tradition of writers in the independent, post-colonial Zimbabwe in

Southern Africa, , J. Nozipo Maraire, born in pre-independent Rhodesia in 1966,

produced Zenzele: A Letter to My Daughter, a work which gives women empowering

roles as bearers and keepers of cultural traditions and values. As the title indicates, the

book is an extended letter from Amai Zenzele, a dying mother, to her daughter, Zenzele,

who is about to leave Zimbabwe to undertake medical study in the United States. As the

authors first and only novel, the largely autobiographical work is patterned on the life of

Maraire, who ultimately attended medical school at Columbia and later Yale to become a

neurosurgeon. Amai Zenzele defies the maternal stereotype of passive mother. She takes

action by nurturing her daughter and arming her with the cultural tools to fortify her

identity when she is away from her home country. Similarly, Amai Zenzele provides the

same kinds of virtuous lessons when she imparts to her daughter her wisdom consisting

of a healthy respect for the cultural values and traditions of her people in Zimbabwe. Her

mother best sums up the worldview that she wants her daughter to have when she states:

How could I allow you to grow up reading Greek classics, Homers

Iliad? the voyages of Agamemnon, and watch you devour The Merchant

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of Venice and Romeo and Juliet yet be ignorant of the lyrical, the

romantic, and the tragic that have shaped us as Africans? 7

Her mother continues to explain the reasons that they take their annual sojourns to

their village is so that she can understand and know the cultural traditions of her

people.

Maraires work continues the activist tradition begun by predecessors like South

African writer Bessie Head by directly highlighting the roles of resistance that women

assumed as freedom fighters during the period in which Rhodesia made the transition

to Zimbabwe.

For, Zenzele gives an accurate account of the courage of the women who actively

engaged in the fight for freedom. As active participants, the women dressed in fatigues

fought alongside the men and were often indistinguishable from them. Using the

language and images of battle and fierce animals, Amai Zenzele, as narrator, paints a

picture of these daring women:

On their backs, they carried not runny-nosed babies but the hope of a

different generation in the form of runs of ammunition, maps, codes, and

supplies to fuel the battle that ultimately was to lead up to independence.

They were as foreign to our traditional image of women as Eskimos. They

were a product of the armed struggle. These women too fashioned their

own identity. They were feared and admired, for in battle it was rumored

the women could be the fiercest of all. The Rhodesian troops called them

the bobcats because the Shona women were as fierce as lions. 8

7
Maraire, J. Nozipe, Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter, (New York: Crown Publishers, 1996), 8.
8
Maraire, 168.

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Through the character Tinawo, Maraire has created a woman who used the tactics

of subversion and duality long used as survival mechanisms in black communities.

Employed as a domestic and nanny to a white household, Tinawo, pretending to be an

imbecilic, illiterate, servant, spies for the liberation forces by snooping in her (baas)

(bosss) official papers and listening to some of the conversations that he has with

military officials. In actuality, her boss has a very low opinion of her, believing her to

be incapable of something as sophisticated as spying. In a conversation with one of his

British peers, completely fooled by Tinawos appearances, he renders his low

expectations of her, The girl has been in my employ for over one year. . .In the entire

twelve months, she has not displayed one whit of intelligence. She cannot read. And
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God knows she can barely write out the grocery list. Tinawo certainly knows what
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it means to wear the mask that grins and lie, to which Dunbars popular poem

attests.

The sisterhood dimension of the womanist framework can be applied to an

analysis of Zenzele. A further examination of womanism reveals a revised definition

by Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi which is similar to Walkers: Black womanism is

a philosophy that celebrates black roots, the ideas of black lifeIts ideal is for black

unity where every black person has a modicum of power and so can be a brother or a
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sister or a father or a mother to the other. This sisterly relationship between

Tinawo and her childhood friend Linda, similar to that of Sisi Tambu and Nyasha was

9
Maraire, 148-149.
10
Dunbar, Paul Laurence, We Wear the Mask, The Norton Anthology of African American Literature,
2nd ed., eds. Henry Louis Gates and Nellie McKay (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 918.
11
Ogunyemi, Chikwenye Okonjo, Womanism: The Dynamics of the Contemporary Black Female Novel
in English, Signs 11, no. 1 (1985), 68-69.

