ALICE WALKER - A FEMINIST MANIFESTO

abuse or injustice for women all over who are locked in and locked out in the world of male domination. Its truly a saga of womanhood, an attempt to destroy the rigid orthodoxy of male dominated society where the females find tough to withstand. It is a universal issue of the female sage of emancipation and triumph over the domination. We have travelled a long milesbut still the scar of female insecurity did not heal. The act of resisting the power of social domination is anHerculean task. In Hindu epic of “The Ramayana” and “The Mahabharata” too displayed the facts of how females are locked in and locked out everywhere. Draupadi’s ‘Vhastraharan’ in the Mahabharata projects the plight of women who is compelled to open her Vastra or cloth, that protected her feminity before the court of male rulers but the timely intervention of Lord Krishna saves her honour. Similarly, Sita of the Ramayana, is sanctioned her territory within a Laxman rekha, a line marked by Laxman, her brother in law. Once Sita crosses the line of Laxmanrekha, she is in the grip of Ravana, the cruel power. The saga of womanhood spells doom everywhere and is a universal issue where punishment awaits those who tend to cross the boundary of laxman- rekha established by the male society. The expression ‘womanism’ has its origin in Black American Women’s cultural, ethical and socio-political stance. In 1983, Alice Walker, one of the foremost contemporary writers and activist, introduced ‘womanism’ in a collection of essays entitled “In Search of Our Mother’s Garden”. She regarded this concept as a more vital and accurate description of Black American women’s ethos to contrast to feminism, which was and is a predominantly middle class white women’s perspective. As Jacquelyn Grant observes “Black Feminism grows out of black women’s tri-dimensional reality of race, sex and class” (202). Since black women face a multifaceted oppression that is manifested in racism, sexism and classism, they find in especially important to define and express the particularity of their experience. Therefore, Walker’s womanist notion suggests not ‘the feminist,’ but the active struggle of Black women that makes them who ‘they are’ (Grant 205). Moreover, black women endeavour to collaborate with black men in the struggle against racism, concurrently joining all the women of the world in resistance to sexism and classism. “To speak of black Women’s tri-dimensional reality, therefore, is not to speak of black women exclusively, for there is an implied university, which connects them with others.” (Grant 217)