Over the last generation, the womanist idea—and the tradition blooming around it—has emerged as an important response to separatism, domination, and oppression. Gary L. Lemons gathers a diverse group of writers to discuss their scholarly and personal experiences with the womanist spirit of women of color feminisms. Feminist and womanist-identified educators, students, performers, and poets model the powerful ways that crossing borders of race, gender, class, sexuality, and nation-state affiliation(s) expands one's existence. At the same time, they bear witness to how the self-liberating theory and practice of women of color feminism changes one's life. Throughout, the essayists come together to promote an unwavering vein of activist comradeship capable of building political alliances dedicated to liberty and social justice. Contributors: M. Jacqui Alexander, Dora Arreola, Andrea Assaf, Kendra N. Bryant, Rudolph P. Byrd, Atika Chaudhary, Paul T. Corrigan, Fanni V. Green, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Susan Hoeller, Ylce Irizarry, M. Thandabantu Iverson, Gary L. Lemons, Layli Maparyan, and Erica C. Sutherlin| Title Copyright Contents Foreword AnaLouise Keating Introduction: "Womanist Is to Feminist as Purple Is to Lavender": Writing in Solidarity across Shade Part I. Teaching in the "Universal[ist]" Spirit of Womanism 1. Spirituality in the Classroom: Some Womanist Reflections / Layli Maparyan 2. Coming into Being: Metta to Womanist Teachers / Kendra N. Bryant 3. Professing the Liberatory Power of Womanism / Gary L. Lemons 4. A Doctored Voice: Resistance, Reading, and Righting as Womanist Pedagogy / Ylce Irizarry Part II. Womanist Alliances for Human Rights and Social Justice 5. Breaking Silence / M. Jacqui Alexander and Beverly Guy-Sheftall 6. From Exile to Healing: I "Too" Am a Womanist / Susie L.Hoeller 7. Nepantlera as Midwife of Empathy / Paul T. Corrigan 8. A Deeper Shade of Consciousness: My Voice Is My Resistance / Atika Chaudhary Part III. Speaking and Acting Out in Womanist Solidarity 9. Transgenero Performance: Gender and Transformation in Mujeres en Ritual / Dora Arreola 10. Soy Mujer Cuando . . . A Collective Poem / Andrea Assaf 11. Now Is Not the Time for Silence: Writing and Directing What the Heart Remembers / Fanni V. Green 12. "I Come from a Dream Deferred" / Erica C. Sutherlin 13. On Becoming a Feminist / Rudolph P. Byrd 14. Compelled by the Spirit: My Journey to Become a Womanist Man / M. Thandabantu Iverson Contributors Index |"Innovative, creative, and unapologetically spiritual, Building Womanist Coalitions reminds us why womanism is still as relevant today as it was several decades ago when Alice Walker first coined the term."—David Ikard, author of Lovable Racists, Magical Negroes, and White Messiahs
"Building Womanist Coalitions is a helplful resource for an instructor interested in better understanding womanist readings and or methodologies into the classroom." —Wabash Center Journal on Teaching
|Gary L. Lemons is a professor of English at the University of South Florida. He is the author of Caught Up in the Spirit! Teaching for Womanist Liberation, Womanist Forefathers: Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois, and Black Male Outsider, a Memoir: Teaching as a Pro-Feminist Man.