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essential to the success of their roles as freedom fighters. In describing their

friendship, Amai Zenzele, tells her daughter that Linda and Tinawo had always been

very close and virtually inseparable. 12

Maraire globalizes the struggle for freedom by creating a character, Sister Africa,

, an African American who travels to various African countries searching for her

Nigerian father. Her story of Sister Africa, whom she described as having the gift of

storytelling, becomes a fascinating story within the overall story. Sister Africa

eventually finds her father, known affectionately as Baba Africa, who educates the

younger generations through his oral dissertations. Amazi Zenzele recalls how he uses

one occasion to speak on Pan-Africanism, a concept espousing unity among the

scattered peoples of the Diaspora using cultural analogies of farming and nature:

If you take a seed, he said one day, and scatter it across the lands,

some will end up in marshes, some in rich fertile lands with

flowing streams, others in sand, and others among the mountains

and rocks. If the seed is tough, it will adapt and survive in all

conditions; if it is weak, it will perish. The same seed in one

country may yield a baobab but in another an oak. Our race is a

potent seed. Whether you are from Ghana or Guyana, you are born

of the same seed and you will be of the same fruit. We must

recognize our fruition in London, in Paris, in Dakar, in Harare, and

in Maputo. Our roots are deep and wide. We must extend

our hearts and minds, like bridges, over the swamps of

racial injustice to link us together. 13

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As in Zenzele, both The Color Purple, and So Long a Letter focus on women

who are mothers. Both books are a womans narrative where a woman writes to another

woman as a way of emancipating herself. After assuming the role of stepmother at a very

young age, Celie, The Color Purples primary character, grows from a shy young

woman to one who has the confidence to stand up for herself, eventually becoming one

of those women whose tongue hurls words of self-defense. When Albert, her husband

insults her in the rural Georgia vernacular, You black, you pore, you ugly, you a

woman. Goddam, You aint nothin at all. 14

By the end of the story, she is able to stand up to her husbands insults, to retort,
15
I may be black, pore, ugly, but Im here. Ramatoulaye, protagonist in So Long a

Letter, has had to juggle the demands of mothering and teaching, while suffering the

abuse of a patriarchal system. All of these women/mothers emancipate themselves

through a literate tradition: they write themselves into emancipationmental, spiritual,

and physical emancipationthrough letters as in The Color Purple and in So Long a

Letter.

Much of Walkers Color Purple prominently displays women who have dared to

engage in a struggle for their own self-respect and dignity, a struggle often achieved

collectively through the bonding and sisterhood of women. Celie experiences a spiritual

coming of age, an emancipation of the self through this bonding. A dimension of Alice

Walkers theory of womanism which emphasizes womens asexual love for each other,

for example, informs Walkers use of sisterly bonding. The intimate friendship between

Celie and Nettie , as well, helped to sustain Celie through the period of abuse by her

13
Maraire, 104.
14
Walker, 176
15
Alice Walker, The Color Purple (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), 176.

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husband. It was a sisterhood that was so deep that it persevered through the long period

of absence of Celies not receiving her sisters letters in spite of the rift that Celies

husband had created to destroy the closeness of the two sisters. Walkers womanism has

implications for building community and love among women by advocating sexual love

between women. The love between Celie and the blues singer Shug reveals sensualities

that played a pivotal role in awakening Celie and moving her towards a greater

understanding of herself.

Walker introduces the global perspective by having Nettie work as a missionary

in Africa. As a result, Nettie becomes grounded in Afrocentric thought and she imparts to

Celie a pride in her heritage and love of self when she asks Celie:

Did you know that the Egyptians who built the pyramids and enslaved the

Israelites were colored? That Egypt is in Africa? That the Ethiopia we read about in the

Bible meant all of Africa? 16

In So Long a Letter, Ramatoulaye, an Islamic woman, pours out her heart to her

best friend Aissatou to launch an indictment against the fetters of polygyny. As the title

indicates, and Rama reiterates near the conclusion as she addresses her childhood
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friend. . . once again I have to write you so long a letter The two women build

solidarity for one another through the intimacy recounted in their letters to each other.

