Clenora Hudson-Weems

Clenora F. Hudson-Weems (born July 23, 1945) is an African-American author and academic who is currently a Professor of English at the University of Missouri. She coined the term "Africana womanism" in the late 1980s. Open acknowledgement of its preexistence was articulated in a 1998 publication after Hudson-Weems’s presentation at the First International Conference on Women of Africa and the African Diaspora at the University of Nigeria-Nsukka in 1992.

Hudson-Weems was working on naming and defining through identifying and refining an African-centered paradigm for women of African descent but later on she realized Africana womanism was a preexisting concept with a rich legacy of African womanhood. She did not create the phenomenon but she observed the African woman and refined a paradigm.

Hudson-Weems wrote a research paper entitled “The Tripartite Plight of the Black Woman- Racism, Classism and Sexism- in Our Nig, Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Color Purple” on her first semester as a Ph.D. student at University of Iowa in 1985.

Hudson-Weems continuously criticized Black Feminism and wrote many papers concerning the distinctions between Africana Womanism (Black Womanism) and Black Feminism. She attended panels and conferences to discuss her writing. She believed that Black Feminism was lacking some crucial ideas in its concept and that motivated her to come up with Black Womanism. She was concerned about how the already existing concepts such as (feminism, black feminism, womanism) did not include an agenda for Africana women.

Her book “Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves” was released in 1993 even though several publishers were hesitant to publish the manuscript due to the controversial issues surrounding black women’s rejection of “mainstream” feminist ideology.

Hudson-Weems took a strong position that black women should not have to rely on Eurocentric feminism for their liberation when they have a rich history and legacy of Africa descent women. [Hill 1811]

Hudson-Weems believed that many people viewed Africana Womanism as risking their professional security and also as invalidating their years of research from the Black feminist perspective. She wished people viewed the concept as “a natural evolutionary process of ideological growth and development” from Black feminism to Africana womanism. (Hudson-Weems, “… Entering the New Millenium” 36).

Hudson-Weems criticized Black Feminists because they did not acknowledge Africana Feminism’s essential and underlying foundation “nommo”, its name.

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