Portrayal of Free Spirit in Adrienne Rich’s Aunt Jennifer’s Tiger and Alice Walker’s Meridian

The works of women writers of USA have become increasingly visible in the academy especially since 1970s because of their active involvement in contemporary women’s movement. Writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and poets like Maya Angelou and Adrienne Rich and others have been strongly greeted for their ideologies. Undoubtedly, their works echo strong resistance against racism, patriarchism and militarism. The present paper highlights the remedy of the various maladies like male dominance, subordinated identity and submissive life. It is said that ‘every action has reaction’ and these writers believe that ‘”FORTUNE FAVOURS THE BRAVE”. So they have depicted the undaunted spirits among their female protagonists who fought bravely against the odds and eventually emerged victorious.

Reversal of Stereotypes in Alice Walker's The Color Purple: God, Gender, Narrative and Sexuality

Unlike most African-American authors, who constantly mirror the repressive effects of racism, classicism and gender discrimination, Alice Walker (1944–) in her The Color Purple (1982) compulsively deals with sexism that was still pervasive within African American communities during the early twentieth century. She argues that just as black groups are relegated to an underclass due to the colour of their skin in a wider milieu of white society, in the same way the black women are reduced to a more inferior class due to their sex in their own community. For women’s self-emancipation from such an inhibitory patriarchy, the novel gives an overarching emphasis on the formation of language, execution of voice, review of sexual preference and redefinition of identity of her female characters, the protagonist Celie in particular. This paper examines how, by a fusion of the bildungsroman and epistolary conventions, the novelist melds a unique way for her women creating a God for their own and carving out a niche in social and economic concerns. It assesses the strategic reversal of gender stereotype as well as sexual orientation in order to establish the independence and equality of women on a par with men. The paper ends up with the claim that the novel is predicated upon the theoretical prism of womanism, previously premised by Walker herself, which puts extensive emphasis on a deeper, empathetic relationship and camaraderie of women.

Continuity of Womanist Ethos: Intertextuality in Select Novels of Alice Walker

This study uses the relational content analysis method and theories of intertextuality, intersectionality, and womanism to explore the continuity of womanist ethos in select novels of the African-American novelist Alice Walker. It attempts to explore Walker’s use of womanism as an intertextual trope in The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), Meridian (1976), The Color Purple (1982), The Temple of My Familiar (1989) and Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992); Walker’s portrayal of Celie-Shug as a perfect womanist couple in Color Purple and their reappearance in Temple as mother trees; foremothers as role models in Third Life and Temple; Walker’s telling and retelling of Tashi’s life-long suffering from female genital mutilation (FGM) in Color Purple, Temple, and Possessing – the subject of this paper.

Post Slavery and the Plight of Black Americans: An Analysis of Langston Hughes’ “Not without Laughter”

This paper discussed the lives of black Americans in the Post Slavery period. It was believed that black Americans who were former slaves were then free from being treated brutally by the slave masters and that the whipping of the so called offenders was a thing of the past. On the contrary, Black Americans were not free to receive education, have access to legal marriages, own properties and enjoy all other benefits that an American should enjoy. Life after slavery was still difficult. The reality was that black Americans were free only in a narrow sense as they were still discriminated by the government institutions. This gave rise to activism and movements such as Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement. Great Black scholars, The Talented Tenth, such as Alice Walker, Du Bois, and Langston Hughes emerged. Not without Laughter is one of the books that Langston Hughes wrote. This paper is an analysis of civil injustices that Black Americans had to endure according to Hughes in Not without Laughter. Today, the situation has not changed much as racism is still rampant as depicted by violence still perpetrated against the Blacks. The rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement worldwide against the death of Floyd in the USA gives evidence to such. One encouraging aspect, though, is that the current President, Joe Biden is against racism as he has ordered that those that killed Floyd should face the full wrath of the law.

