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    Possessing the Secret of Joy
    Possessing the Secret of Joy
    Possessing the Secret of Joy
    Ebook260 pages3 hours

    Possessing the Secret of Joy

    By Alice Walker

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    An American woman struggles with the genital mutilation she endured as a child in Africa in a New York Times bestseller “as compelling as The Color Purple” (San Francisco Chronicle).

    In Tashi’s tribe, the Olinka, young girls undergo female genital mutilation as an initiation into the community. Tashi manages to avoid this fate at first, but when pressed by tribal leaders, she submits. Years later, married and living in America as Evelyn Johnson, Tashi’s inner pain emerges. As she questions why such a terrifying, disfiguring sacrifice was required, she sorts through the many levels of subjugation with which she’s been burdened over the years.

    In Possessing the Secret of Joy, Alice Walker exposes the abhorrent practice of female genital mutilation in an unforgettable, moving novel.

    This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alice Walker including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.

    Possessing the Secret of Joy is the 3rd book in the Color Purple Collection, which also includes The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateSep 20, 2011
    ISBN9781453224007
    Possessing the Secret of Joy
    Author

    Alice Walker

    Alice Walker, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, is a canonical figure in American letters. She is the author of The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful, The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart, and many other works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Her writings have been translated into more than two dozen languages, and more than fifteen million copies of her books have been sold worldwide. 

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    Reviews for Possessing the Secret of Joy

