Juxtaposition of Women, Culture, and Nature in Alice Walker’s Possessing The Secret Of Joy
Keywords:
Alice Walker, ecofeminism, patriarchy, female genital mutilation, colonization
Abstract
The present paper focuses on the tradition of women’s circumsicion in the African tribe of Olinkan in Alice Walker’s Possesing the Secret of Joy. The Olinkans are asked by the white settlers to stop women’s mutilation, but Olinkan men continue this custom stealthily to ensure their patriarchial dominance. This novel is a complicated juxtaposition of two different types of oppression: one by White male colonizers over an African native land, and the other one by the native Olinkan men over native women. In this juxtaposition women and land are both victims exploited and manipulated by men, no matter Black or White. This novel is also seen as a fertile ground to analyze the dual domination of both nature and women by the Olinkan men and White colonizers who are both trying to impose their androcentric rules that are created to dominate women and land, respectively.Downloads
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References
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Teard, V. I. (2011). Womanism, sexual healing and the suture of eco-spirituality in Alice Walker’s novels. In Silvia Pilar Castro-Borrego (Ed), The search for wholeness and diaspora literacy in contemporary African American literature, p. 30-38. New Castle: Cambridge Publishing Scholar.
Wankhade, D. B. 2015. Alice Walker as novelist of color consciousness and multiracialism. Indian Streams Research Journals. 5 (1). 1-4.
Walker, A. (1992). Possessing the secret of joy. New York: Pocket Books.
Brum, G. E. (2005). Sexual blinding of women: Alice Walker’s African character Tashi and the issue of female genital cutting. MA Thesis. Federal University of Do Rio Grand Do Sul.
Buell, L. (2005). The future of environmental criticism: Environmental crisis and literary imagination. New York: Blackwell.
Cogeanu, O. (2011). Inscriptions on the African body: Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy. Linguaculture. 2, p. 55-65.
Dent, G. 1992. Black pleasure, black joy: An introduction. Black Popular Culture, p. 1-10.
Egan, G. (2006). Green Shakespeare: From ecopolitics to ecocriticism. London: Routledge.
Esposito, L. (2010). A spiritual revisioning: Alice Walker from an ecofeminist perspective. MA Thesis. Stony Brook University.
Gaard, G. (1993). Living interconnections with animals and nature. Ecofeminism: Women, animals, nature, p. 1-12. Phildelphia: Temple University Press.
Gaard, G. (2000). Strategies for a cross-cultural ecofeminist ethics: Interrogating tradition, preserving nature. New Essays in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism, p. 82-101.
George, O. (2001). Alice Walker’s Africa: Globalization and province of fiction. Comparative Literature. 53 (4). p. 354-372.
Gourdine, A. (2002). The difference place makes: Gender, sexuality, and diaspora identity. New York: Thomson-Shore.
Jordanova, L. J. (1980). Natural facts: A historical perspective on science and sexuality. In Carol P MacCormack and Marilyn Strathern (Eds), Nature, culture and gender, p. 42-69. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.
King, Y. (1983a). The Eco-feminist imperative. In Leonie Caldecott & Stephanie Leland (Eds), Reclaim the earth: Women speak out for life on earth, p. 9-14. London: The Women’s Press.
King, Y. (1983b). Towards an ecological feminism and a feminist ecology. Machina ex dea: Feminist Perspectives on Technology, p. 118-129.
Kuhne, D. (1999). African settings in contemporary American novels. New York: Greenwood Press.
Lalbakhsh, P., & Torkamaneh, P. (2015). The parallel quest for identity in Hedayat’s The blind owl and Faulkner’s The sound and the fury. Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities. 23 (1), p. 1- 8.
Loomba, A. (2005). Colonialism/Post-colonialism, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Mahmoodi, K. (2012). Historical hegemony: Fractured identity and mono-vocalization in Sadegh Hedayat’s Blind owl. Akademika, 82 (2), p. 45-54.
Merchant, C. (1980). The death of nature: Women, ecology and the scientific revolution. San Francisco: Harper Collins.
Merchant, C. (2006). The scientific revolution and the death of nature. Focus-Isis. 97 (3), p. 513-533.
Moore, G. C. (2000). Archetypal symbolism. Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy, p. 111-121. University of North Carolina Press.
Ruether, R. (1975). New woman/new earth: Sexist ideologies and human liberation. New York: Seabury.
Smith, V. W. (2014). Breaking silence/uttering agony: The black female body in pain and the power of parody from invisible man to Corregidora to Possessing the secret of joy. International Journal of Languages and Literatures. 2 (1), p. 141-183.
Teard, V. I. (2011). Womanism, sexual healing and the suture of eco-spirituality in Alice Walker’s novels. In Silvia Pilar Castro-Borrego (Ed), The search for wholeness and diaspora literacy in contemporary African American literature, p. 30-38. New Castle: Cambridge Publishing Scholar.
Wankhade, D. B. 2015. Alice Walker as novelist of color consciousness and multiracialism. Indian Streams Research Journals. 5 (1). 1-4.
Walker, A. (1992). Possessing the secret of joy. New York: Pocket Books.
Published
2015-01-01
How to Cite
Lalbakhsh, P., Khoshnood, A., & Gholami, F. (2015). Juxtaposition of Women, Culture, and Nature in Alice Walker’s Possessing The Secret Of Joy. K@ta: A Biannual Publication on the Study of Languange and Literature, 16(2), 93-100. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.9744/kata.16.2.93-100
Section
Articles
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