Possessing the Secret of Joy

by Alice Walker

Overview

From the author the New York Times Book Review calls "a lavishly gifted writer," this is the searing story of Tashi, a tribal African woman first glimpsed in The Color Purple whose fateful decision to submit to the tsunga's knife and be genitally mutilated leads to a trauma that informs her life and fatefully alters her existence. Possessing the Secret of Joy, out of print for a number of years, was the first novel to deal with this controversial topic and managed to do so in a manner that Cosmopolitan called "masterful, honorable, and unforgettable storytelling." The New Press is proud to bring the book back into print with a new preface by the author addressing the book's initial reception and the changed attitudes toward female genital mutilation that have come about in part because of this book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781595583642
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	05/06/2008
Pages:	286
Sales rank:	687,949
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x (d)

About the Author

Alice Walker is one of the most prolific and important writers of our time, known for her literary fiction, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Color Purple (which was also a major Broadway play), her many volumes of poetry, and her powerful nonfiction collections. She is the author of We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, Possessing the Secret of Joy, The World Has Changed (edited by Rudolph P. Byrd), The Chicken Chronicles, The World Will Follow Joy, and The Cushion in the Road, all published by The New Press. Some of her other bestselling books include In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, The Temple of My Familiar, By the Light of My Father's Smile, and The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart. Her advocacy on behalf of the dispossessed has spanned the globe. She lives in Northern California.

Hometown:

Mendocino, California

Date of Birth:

February 9, 1944

Place of Birth:

Eatonton, Georgia

Education:

B.A., Sarah Lawrence College, 1965; attended Spelman College, 1961-63

Editorial Reviews

"As compelling as . . . The Color Purple." —San Francisco Chronicle

"Extraordinarily courageous and chilling . . . Walker's remarkable compassion rings on every page." —Cosmopolitan

"Remarkable . . . superb fiction." —New York Daily News

From the Publisher

Pulitzer Prize winner Walker illustrates the truism that violence begets violence in this strong-voiced but often strident and polemical novel, a 17-week PW bestseller, which focuses on the practice of female circumcision in African cultures. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

As compelling as The Color Purple.

Book Review San Francisco Chronicle

As compelling as The Color Purple.

San Frani

Here and there tantalizing remnants of the writing that made The Color Purple such a critical success, but for the most part Walker's latest is held hostage to an agenda—the eradication of female circumcision in Africa and the Middle East—a cause to which she will be contributing a portion of the royalties. A range of voices, including husband Adam, son Benny, and the character Tashi herself, tell the story of the Olinka girl who made a brief appearance in The Color Purple. Married to Adam, the young African-American missionary who took her back to the US, Tashi has suffered intermittent periods of madness since she was brutally circumcised as an adolescent in a remote guerrilla camp in Africa. It's a madness that has required hospitalization and treatment by a range of analysts, including the great Jung, who puts in a cameo appearance here. Though her older sister had bled to death from the effects of the operation, Tashi chose to have it done because she felt it would make her "...completely woman. Completely Africa. Completely Olinka." The operation also was responsible for a difficult delivery in which her son Benny was brain-damaged. Helped by therapy, her grief turns to anger: she returns to Africa and murders the old woman who performed the operation. Sentenced to death, Tashi, who feels neither guilt nor fear of death, is finally at peace because an anthropologist tells her about the mythic causes of the practice: the early African woman, "the mother of womankind," was "notoriously free" of both sexual guilt and circumcision; invading tribes and Arabs were responsible for its imposition. Dying, Tashi finally possesses the "secret of joy": the resistance towhat is evil. A pastiche of New Age mysticism, dubious history, and feminist ideology tied to a storyline that points a moral, heavily underlined, rather than one that grows out of a tale. Female circumcision is a terrible travesty, but neither it nor Walker's talent is well served by this overwrought novel.

Kirkus Reviews