Womanist theology emerged in the late twentieth century as a resounding voice giving African American women theologians a new sense of freedom in reclaiming their spaces within the realms of theology, the church and the community. With the publication of Alice Walker’s book, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose, and her four part definition of the term “womanist,” African American womanist theologians began constructing new critical analyses by which to challenge the exclusion of their personhoods from Black liberation theology, Christian theology and feminist theology. Furthermore, these theologians sought to illuminate the multiple religious complexities that define the Black woman in the West.