Alice Walker Feminist Analysis
ALICE WALKER: THE HARBINGER OF BLACK WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN THE PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY OF AFRICA AND AMERICA Kasukurhi Srinivasa Rao1*, Prof. Kolakaluri Suma Kiran2 1*(Lecturer in English, SVKP College – Markapur) 2(Professor, Department of English, S.V.University – Tirupati.) ABSTRACT The black women of Africa like those of India have been facing a hard time. Their humanity and rights have been denied by the power of patriarchy. With the emergence of Flora Nwapa’s Efuru revolutionary changes occurred in African feministic fiction. The novel Efuru echoed strongly the thoughts of black women and their rights. After Flora Nwapa, Alice Walker broke the confines of established American and African literary structures she approached Womanism which means Black Feminism to her literature. With her own coined literary term, womanism she disclosed through her novels how black women’s human rights have been violated by patriarchal community. Through her heroines like Celie, Tashi, and other heroines shown to the world how black women moved from victimhood to self realization and agitated against the sexual, racial and class oppression of the male dominated society of Africa and America. Keywords: Black Women, Womanism, Oppression, Male Dominated Society. …show more content…
This epistolary novel by central protagonists Celie and her sister Nettie honestly describes the damaging effects of male domination upon Celie’s spirit and her eventual redemption through the love of her husband’s mistress Shug Avery. The novel broke the silence surrounding such taboo subjects as incest and lesbianism. It explored the theme of sexual oppression of black women by black men and situated its sincere treatment of sexism within the black community and also white racial oppression of blacks both in Africa and
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