Womanism In Alice Walker's The Third Life Of Grange Copeland And The Color Purple

Alice Walker (1944-), one of the most accomplished African American writers since the 1970s, has made unique achievements in contemporary American literature. Most of Walker's novels, marked by an acute political consciousness and sense of community values, celebrate African American women's uncompromising quest for self-identity and integrity amidst the most perverse conditions of the racism and sexism. The most remarkable contribution, however, is her notion of womanism. To distance herself from mainstream feminism, Walker has proposed a philosophy of art that strongly centers on African American female subjectivity while at the same time pertains to the commitment to "survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female."Based on an analysis of Walker's definition in her In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, this paper seeks to explore the myriad aspects of womanism as they are embodied, respectively, in Walker's characterization of male characters in The Third Life of Grange Copeland and in the female characters in The Color Purple. Our comparative reading indicates that an inadequate understanding of womanism results in castigations from the critical circle that Walker has done the detrimental joy of demonizing black males. Walker's womanism, contrary to radical feminism, affirms the need of black women to strive courageously for self-identity, self-empowerment and equality without eschewing commitment to the construction of an ideal male and female relationship within the African American community where both men and women could live in mutual respect, love, and happiness.