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Alice Walker is such a beautiful writer. This book begins with Adam and Olivia, children of black missionaries, meeting Tashi, an African child in an African area called Olinka, which holds very traditional values. What "traditional" means in this case is that female genital mutilation is considered mandatory for girls who hope to marry a good man and have a respectable place in Olinkan society. The book details the lives of these 3 people as they grow to adulthood and struggle with Tashi's trauma from her upbringing. Her life, her personal choices, made on a background of trauma and pain, lead us to a place of deep insight regarding the treatment of women, the violence of colonialism and the lack of healing of the supposedly free society. There is violence here but also intense sweetness and love. Alice Walker has been a strong advocate of women's rights and education to end the practice of FGM. I have such admiration for her and her incredible writing. The aching desire to end suffering comes through so clearly and so beautifully.
    • 4/5
      This was a fantastic book! I loved A Color Purple, but I liked this one even better! I'm currently reading two other books that coincidentally mention female circumcision. I liked how the author broke it into the viewpoints of the different characters. However I think I would have liked it better if she had used an actual Africn village instead of a fictional one.
    • 3/5
      This book was written in the same style as The Color Purple, with each section being written by a different character. I enjoyed that aspect, because it gives each one a voice of their own, & a unique perspective on the events in the book. This book centers on Tashi, also called Evelyn, who married Adam, & was briefly seen in The Color Purple. It centers around the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation, or, female circumcision, which Tashi had done, & which killed her sister Dura. It drove Tashi insane, & once she & Adam returned to America, she was in & out of Waverly Asylum. On her return to Africa, she searches out M'Lissa, the "tsunga", or female witch doctor, who was also the tribe midwife & delivered Tashi when she was a newborn. When M'Lissa is found dead, Tashi goes on trial for it. The story is sad, and gives graphic details on what is done to these poor girls over there, & how. It also touches on an interesting theory of how AIDS came to be the epidemic it is in Africa, which is the introduction of a contaminated batch of smallpox vaccine, since Adam is a doctor.All in all, a powerful, haunting story
    • 3/5
      Book on an African woman and her circumcision as a child and how it affected the rest of her life.
    • 4/5
      This novel focusses on the story of Tashi, a minor character in The Colour Purple, who left Africa for a new life in America, and explores the tragic consequences of the female initiation ceremony.This book is written from a number of different points of view, and it switches very quickly, within a few pages. At first, this makes the book very confusing, as it is difficult to see how the different characters relate to each oterh, but gradually this book settles down. The story is well thought-out, and the characters are very vivid, but yet I was still left feeling a bit disappointed. Not sure why - maybe I just expected more than this book was able to give, but unfortunately, despite the sometimes harrowing scenes, I was left feeling that a lot of it was only skimming the surface. For me, it didn't go as deep as it potentially could have done I suppose...
    • 5/5
      This book should be required reading for everywoman. It had a profound impact on my life and how I view the issue of gential mutilation.
    • 3/5
      Tough to take in the information but an important read.
    • 5/5
      A profoundly shocking yet somehow uplifting tale of one woman's quest for understanding. Tashi is an independent African woman married to a Black American. She relates how she underwent the tribal ritual of female circumcision and how this has traumatised her and affected her relationship. It sounds horrific and it is, yet in her journey, Tashi realises just how powerful she is as a woman, and despite what was done to her, she finally discovers the secret of joy in an ending that is tragic yet empowering. I'm so glad I read this - it really is a life changer.
    • 5/5
      This book will always make me cry, both from a feeling of loss and the burning of fierce hope. She put words to what I knew.
    • 1/5
      Walker should have written a short story or a factual article instead of this so-called novel. It is heavy on rhetoric and repetition with very little story or character to back any of it up. Overall, already knowing of the basic subject and having already read the same themes in Walker's work repeatedly, I found it a waste of time, and finished it only because it was expected of me for a class. It isn't time-consuming at all, but it also isn't worth the time you'll have to spend to read it, little as that is.
    • 5/5
      This book is one of the many Alive Walker novels that I have been deeply moved by. Once again, it's a novel that sheds light on what it means to be a woman, how the stereotypes associated with our sexuality shape us, where they come from, and how our methods of dealing with it define us.It talks about the kind of relationships we have when we own our sexuality. It talks about how we pass these things on to our children, wittingly and unwittingly. It talks about the indoctrination of entire communities and cultures, and the battles we face when we want to break free of that whilst still wanting to be accepted and loved by society. Whether this is in fact even possible.At once both painful and powerful, this book is gripping. It's a book I want to gift every female in my life with. And it raises issues I want to school every male in my life about.
    • 5/5
      This book blew me away like no other. The topic of genital mutilation would be a difficult topic for most authors, but Walker takes it head on and treats all sides of the topic with respect. Where most authors would be judgmental, Walker is understanding and honest. She understands the human condition like no other. Possessing the Secret of Joy is simply fantastic. It is a must read.
    • 5/5
      If any single fiction book could get people to discuss the reality of femal circumcision at home and abroad, this is it.
    • 4/5
      While "Possessing the Secret of Joy" certainly isn't Alice Walker's strongest work, it's still an solid one and focused on the incredibly important topic of female genital mutilation. Tashi's story, of a lifetime of suffering due to what happened to her body and rift between her cultural beliefs and the pain she endured, makes this a hard read, but one that is ultimately worthwhile.
    • 4/5
      Picked this book up for a dime on a bookshelf full of unappealing books outside of a library. I believe that I took it because I knew that Alice Walker is a reputable writer, but I didn't even read the back cover. It's been sitting on my shelf for a few years and I'd completely forgotten about it. I picked it up two nights ago and WOW...

      The subject of genital mutilation has been dormant in conversations in my world lately, and I welcome the opportunity to be awakened to important concerns in the world today as I've been sidetracked with issues of little relevance to anyone...

      I had a professor that claims she was a princess of Yoruba. She opened the discussion of female circumcision, cringing every time it was called "genital mutilation" by us naive westerners. She defended the practice, told us we didn't understand the culture, tried to make us feel ignorant. I continued to stress the word "mutilation" in my comments anyway. I wondered for just a minute if I were really just a stupid judgmental American (probably) that had no valid concern for the women in Africa and elsewhere who endure this brutality--after all, this was an actual African princess with whom I was arguing. But then I remembered that I'm equally horrified by bullfighting and accept no vindication for the "sport" in the name of "cultural difference." So my opinion has remained firm.

      I wonder what this professor would think about this novel? She wanted to silence our discussion on the topic by shaming us. She also maintained that there was no sexism in Africa until it was introduced by the white colonialists. These ideas so conflict with this story that I desperately want to have a discussion with people who really know. Has Alice Walker been to Africa? Is she misinformed or has she done her research? Can one African tribe be so drastically different from another but still practice this same "initiation" ceremony? Anyway, these are the questions I have since finishing this novel last night. I'll be delving into some nonfiction right away.

