Universität Greifswald, Sommersemester 2006
PS: African American Literature in the USA

Womanism in Lorraine Vivian Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun
- Beneatha and the Triple Oppression of African American Women -

by: Antje Bernstein

Table of contents

1. Introduction 3

2. Womanism – A Definition 4

3. Beneatha’s role within the play 6

4. Is Beneatha a Womanist? 7

4.1. Beneatha and Race 7
4.2. Beneatha and Class 10
4.3. Beneatha and Gender 11

5. Conclusion 14

6. Appendix 16

Definition of Womanist taken from Alice Walker’s In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose 16
Diagram of characters: 17

7. References and Further Readings 18

1. Introduction

The question of discrimination has been an important issue ever since. In history there have always been human beings that were considered to be inferior to others. There are many reasons that caused people to consider other people to be less valuable and consequently made them think that these people can and have to be treated in a different, mostly unfair way due to their not belonging to the dominant majority. The most prominent forms of discrimination are due to racial, sexual, and social differences. If a person does not fit into the predominating norms he or she is often regarded as being no equal member of the society to which he or she belongs. Such people often try to assimilate into the society that oppresses them and adjust to the dominant majority as much as possible. But since there has been discrimination there have always been people who would not let anybody force them to be an outcast. They do not want to deny who and what they are and they struggle to be accepted and respected like everybody else. That is why whole movements like the Civil Rights Movement or the Women’s Movement evolved in the United States of America to improve the situation of discriminated people and put an end to their subordinate roles within their society.
Black feminists or womanists are the ones that deal with the discrimination of black women in particular. The struggles of African American women for equality can not only be seen in everyday life but in literary texts as well. Although the term womanism was not coined until the 1980’s, the “concept” of black feminism had of course appeared in many literary works before that time.
An example for that is Lorraine Hansberry’s award-winning play A Raisin in the Sun. The drama about an African American working class family, which comes to money, is a portrait of a typical black family, their dreams, and their struggles to realise these dreams. One of these family-members is Beneatha – a young, black woman who has to assert herself over the values of her family and the prejudices of her society. Although the play addresses several topics like the “[…] value systems of the black family; concepts of African American beauty and identity; class and generational conflicts; the relationships of husbands and wives, black men and women [and] feminism […]” (Hansberry 1994, p.6), it will be the aim of this term paper to focus on black feminism and Beneatha’s struggles within the play in particular.
To contribute to the understanding of how womanism is included in the play, the term and its definition shall be considered first. Furthermore it will be of interest to find out whether Beneatha is a womanist or not. Therefore a closer look at the triple impact of race, class, and gender on Beneatha and her reaction towards these concepts will be done. The major basis for this term paper is build by A Raisin in the Sun (the version as it is contained in the Heath Anthology of American Literature) and The Oxford Companion to African American Literature, but also texts of Alice Walker, bell hooks, and other authors will be used as an aid to analyse and characterise Beneatha.

2. Womanism – A Definition

The term ‘womanism’ was coined by Alice Walker who defined it in her book In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose from 1983 . There she described four different aspects to a ‘womanist’.
Firstly she relates the term to feminism by calling a womanist a “[…] black feminist or a feminist of color.” (Walker, p. xi) and points out that the term derives from the expression “womanish” referring to the fact that a child behaves like a woman. Characteristics for a womanist are seriousness, a huge thirst for knowledge and responsibility.
Secondly she underlines the unity and loyalty of a womanist to other women and to the culture of women. But Alice Walker also makes clear that a womanist can love a man both sexually and non-sexually but is more committed to other women often in the sense of sisterhood. Moreover a womanist can hold back her own interests and wishes to contribute to her community including men and women alike.
As a third point she includes an enumeration of the preferences of a womanist: “Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.” (Walker, p. xii) . This shows that a womanist loves her community, its culture, and herself as a devoted member of this community. Furthermore it underlines that she likes to celebrate her womanhood.
As the fourth and final point Walker defines womanism as the black equivalent to feminism and makes clear that both can only be differentiated due the additional factor of color/race.
But there are more definitions of womanism or black feminism than that of Alice Walker. According to The Oxford Companion of African American Literature

[…] “womanism” is generally understood to address the triple impact of sex, *race, and *class on African American women and to compensate for the traditional shortcomings of feminist and African American liberation discourse that have routinely excluded the peculiar needs of African American women (Marsh-Lockett, p.785).

This explanation underlines the special position of black women and emphasises the fact that black women in contrast to white women, additionally to their suppression in terms of gender and class, have to overcome disadvantages because of their race. It also emphasises that black women do not only have to face discrimination because of their cultural and social background like black men but they are discriminated because of the fact that they are women as well. This can be summarised as the triple oppression of African American women. The black feminist and writer bell hooks writes in her book Ain’t I a Woman “[…] that conversations about black people ‘tend to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women’” (Holloway, p.313) and thus makes clear that African American women are often excluded from debates about discrimination. African American women as well as their achievements and contributions to the whole American society were almost entirely unseen and not noticed.

[...]