Possessing the Secret of Joy

by Alice Walker (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1992

  $3.25

  Posessing the Secret of Joy is the story of Tahsi, an African tribal woman. Told in Tashi's voice and the voices of the people who knew and loved her, it is the shattering account of a young girl whose decision to go through the female initiation ceremony has terrible and tragic consequences. Alice Walker says about this book, 'When I finished The Color Purple and realised that Tashi, a minor character I had created in that book, had left Africa but taken her wound with her to America, I understood it was my duty as an American woman and human being to stay with her.' With this novel Alice Walker takes on a subject of profound importantce to millions of women and men throughout the world, and does so with integrity and grace.

• Used

  Paperback
  1993

  $3.56

  When Alice Walker finished writing The Color Purple she realised that she needed to tell the story of Tashi, a minor character, who had left Africa but had taken her wound with her to America . This is Tashi's story, told in her words and the voices of the people who loved her. This extraordinarily courageous and compelling novel explores the tragic consequences of Tashi's decision to go through the female initiation ceremony.

• New

  Paperback
  2008

  $18.20

• New

  Hardcover
  1992

  $28.29

  Possessing the Secret of Joy is the story of Tashi, a tribal African woman who lives much of her adult life in North America. As a young woman, a misguided loyalty to the customs of her people led her to voluntarily submit to the tsunga's knife and be genitally mutilated (pharoanoically circumcised). Severely traumatized by this experience, she spends the rest of her life battling madness, trying desperately through psychotherapy - she is treated by disciples of both Freud and C.G. Jung, and even by Jung himself - to regain the ability to recognize her own reality and to feel.It is only with the help of the most unlikely ally she can imagine that she begins to study the mythological reasons invented by her ancient ancestors for what was done to her and to millions of other women and girls over thousands of years. As her understanding grows, so does her capacity to encounter her overwhelming grief. Underneath this grief is her glowing anger. Anger propels her to act. Action brings both feeling - life, the ability to exist with awareness in the moment - and death. Of which she finds she has completely lost her fear.While not a sequel to The Color Purple or The Temple of My Familiar, Possessing the Secret of Joy follows the life of a barely glimpsed character from those books. Combining fact and fiction, communing with the spirits of the living and the dead, Alice Walker in this novel strikes with graceful power at the heart of one of the most controverial issues of our time.