      Overall, this is a beautiful and poetic treatment of a vile subject. Makes you wince and cower, covering your wide open eyes. One of the ways in which I was personally touched after reading this was that I feel like I need to just love being me and resist the things that might interfere with that possibility.


      Update 2008: I still remember this story every time I visit my friend's farm. The chickens! Oh, the horrors!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      African American literature. Alice Walker, author of the The Color Purple writes about Tashi, a woman briefly mentioned in The Color Purple. Tashi is from Africa and Adam, her husband, is the son of a missionary. It is a story of misogyny. Tashi follows the tradition of her people and then sinks into a world of depression. She fights back and is saved by the grace of herself.
    • 5/5
      One of my all time favorite journeys to take, mind affecting.

    Book preview

    Possessing the Secret of Joy - Alice Walker

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    Possessing the Secret of Joy

    Alice Walker

    Contents

    Part One

    Part Two

    Part Three

    Part Four

    Part Five

    Part Six

    Part Seven

    Part Eight

    Part Nine

    Part Ten

    Part Eleven

    Part Twelve

    Part Thirteen

    Part Fourteen

    Part Fifteen

    Part Sixteen

    Part Seventeen

    Part Eighteen

    Part Nineteen

    Part Twenty

    Part Twenty-One

    This Book Is Dedicated

    With Tenderness and Respect

    to the Blameless

    Vulva

    PREFACE:

    THE MOTHER’S BUSINESS

    I LIKE TO TELL THIS STORY because it sounds unlikely. There we were, filmmaker Pratibha Parmar and I, on a plane from Tamale to Accra, in Ghana, West Africa. We had boarded this plane because there was no other, and the alternative to flying to the capital was a seven-hour drive over so rough a road that on our way to Tamale by car a few days earlier we experienced every imaginable discomfort. We had arrived at our destination faint from heat and hunger and covered in red dust.

    The plane was an old army transport, painted in brown and dull green camouflage; Pratibha mentioned on entering that it seemed to be made of tin. Inside the plane there were no seats. We found places on the floor for our parcels and her various cameras, and found ourselves surrounded by other adults who had also impassively entered the plane, attached to their children, their chickens, and their goats. Actually the feeling of being a village flying through the air was quite restful.

    What struck us as the plane took off, however, was that it had no windows. Rather, there were window holes but no panes of glass or plastic in them, just strips of rubber; we immediately stuck our hands right through. We also soon noticed that the plane didn’t fly very high, cruising after climbing just a few hundred feet above the treetops.

    We didn’t dare look toward the front of the plane to locate the pilot, whom we could hear joking with someone behind him. I think we prayed. As the plane lumbered along we looked each other in the eyes. One of us said: Well, here we are. This may well be our last flight together. Or, separately, the other no doubt replied: Is it worth it? Yes, said the other, for we are on the Mother’s business; if we stand She supports us and however we fall She will catch us. We then turned our attention to our neighbors, exchanging greetings and smiles and passing out the Polaroids Pratibha took, and almonds, while accepting bananas and groundnuts. It was a short flight.

    No doubt the presence of groundnuts reminded Pratibha of an earlier time she and I had traveled to Africa on the Mother’s business, some years before when we were making our film, Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women. Then too we had had a memorable experience. Traveling by van from the Gambia to Senegal on a road so treacherous most vehicles chose to bump alongside it rather than on it, we had come upon a huge lorry that had been piled impossibly high with groundnuts and had overturned. Pratibha could not believe my glee—not that the lorry had overturned; thankfully, no one was hurt—but to see so many groundnuts. For me, it was peanut heaven to sit and lie beside a veritable mountain of these nuts that I have adored since I was a child.

