Emancipating the African Female without a Fuss in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Everyday Use: for your Grandmama and in Search of our Mother’s Garden

Abstract

The African woman, feminist or not, at home or in the diaspora, has always strived to identify with the African social order–a legacy of submission even in self-assertion. This study interrogates the several marginalizing experiences of the African American woman, viz a viz, her various harrowing and dehumanizing experiences in America, first as black, and then as female, and how she has evolved over the years in her struggle against this background. This study was carried out within the theoretical purview of Womanism and by analyzing three of Alice Walker’s works: The Color Purple, Everyday Use: For your Grandmama, and In Search of our Mother’s Garden. The study has established that the inability of the African American woman to identify with the Western variant of Feminism birthed Womanism which is an African-American variant of Feminism and more liberal. The tenets of Womanism and how they are reflected in Walker’s works are also considered in this study. Walker preaches that an egalitarian society can result from a dialogic complementarity between the man and the woman and that this is always a more rewarding approach to gender differences for both genders. It is finally established that Womanism is a veritable tool against patriarchy.