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Possessing the Secret of Joy is a 1992 novel by Alice Walker.

[edit] Plot summary

It tells the story of Tashi, a minor character in Walker's earlier novel The Color Purple. She comes from Olinka, Alice Walker's fictional African nation where female genital mutilation is practiced. Tashi chooses to undergo circumcison because she is a woman torn between two cultures, Olinkan and Western. She wants to honor her Olinkan roots and has the operation in her teen years, although it is usually performed on female children. Tashi later sees several psychiatrists because of the trauma she has suffered before finding the strength to act. The novel explores what it means to have one's gender culturally defined and emphasizes that, according to Walker, "Torture is not culture."

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[edit] Characters

Tashi "Evelyn" Johnson- The main protagonist of the novel. She is haunted by her experiences as a child, especially the act of female circumcision that she underwent as a tradition of her village. The novel delves into her struggles recuperating emotionally and physically from the circumcision as she is enveloped in revelations about the underlying meaning of her culture.

Adam Johnson- He is Tashi's lovingly supportive husband. Adam watches Tashi's downward spiral into darkness with the miserable frustration of being incapable of helping her. His intensely powerful insecurity and fear causes him to indulge in a merely comforting affair with his long time friend, the French feminist, Lissete. As a result of their extramarital union, their son, Pierre is born. Adam is devastatingly heart broken as his affair pushes Tashi further away, and must face the consequences of his actions.

Benny Johnson- Tashi and Adam's adult son- Benny is born retarded due to his brain being damaged during his complicated birth. Benny's limited abilities make Tashi increasingly depressed because she blames her circumcised vulva as the reason for Benny's agonizing journey from her womb. Benny is very curious about the world and is willing to study about it in order to keep up conversations with his parents.

Lisette- Adam's lover and mother of Pierre, Adam's second son.

Dura- Tashi's older sister that bled to death in childhood due to the ritual circumcision. Tashi comes to view Dura's death as a murder, and repeatedly emphasizes that Dura has been "screaming in her ears" since her death.

v • d • e Works of Alice Walker Novels and short story collections The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) • Everyday Use (1973) • In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973) • Roselily (1973) • Meridian (1976) • The Color Purple (1982) • You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down: Stories (1982) • Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self (1983) • Am I Blue? (1986) • To Hell With Dying (1988) • The Temple of My Familiar (1989) • Finding the Green Stone (1991) • Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) • The Complete Stories (1994) • By The Light of My Father's Smile (1998) • The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (2000) • Now Is The Time to Open Your Heart (2005) • Devil's My Enemy (2008) Poetry collections Once (1968) • Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems (1973) • Good Night, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning (1979) • Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful (1985) • Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems (1991) • Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth (2003) • A Poem Traveled Down My Arm: Poems And Drawings (2003) • Collected Poems (2005) • Poem at Thirty-Nine • Expect nothing Non-fiction In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983) • Living by the Word (1988) • Warrior Marks (1993) • The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult (1996) • Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism (1997) • Go Girl!: The Black Woman's Book of Travel and Adventure (1997) • Pema Chodron and Alice Walker in Conversation (1999) • Sent By Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit After the Bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon (2001) • Women • We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For (2006) • Mississippi Winter IV See also The Color Purple (film) • The Color Purple (musical)

[edit] Trivia

• The novel is the inspiration for Tori Amos's song "Cornflake Girl"

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