Picture 1 of 5

Stock photo

Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker (1992, Hardcover) - Picture 1 of 5

Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker (1992, Hardcover) - Picture 2 of 5

Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker (1992, Hardcover) - Picture 3 of 5

Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker (1992, Hardcover)

5.01 product rating

nene_766816 (14)

Price:

US $3.63

ApproximatelyAU $5.67

+ $25.40 postage

Estimated delivery Mon, 26 May - Thu, 5 Jun

Returns:

30-day returns. Buyer pays for return postage. If you use an eBay postage label, it will be deducted from your refund amount.

Condition:

Good

Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker (1992, Hardcover).

About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherHarperCollins

ISBN-100151731527

ISBN-139780151731527

eBay Product ID (ePID)58342

Product Key Features

Book TitlePossessing the Secret of Joy

Number of Pages304 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicAfrican American / Contemporary Women, Contemporary Women, Cultural Heritage, African American / General, General, Literary

Publication Year1992

GenreFiction

AuthorAlice Walker

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height1.1 in

Item Weight17.8 Oz

Item Length9.2 in

Item Width5.2 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN92-006883

ReviewsPulitzer Prize winner Walker illustrates the truism that violence begets violence in this strong-voiced but often stridentan obvious novel? and polemical novel. The focus of Walker's rage is the practice of female circumcision in African cultures. Her tale concerns Tashi, a character who made fleeting appearances in The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar , and who here represents an archetypal figure, not so much a woman as a mouthpiece for feminist distress. Tashi grows up in a small African village but initially escapes the customary clitorodectomy. Eventually she is coerced into having the operation as a means of offering fealty to the sinister politician called Our Leader. When she moves to the U.S. with her husband and assumes a new identity as Evelyn Johnson, her pain and anger, accumulating the suffering of the ages, bubble to the surface in a lingering madness that therapy does not assuage and thatwhy not delete this next phrase (through 'finally') as point is made in previous sentence and 'accumulate' is repeated, and incorporate the point about "the ages" into the previous sentenc finally culminates in murder. Walker tells the story in very brief chapters, each loaded with the sense of the historical importance she wishes to convey, but the fragile narrative cannot support the weight of her overwrought prose. Walker's protest against ok? author's "message" in the last review "what men . . . do to us" cannot be faulted; its guise as a novel, however, can. , A peripheral character in The Color Purple ( LJ 6/1/82) and The Temple of My Familiar ( LJ 3/15/88), Tashi becomes the focus of this welcome new work. Tashi, who marries Celie's son Adam, submits to female circumcision partially out of loyalty to the threatened tribal customs of her people, the Olinka. As a result, she endures physical pain and long-lasting emotional trauma. Not a sympathetically drawn victim, the tortured Tashi stretches to bridge two continents and to understand why women must undergo this torture, even at the hands of their mothers, for the pleasure of men. Though she often succumbs to madness, Tashi eventually takes possession of the secret of joy. Her compelling story is every Eve's account of those "whose chastity belt was made of leather, or of silk and diamonds, or of fear and not of our own 'flesh.' " This is not a sequel to Walker's previous novels, but it easily equals, if not surpasses, their excellence. -Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia

Dewey DecimalFIC

SynopsisA provocative novel about an African tribal woman's battle with madness after the trauma of a childhood genital mutilation.

LC Classification NumberPS3573.A425P67 1992