Africana Womanism is a term I coined and defined in 1987 after nearly two years of publicly debating the importance of self-naming for Africana women. Why the term ‘Africana Womanism’? Upon concluding that the term ‘Black Womanism’ was not quite the terminology to include the total meaning desired for this concept, I decided that ‘Africana Womanism,’ a natural evolution in naming, was the ideal terminology for two basic reasons. The first part of the coinage, ''Africana'', identifies the ethnicity of the woman being considered, and this reference to her ethnicity, establishing her cultural identity, relates directly to her ancestry and land base—Africa. The second part of the term ''Womanism'', recalls Sojourner Truth's powerful impromptu speech ‘Ain't I a Woman?’, one in which she battles with the dominant alienating forces in her life as a struggling Africana Woman, questioning the accepted idea of womanhood. Without question she is the flip side of the coin, the co-partner in the struggle for her people, one who, unlike the white woman, has received no special privileges in American society.〔Hudson-Weems, pp. 22-23.〕

A concept (Womanism ) that has been shaped by the work of women such as Clenora Hudson-Weems, Ifi Amadiume, Mary E. Modupe Kolawole, and others. African womanism may be viewed as fundamental to the continuing development of Afrocentric theory. Africana womanism brings to the forefront the role of African mothers as leaders in the struggle to regain, reconstruct, and create a cultural integrity that espouses the ancient Maatic principles of reciprocity, balance, harmony, justice, truth, righteousness, order, and so forth. (p. 535)