"...launched a new critical discourse in the Black Women's Literary Movement."***
Dr. Clenora Hudson-Weems - Africana womanist - Emmett Till Historian
"The first African American intellectual to formulate a position on Africana Womanism..."***
the Philosophy for our Future
Author of Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves (1993;2019).
Presentations
AFRICANA MELANATED WOMANISM
"Clenora Hudson-Weems' work provides a theoretical construct that boldly restores meaning within historical and cultural contexts that are peculiar to the African and African Diaspora woman's experiences. It offers an element historically denied such women: a choice. Moreover, her application of the Africana womanist theory to Black life and literary texts proves to be both accurate and useful as we search for appropriate theories and methodologies for Africana writers".
Dr. Adele Newson-Horst,
Professor,
Coordinator of Women's and Gender Studies at Morgan State University
EMMETT TILL: THE SACRIFICIAL LAMB OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (1994)
"Hudson-Weems has dug relentlessly into Southern justice, revealing the stench and ugliness of race hatred, American style. She has captured the essence of Emmett, a "Sacrificial Lamb" whose death has provided an escape to life for millions who were trapped in a web of hate."
Mamie Till Mobley, mother of Emmett Till
A legacy of Theoretical Excellence
"Africana Womanist Literary Theory provides an expansion of ideas presented in Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves. It provides an extensive and thorough understanding of the concepts, nommo/self-naming" and self-defining. Hudson-Weems believes nothing is more important to a people's existence than naming and defining self. It comes as no surprise, then, that the work takes to task those who have ignored, distorted, or misappropriated all or parts of the theory that she has articulated." (Foreword, Africana Womanist Literary Theory, p. xii, 2004)
Dr. Delores P. Aldridge, Grace T. Hamilton Chair of Sociology & Black Studies, Emory University