Abstract
African feminism is a theoretical approach developed in the early 1980s by anthropologist Filomina Chioma Steady, who herself is a child of the African diaspora. Born in Sierra Leone, Steady’s ancestors were enslaved in another area of the African continent, trekked to the sea, then packed on a slave ship bound for the Americas. En route the vessel was captured by the British; the Africans were freed and returned to the African continent, but settled in Sierra Leone. However, this British colony was not their home of origin. Perhaps the legacy of her family experience influenced Steady in developing the African feminist theory, because it lends itself not only to the experiences of women of African descent on the continent, but also to women of the African diaspora worldwide.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Endnotes
Filomina Chioma Steady, The Black Woman Cross-Culturally. (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishers, 1981), Introduction.
Melville Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958; reprint, 1990), pp. 146, 166, 176.
Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, ‘African feminism: a theoretical approach to the history of women in the African diaspora’, in Rosalyn Terborg-Penn et al. (eds.), Women in Africa and the African Diaspora. (Washington DC: Howard University Press, 1987), pp. 44–45.
Harriet A. Jacobs (ed. Jean Fagan Yellin), Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), Chapters XVII, XXI, XXIX.
Hilary McD. Beckles, Natural Rebels: A Social History of Enslaved Black Women in Barbados (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), pp. 65–68, 127.
Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, ‘Black Women in Resistance: A Cross-Cultural Perspective’, in Gary Y. Okihiro (ed.), In Resistance: Studies in African, Caribbean and Afro-American History. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), pp. 203–204.
Blanca G. Silvestrini, ‘Women and Resistance: Herstory in Contemporary Caribbean History’, The 1989 Elsa Goveia Memorial Lecture (Mona: Department of History, University of the West Indies, 1990), pp. 6–8.
Lucille Mathurin, The Rebel Woman in the British West Indies During Slavery (Kingston: African-Caribbean Publications, 1975), p. 21.
Dorothy Sterling (ed.), We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York: WW Norton, 1984), pp. 119–21.
Yamila Azize-Vargas, ‘The Roots of Puerto Rican Feminism: The Struggle for Universal Suffrage’, Radical America, 32:1 (January–February 1989), pp. 70–79.
See Louise Spencer-Strachan, Confronting the Colour Crisis in the Afrikan Diaspora, Emphasis Jamaica (New York: Afrikan World Infosystems, 1992).
See Shirlee Taylor Haizlip, The Sweeter the Juice: A Family Memoir in Black and White (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994).
Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, ‘Survival Strategies Among African-American Women Workers: A Continuing Process’, in Ruth Milkman (ed.), Women, Work and Protest: A Century of US Women’s Labour History (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 150–51.
Lucille Mathurin Mair, ‘Women Field Workers in Jamaica During Slavery’, The 1986 Elsa Goveia Memorial Lecture (Kingston: Department of History, University of the West Indies, Mona, 1987), p. 4.
Lucille Mathurin, ‘The Arrivals of Black Women’, Jamaica Journal, 9, 2&3 (1975), pp. 2–7; Lucille Mathurin, ‘Reluctant Matriarchs’, Savacou, 13, Gemini (1977), pp. 1–6.
Deborah Gray White, Arn’t I A Woman? Females Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: WW Norton, 1985); Bernice Johnson Reagon, ‘My Black Mothers and Sisters or on Beginning a Cultural Autobiography’, Feminist Studies, 8 (spring 1982), pp. 81–96; Bernice Johnson Reagon, ‘African Diaspora Women: The Making of Cultural Workers’, in Rosalyn Terborg-Penn et al., Women in Africa and the African Diaspora, pp. 167–80.
Terborg-Penn, ‘Black Women in Resistance’, op. cit., pp. 188–90.
Bettina Aptheker, Tapestries of Life: Women’s Work, Women’s Consciousness and the Meaning of Daily Experience (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989), p. 18.
Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society (Kingston: Heinemann Publishers, 1990); Hilary McD. Beckles, Natural Rebels (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989).
Melton A. McLaurin, Celia, A Slave (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1991).
Editor information
Copyright information
© 1995 Department of History, U.W.I., Mona, Jamaica
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Terborg-Penn, R. (1995). Through an African Feminist Theoretical Lens. In: Shepherd, V., Brereton, B., Bailey, B. (eds) Engendering History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-07302-0_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-07302-0_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-0-312-12766-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-07302-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)