From The Edge Went To The Center - Walker Described Black Women's Liberation

Alice Walker is one of the most outstanding and prominent contemporary black American women writers. Her epistolary novel The Color Purple (1982) garnered Walker not only the American Book Award and the National Book Critical Circle Award but also the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which established her world-wide reputation. Distinctive subjects, dual marginalized identity as an Afro-American woman writer and her womanism ideology contribute her uniqueness. In fiction, walker is mainly concerned with the black women's living conditions and their struggle for spiritual wholeness and sexual, racial and political equality. To distinguish herself from a "feminist" Ms. Walker invents the term "womanism". Walker's womanism is the combination of anti-racism, anti-sexism, Afracentrism and Humanism, which is feasible not only for the black women, but also for the women in the Third World. Walker's womanism ideology is fully exemplified in The Color Purple, her most representative work, which portrays a 14-year-old black girl, Celie, who is brutalized by the patriarchal society and the religion repressed by the power of male God. The novel successfully depicts how Celie shakes off the oppression of patriarchy and achieves her individual identity and self-actualization with the help of Shug Avery, her husband's lover. Alice Walker concerns not just the pain and hardships of black females but that of black men as well. As the direct victims of racism, black men are distorted, oppressed and repelled by the white world. They are also the victims of patriarchy. Alice Walker believes firmly the possibility of black men's growth, self-healing and self-improvement. She also believes...