Ramatoulayes letter details her husband Modous abandonment of her for a much

younger woman, her daughters peer. Ba launches social indictment of womens

inequality and unfair treatment under the system of polygyny. Able to resist becoming

one of multiple partners in a polygynous marriage, Aissatou, unlike Rama, divorces her

16
Alice Walker, The Color Purple, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), 138.
17
Mariama Ba, So Long a Letter, (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Press, 1989), 89.

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husband, moves into her own home, and finds work in a Senegalese embassy in

America. Aissatous education and middle-class status allow her to become

independent and make choices with her life that do not bind her to a man. Through her

outcries in the letter to Aissatou, Rama is able to present a negative portrayal of lustful

middle-aged men marrying young teenaged girls. Her husband Modou, is described

with a receding hairline. Once she publicly discredits him through the mirasse, a

cultural practice that dictates that his most intimate secrets be exposed, she begins the

journey towards emancipation.

Bas activism against womens restrictions in such a patriarchal society

are clear, but Rama faces criticism for not using her education and class status to
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promote better conditions for women and their families in the community. She does

not, for example, raise her voice to advocate laws for pregnant teens to continue their

education or to speak about the need for public playgrounds that might have prevented
19
an auto accident had her son not been playing in the streets.

Literary characters, like Ramatoulaye and Aissatou, Celie and Shug, and Amai

Zenzele and her daughter form deep, lasting spiritual bonds. Black writers have sought to

establish images of African Americans practicing a spirituality rooted in African cultural

beliefs. As W.E.B. Dubois has argued in his groundbreaking The Souls of Black Folk, the

spiritual consciousness of people of African descent emanates from within their souls. 20

It is a spiritual consciousness that can be awakened in traditional religious faith and

worship, as well as in less traditional settings. Gloria Wade Gayles reminds us we can

18
Kemp, Yakini B. Romantic Love, Arms Akimbo. Eds. Janice Liddell and Yakini B. Kemp,
(Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press, 1999), 158.
19
Kemp, 158.
20
Dubois, W.E.B, The Souls of Black Folk, (New York: Pocket Books, 1903/2005).

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experience the divine within us wherever, however, and with whomever we so desire,

each time anew and each time in celebration of the divine that is in us and in the entire
21
universe. Such a consciousness, grounded in African cultural traditions, has been cast

in fictional literature as one that revises the image of the white patriarchal image of God

and embraces spiritual revival. These revisionist, energizing spiritual practices help to

move others towards a greater awareness of self.

The literature created by writers of African descent has helped to establish how

these perspectives can arm people of African descent with the fortitude to fight against

racism and sexism. These perspectives can be examined as springboards for effecting

changes in the spiritual well-being of others. In the case of Celie, after her lover Shug

Avery instills in her the desire to find God for herself, she rejects the notion of God as a

white old man commonly portrayed in Western society. She reenvisions God as being

within her. This redefinition begins her journey towards becoming a woman who

finally musters the courage to stand up to an abusive husband.

Zenzele also seeks to redefine God as one in her own image. By

reconceptualizing God as one who looks like herself, she is able to connect and

commune with her ancestors from a spiritual standpoint. After Ramatoulaye publicly

discredits her husband through the religious mirasse, she purges herself of some of the

resentment she had held against him and is able to begin the journey towards self-

renewal.

Fiction often mirrors reality; thus we have witnessed brutality and remnants of

patriarchy still alive in both Africa and America. In Uganda, Vice-President Specioza

21
Wade-Gayles, Gloria, ed., My Soul is a Witness: African American Womens Spirituality,
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 4.

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Kazibwe recently revealed publicly that her husband beat her in spite of her prestigious

position, so they have separated. Even though many working class and poor Uganda

women criticized Ms. Kazibwe for her public outcry, she still spoke up. Many of these

women who are part of the lower echelons of society feel that they do not have the

luxury of being able to speak out because of their dependence on their husbands

income. In suburban Washington, D.C., a woman was set ablaze by her estranged

husband. Since that brutal event, this woman who had been constantly harassed by her

husband has become an outspoken activist against domestic violence. These horrible

examples of physical abuse and torture indicate the necessity for women, be they in

Africa or America, to speak up for their human rights by decrying social injustice.