    Now, half a decade later, we were returning from a meeting of Female Genital Mutilation abolitionists held in the tiny, dusty town of Bolgatanga, Ghana, a gathering attended by women and men dedicated to the eradication of the millennia-old practice in many African countries and cultures of genital cutting of female children and young women. It had been three days of intense testimony, much sadness, anger, weeping. Understanding. Pratibha and I had been among the weepers several times during the gathering, because it was overwhelming to see that so many Africans, from many and diverse places, had come to discuss ending something that so deeply scarred and undermined the health and well-being of the continent of Africa itself. We cried at everything, really. The anger of the young woman whose parents had thrown her out for refusing to be cut: holding her child in her arms, she challenged her parents and all parents to have the courage to support their daughters’ right to be whole. The sorrow of our best friend at the gathering, a tall, thin, gentle Ghanaian man, head of the local Amnesty International, whose story of being facially cut as a child pierced our hearts. The regal, beautifully dressed woman, a judge from Mali, who spoke eloquently of her daughters’ mutilation under the traditionalist eyes of her mother, their grandmother, while the judge was away from home. The awakened look on the faces of all who attended was well worth the journey to get there. To our great relief and happiness, we were welcomed and embraced by almost everyone. After Pratibha screened our film, there was the joyous feeling of being on a journey together, and sharing with the women in the film the certainty that, though probably not in our lifetimes, we will, through our descendents, see the end of it.

    I was just twenty when I first overheard something about female genital mutilation (FGM) while helping to build a school (out of sisal stalks, all that these very poor, dispossessed-by-British-colonialists people had) for children near Thikka, Kenya. I was then too young and ignorant of patriarchal control of women even to grasp what I had heard. Besides, what was there to be cut off? And why? It would be another twenty-odd years before I felt empowered, by study, travel, conversations with mutilated women, and years of being an editor at Ms. Magazine—the feminist magazine that dared to encourage public discussion about FGM by occasionally publishing pieces that protested it—to begin the work that, in all honesty, felt like it was mine to do from the start. Even in that moment of overhearing something about the practice of cutting young girls. Why me? Because such information caught my ear, snagged my imagination, and never left me, not once, in all those years? I believe in such gifts.

    And so, with the blessings of my Africans-in-America ancestors in the form of the massive bestseller The Color Purple, and after writing The Temple of My Familiar—a long, loving, thank-you novel to said ancestors—I wrote the book that began the journey toward my seat on the floor of the Ghanaian plane, Possessing the Secret of Joy. I would have written this novel in any case, but what a delight to have enough money, space, and time to give it my complete attention. I did not have to teach or do speaking engagements, as I had done while writing The Color Purple. I did not have to worry about heating bills or car notes. Or school fees. Whether to buy winter boots this year or wait. Could I afford new glasses? It was heaven to feel the support of the women and men in this novel as they gathered themselves into flesh that walked around on the page after living for so long as shadows and tortured spirits in my consciousness.

    The world is teaching us more every day of earth’s hard realities; it seems that part of my mission is to encourage a closer look. Many who read this novel will not be prepared for the world that it exposes. I understand. I recall my own innocence at the age of twenty, with nowhere to put information about previously unheard-of violence against women that so shocked me. However, for those who wish to feel with the people who are immersed in the suffering through and occasional triumph over female genital cutting, this book is a good place to start, if only to criticize my approach (which has been done by some readers, and which—understanding an instinctive need many feel to protect the people of Africa, battered for so long by misrepresentation and disdain—I accept without resentment. I have done the best that I could with a challenging subject; perhaps my writer’s shortcomings might be viewed against the magnitude of the calamity).

    After writing Possessing the Secret of Joy, I asked Pratibha to make a film with me about the practice. Warrior Marks became a vigorous and fruitful adventure, as did our touring of it over several countries in Africa and Europe, and also in England, Japan, Cuba, and the United States. We talked ourselves hoarse on the subject in city after city for a couple of years. Going into my tenth year of giving the campaign against female genital cutting virtually all of my activist energy, I realized I needed to retreat. During the trial in Paris of a Gambian woman whose infant daughter bled to death after being cut by a circumciser she met in the park, the ongoing, increasingly global nature of the struggle impressed itself upon me. It wasn’t as simple as burnout; it was a deep recognition that, as with many of the planet’s urgent crises, it will take all of us working together to turn things around. It was also extremely draining to find that I, rather than the eradication of FGM, was becoming the subject of many people’s discourse. Years after I wrote and published Possessing the Secret of Joy there were those who claimed I made the whole FGM thing up, and protests met me at more than one college campus where I was accused of maligning Africa and men (and women of African descent). There were those who assumed I sought control of the subject and jealously guarded their turf as the discussion became debate in some places. Two doctors whom I was later told had performed female genital cutting procedures in the United States were some of my most persistent critics. One of them sent me a photograph of a child whose incision had healed to show me how smoothly and cleanly it was done.

