Author and poet Alice Walker first used the term "womanist" in her short story, "Coming Apart", in 1979, and later in In Search of our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983). Walker defined a "womanist" as a Black feminist or feminist of color. The term comes from the Black folk expression of mothers to female children, 'You acting womanish', referring to grown-up behavior."The Challenge of Blackness", The Black Scholar, Vol. 26, No. 1, (Winter/Spring 1996). The womanish girl exhibits willful, courageous, and outrageous behavior that is considered to be beyond the scope of societal norms. She goes on to say that a womanist is also:
