The subtitle to this collection of essays identifies it as a collection of “womanist prose.” There is also a full definition of the term “womanism” as a foreword to the book. Walker explains the term as applying specifically to black women and as bearing a relation to traditional feminism that is akin to that of “purple” to “lavender” (xii). The overall impression of the definition (which is lengthy, and in the style of an irreverent dictionary entry) is one of fullness and “roundness,” a term that Walker also employs in these essays. The definition contains many contradictions: a womanist is someone who is “[t]raditionally universalist” but can also be “a separatist [..]periodically, for health” (xi). She is someone who may love men, women or both. Walker explains the term itself as being derived from the “black folk expression of mothers to female children, ‘You acting womanish’” (xi).

The complexity of the definition gives African-American women a certain amount of room—room that they have often not had elsewhere. Among other things, it gives African-American women space to concern themselves with matters other than women’s rights and to be individuals as much as members of a community.