What Can We Learn About Leadership/Activism from Black Writers?

To reiterate a thought discussed elsewhere in this paper, I maintain that these

writers committed to social change have addressed issues through the fictional

characters in their novels and stories. An introspective examination of the prominent

themes discussed and nature of the varied characters has led me to design a model of

leadership that uses the following elements:

1. Womanism emphasizes collaboration/networking/community building;

often women talking among themselves is the first step toward identifying a

problem and later leading to its being resolved. Organizations like Femrite

illustrate real-life examples of women writers in Uganda offering a network

of support for their creative efforts.

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2. Cultural Awarenessassists with self-identity; strengthens and empowers

individuals. Just as Zenzele and Celie become self-assured through learning

more about their cultural and racial heritage, this component is integral to

leadership.

3. Mothering/Nurturingemphasizes sensitivity to others; giving wise

counsel.

Many activists are mothers whose concerns about family naturally extend into

the community.

Amai Zenzele, Shug, and Nettie are excellent examples of mothers or mother

figures who are give wise counsel and assist others with gaining confidence and

self-assurance.

4. Religion/ Spirituality helps one to assert meaning and purpose of life and

embrace wholesome values after a period of self-discovery; helps one to

stay grounded and to fight in a peaceful, loving way

Both Celies and Zenzeles spiritual consciousness confront traditional

interpretations of religion and spirituality.

Like the writers who created these characters we can exercise leadership by

raising our voices through literature. In the same way that Sonia Sanchez has called our

attention to an awareness of AIDS, or Ama Ata Aidoo of marital rape and womens

oppression, Women seem to have a natural ability to fight for social justice and they

continue to do so. In some African countries, for example, the problem of distributing

and selling books making them affordable has been tackled through the formation of

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womens cooperative organizations unifying Ugandan women through organizations

like FEMRITE. In East Africa, the Kenya Oral Literature Association began a project,

The Literary Road to Empowerment, whose aim is to affect childrens socialization

by presenting them with literature offering images that dispel traditional images of

women as subservient. In the US, international conferences like Yari Yari Pamberi,

founded by Jayne Cortez and Ama Ata Aidoo advance the goals of Black women

writers from across the globe. Like these writers engaged in condemning racial, social,

and gender oppression, all, whether they call themselves womanists, an African

womanists, or feminists or Black feminists, should embrace the legacy of black

activism and use it as a tool for advancing equality for women around the globe.

References
Arndt, Susan. African Gender Trouble and African Womanism: An Interview
With Chikwenye Ogunyemi and Wanjira Muthoni. Signs, 25, no.3 (2000):
609-726.
Ba, Mariama. So Long a Letter. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Press, 1989.
Dunbar, Paul Laurence. We Wear the Mask. The Norton Anthology of
African American Literature, 2nd edition, ed. Henry Louis Gates and Nellie
McKay. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. 918.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Kemp, Yakini B. Romantic Love and the Individual in Novels by Mariama Ba,
Buchi Emecheta, and Bessie Head. Arms Akimbo: Africana Women in
Contemporary Literature. Eds. Liddell, Janice and Yakini B. Kemp.
Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press, 1999. 147-161.
Maraire, J. Nozipo. Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter. New York: Crown Publishers,
1996.
Ogunyemi, Chikwenye Okonjo. Womanism: The Dynamics of the Contemporary Black
Female Novel in English. Signs 11, no.1 (1985): 63-80.
Veit-Wild, Flora. Women Write about the Things that Move Them. A Conversation
with Tsitsi Dangarembga. Moving Beyond Boundaries: Black Womens
Diasporas, Vol. 2. Ed. Carol Boyce Davies. New York: NYU Press, 1995.
27-31.
Wade-Gayles, Gloria, ed. My Soul is a Witness: African-American Womens Spirituality.
Boston, Massachusetts, Beacon Press. 1995.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982.
Walker, Alice. Introduction. In Search of Our Mothers Gardens: Womanist Prose.
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982.

Published by the Forum on Public Policy

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