PENDERITAAN TOKOH CELIE DALAM NOVEL THE COLOUR PURPLE KARYA ALICE WALKER

Penelitian ini berjudul “Penderitaan Tokoh Celie dalam Novel The Colour Purple Karya Alice Walker”. Perempuan maupun laki-laki merupakan dua makhluk hidup yang diciptakan Tuhan dengan segala kekurangan dan kelebihannya. Perempuan pada dasarnya merupakan sosok makhluk yang lemah lembut, penuh kasih sayang dan mimiliki perasaan yang halus. Masyarakat umumnya menganggap laki-laki sebagai makhluk yang dianggap kuat dan perempuan dianggap lemah, oleh karena itu diyakini bahwa perempuan membutuhkan perlindungan dari semua orang. Sampai saat ini, masih ada perempuan yang mengalami kekerasan baik itu kekerasan fisik maupun kekerasan mental. Hal tersebut berkaitan dengan kisah yang diceritakan dalam novel yang berjudul The Colour Purple Karya Alice Walker yang menarik untuk penulis kaji. Kisah kehidupan Celie yang berawal dari kekerasan dan pelecehan yang terus Celie alami hingga berdampak pada psikologi Tokoh Celie. Peneliti menggunakan Jenis penelitian kualitatif deskriptif. Penelitian deskriptif kualitatif merupakan penelitian yang menggambarkan dan menjelaskan suatu keadaan didalam karya sastra itu sendiri. Penelitian ini dideskripsikan berdasarkan data yang dianalisis yaitu berupa penderitaan tokoh Celie dalam novel The Colour Purple Karya Alice Walker yang dikaji berdasarkan tokoh, alur, dan dampak penderitaan itu sendiri terhadap tokoh utama.

Locating Banned Books: A Collection Analysis of Libraries in Arkansas and Tennessee

No library can make everything available to its patrons. However, libraries should adhere to the American Library Association (ALA) for guidance on what items are banned from the library's collections. Censorship and intellectual freedom have gained attention for how it affects libraries and the restraints it individualized for banned or forbidden items. Difficulties are characterized as formal, composed complaints recorded with a library or school asking for specific materials to be expelled from view because the substance may not be considered appropriate for the users. The purpose of this study is to compare a selected set of previously banned books or challenged titles in the collections of twelve public libraries within two southern states: Arkansas and Tennessee. The titles include: I Know Why the Cage Birds Sings by Maya Angelou; Beloved by Toni Morrison; Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison; and The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

The Characters of Children in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path”: A Comparative Study

This article tries to compare between two well-known American short stories, “A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty and “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, from a comparative perspective. The author of the first of these stories is an African-American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. Alice Walker and the other story is written by an American short story writer, novelist and photographer, who wrote about the American South, Audra Welty. The specific reasons behind choosing these two short stories because they are written by women writers from different cultures, both deal with racial issues, but more importantly is that both include children characters that can add an attribution to be representations of the new African- American generation. Walker’s story includes the characters of two African- American daughters; Maggi and Dee, each of these characters behave in a different way, a behavior which consequently represents a special attitude towards the new generation of African- Americans. While in Welty’s story, we find the character of the grandson of the protagonist, Phoenix, who has a disease which deprived him from his ability to speak. This study analyses how these three characters provide different angles of seeing how the new generation of African- Americans is represented through a comparative outlook.

TONY MORRISON AND ALICE WALKER’S LINGUISTIC IDENTITY AND SEMANTIC TRIGGERS (IN THE CONTEXT OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN IDENTITY)

The article is devoted to linguistic identity and semantic triggers, a rather interesting aspect of the linguistic identity of Tony Morrison and Alice Walker. The main purpose of of the research of linguistic identity by Toni Morrison and Alice Walker is to analyze of semantic trigger lexical units and expressions in their ideolect. Scientific novelty of the research is determined by studying the semantic trigger lexical units. Our analysis suggests that for T. Morrison and E. Walker, semantic triggers such as blue eyes, nigger, and coon provide a “transition” to scripts that are relevant to their African-American identity. Thus, both writers are carriers of individual linguistic identities, as well as symphonic (social, ethnic, social) linguistic identities, specifically African-American linguistic identities.