    Although I have removed myself from the FGM arena in recent years, the reader will sense that all of my love remains with the characters in this novel, just as all of it moved forward to embrace characters to come. The everlasting elasticity of love is what makes creativity possible. Pratibha and I have tried, unsuccessfully so far, to interest a major American filmmaker in making a film based on the novel. We are convinced it could halt the practice of genital cutting in many places—in cities in the West and in Africa, for example—overnight. Such is the power of cinema in people’s lives, especially in the lives of people who do not read. We will continue to hold the belief that this collaborative venture is possible, and when it arises we will be ready for it.

    What does it mean to possess the secret of joy? Where is the secret to be found? Where must we search for it? Looking back on my life I see moments when the secret of joy became plain to me and I began to dance its dance. In Possessing the Secret of Joy I pass this on. Human beings do terrible things to each other, yet we are healers, too. In the midst of my darkest ruminations about a practice that affects over a hundred million women and girls, with more becoming its victim every day, I leaned on the wisdom and grace of many a psychiatrist and psychologist. One of them, Dr. Carl Jung, entered the novel as Mzee, the old man, who tenderly begins to guide Tashi,*[1] the character who was mutilated, back to mental health. My favorite thought most days about the suffering of our planet is that some of us, many of us, recognize the perilous journey we are on and its unexpectedly thrilling allies and joys—and we are preparing ourselves, of necessity, to withstand many a shock, as we continue on our way.

    Alice Walker

    Temple Jook House

    Mendocino, California

    Fall 2007

    _________________________

    [1]*The lover and later wife of Adam, in The Color Purple.

    There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

    The children stood up with us in a simple church ceremony in London. And it was that night, after the wedding dinner, when we were all getting ready for bed, that Olivia told me what has been troubling her brother. He is missing Tashi.

    But he’s also very angry with her, she said, because when we left, she was planning to scar her face.

    I didn’t know about this. One of the things we thought we’d helped stop was the scarring or cutting of tribal marks on the faces of young women.

    It is a way the Olinka can show they still have their own ways, said Olivia, even though the white man has taken everything else. Tashi didn’t want to do it, but to make her people feel better, she’s resigned. She’s going to have the female initiation ceremony too, she said.

    Oh, no, I said. That’s so dangerous. Suppose she becomes infected?

    I know, said Olivia. I told her nobody in America or Europe cuts off pieces of themselves. And anyway, she should have had it when she was eleven, if she was going to have it. She’s too old for it now.

    Well, some men are circumcised, but that’s just the removal of a bit of skin.

    Tashi was happy that the initiation ceremony isn’t done in Europe or America, said Olivia. That makes it even more valuable to her.

    I see, I said.

    The Color Purple, 1982

    When the axe came into the forest, the trees said the handle is one of us.

    Bumper sticker

    PART ONE

    TASHI

    I DID NOT REALIZE for a long time that I was dead.

    And that reminds me of a story: There was once a beautiful young panther who had a co-wife and a husband. Her name was Lara and she was unhappy because her husband and her co-wife were really in love; being nice to her was merely a duty panther society imposed on them. They had not even wanted to take her into their marriage as co-wife, since they were already perfectly happy. But she was an extra female in the group and that would not do. Her husband sometimes sniffed her breath and other emanations. He even, sometimes, made love to her. But whenever this happened, the co-wife, whose name was Lala, became upset. She and the husband, Baba, would argue, then fight, snarling and biting and whipping at each other’s eyes with their tails. Pretty soon they’d become sick of this and would lie clutched in each other’s paws, weeping.

    I am supposed

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