Alice Walker, possessing the secret of joy

Résumé du document

Alice Walker was born in 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia, the eight and last child of a couple of sharecroppers. She went to Spelman, a college for black women in Atlanta. After spending two years there, she transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and during her junior year travelled to Africa as an exchange student. In 1965, she received her bachelor Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College. Alice Walker was active in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s in the South and today, she is still as an involved activist. She has spoken for the women's movement, the anti-apartheid movement, for the anti-nuclear movement and against female genital mutilation (FGM). In 1983, she received the Pulitzer Prize for 'the Color Purple', the first book of a trilogy, also, 'The Temple of my familiar' (1989) and 'Possessing the Secret of Joy' (1992), which stayed for 17 weeks at the top of sales in the US. In 'the Color Purple', Celie was the most important character, a black woman, two times pregnant because of her stepfather, giving birth to a girl, Olivia and a boy, Adam, both of them were adopted by a couple of missionaries moving to the African continent. The main character of 'Possessing the secret of joy' is linked to these previous ones. Her name is Tashi and she belongs to the Olinka's tribe. She is Olivia's friend on the African continent and later, Adam's becomes wife.

Extraits

[...] Last but not least, excision in these countries is made by a who's not a proper doctor and whose tools are not clean enough. Simple death or AIDS are a consequence too and for young girls who die of it the cause is attributed to the unhealthy and unclean tools used during female circumcision. “Women get infections from the unwashed, unsterilized sharp stones, tin tops, bits of glass, rusty razors and grungy knives used by the tsunga.” Because of the need of each human being to be integrated and related to his community, Tashi has decided to submit to this barbarian custom of the FGM making her fall slowly in madness. [...]

[...] Through the different groups 1. The missionaries Since the beginning, we are about to know about the missionary vision through Olivia who, thanks to her education (her parents are both Christians and White missionaries who came to the Olinkan country) gets angry with Tashi since she was going to scar her face: don't do this to yourself, please, Tashi.” Missionaries' goal was to expand Christianity and its virtues, while stopping the Olinkans' believes and culture. That's why Tashi couldn't accept this and has decided to scar her face and more than that, get circumcised: I care about now is the struggle for our people. [...]

[...] They both have nostalgic thoughts of their life there. Mzee was a name given by the Africans, a kiswahili word for or a term of address and to him, the names given to the Whites by Africans were suggested by the Whites' behaviour: “Perhaps I flatter myself as whites do when blacks offer them a benign label for something characteristically theirs, but which they themselves have failed to acknowledge.” Through Lizette Alice Walker talks about the French colonization of Algeria and their way of life there: / houses and gardens end servants / / hot sun She had created friendship with the servants too but Lizette recalls the old colonial story and the segregation: / places, restaurants, nightclubs, schools, neighbourhood-Algerian natives could not in spite of which the Algerians remained beautiful, hospitable as Africans are, especially our servants and playmates. [...]

[...] Tashi then decides to turn over to Africa, on the ground of her ancestors olinkas to find the responsible for all her evils, execute her signing her death sentence then. The main subject is the pain of a young woman because of a barbarian ritual which is the FGM and the consequences that result of it showing at the same time the taboos and culture of an African society. The title of Alice Walker's novel is taken from African Saga, the memoir of an Italian woman, M. [...]

[...] In possessing the secret of joy, female circumcision is considered as part of the African's inglorious past in which main continue to mutilate female for there own desires AIDS In the book the AIDS problem is taken in account. Alice Walker criticise the politics of some of African government concerning it, denying its existence she gives her characters the opportunity to theorise about the origin of AIDS. (citation). F. Ricciardi's criticism. At the end of the book Tashi becomes a ant colonial when Mbati fells to explain her what Mirella Ricciardi meant in African Saga about “possessing the secret of I say. These settler cannibals. [...]