Abstract
This chapter will focus on Alice Walker’s fluid spirituality and show how it serves as a foundation for the grounding of an eco-justice perspective. Examination of Walker’s nonfiction essays about eco-womanist spirituality reveals an important ethical imperative for womanist ethical analysis—earth justice. In addition to race, class, gender, and heterosexist analysis, I argue that studying Walker’s nonfiction work summons us to add earth-justice to womanist religious ethical analysis. Eco-womanist spirituality, and its focus on the interconnections between the oppressions faced by women of African descent and the unjust treatment of the earth, becomes a new aspect of theo-ethical discourse whereby we are moved to heal our own bodies and communities in connection with healing the body of the Earth. Studying Alice Walker’s spirituality helps us chart our course.
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Notes
See footnote citing an interview with Scott Winn in Karla Simcikova’s To Live Fully, Here and Now: The Healing Vision in the Works of Alice Walker (New York: Lexington Books, 2007), p. 20.
Simcikova, Karla. (2006). To Live Fully, Here and Now: The Healing Vision in the Works of Alice Walker. New York: Lexington Books.
Ibid, p. 4.
Ibid, p. 10.
Ibid, p. 24–25.
Ibid, p. 4.
Walker, Alice. (1988). Living by the Word: Selected Writings 1973–1987. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Coleman, Monica A. (2006). “Must I Be a Womanist?” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 85–96. See also, Hucks, Tracey E. & Stewart, Dianne M. (2003). “Authenticity and Authority in the Shaping of the Trinidad Orisha Identity: Toward an African-derived Religious Theory” Western Journal of Black Studies, volume 27.
Townes, Emilie M. (1995). In a Blaze of Glory: Womanist Spirituality as Social Witness. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, pp. 11–13. Just as the thought and spirituality of Alice Walker can be seen as fluid, so too can the thought and spirituality of womanists scholars, including Townes. While in her 1995 book, quoted above, she gives reference to God and Jesus as important aspects of her womanist spirituality, just over a decade later, in her landmark essay, “The Womanist Dancing Mind: Speaking to the Expansiveness of Womanist Discourse.” In Stacey Floyd-Thomas (ed.). Deeper Shades of Purple: Womanism in Religion and Society. New York: New York University Press, pp. 236–24. Townes uncovers a shifting in her own thought based on the fact that she does not often see Christianity truly being lived out in a way that promotes social witness. She writes, “for many years, I have been a somewhat reluctant Christian. From childhood, I listened to and took seriously what the older folks told me about what being a Christian meant and I watched with equal care as almost no one ever came close to being one. It was for me, as a child, a strange disconnect and in many ways I thought (and continue to think) that Christianity is a wonderful religion but hardly anyone is actually doing it. What I found far too often, however, is a Christianity that sanctions oppression as holy or a religiosity that separates spirituality and social witness … The dilemma is one of being—not so much in the dense ontological sense, but in a more mundane one. What is the difference for me when I say “I am a Christian” and “being Christian?” This is more than rhetorical ruffles and flourishes for me because as a womanist Christian ethicist, I am deeply concerned about the ways in which our actions and values line up or not” (p. 239). Townes’ more extensive analysis on the importance of expanding womanist discourse appears in her groundbreaking work, Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006) wherein she argues that womanist scholarship must expand its focus and expand its study into the multiplicity of religious understandings and belief systems held by peoples of various faiths across the African Diaspora.
Walker, Alice. (1998). “Journey to Nine Miles.” In Living By the Word. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, p. 114.
Walker, Alice. (1983). “Coretta King: Revisited.” In In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, p. 148.
Walker, Alice. (1997). “Introduction” In Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer’s Activism. New York: Ballantine Books, p. xxii.
For more on each of these traditions, see Margarite Fernandez Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Creole Religions of the Caribbean: An Introduction from Vodou and Santeria to Obeah and Espiritismo (New York: New York University Press, 2003) and Rachel Harding, A Refuge in Thunder: Candomble and Alternative Spaces of Blackness (Indiana University Press, 2000); and Carole Christ, She Who Changes: Re-Imagining the Divine in the World (Palgrave McMillian, 2003).
For more on distinctions between the waves in womanist thought see, Melanie L. Harris’ (2010). Gifts of Virtue, Alice Walker, and Womanist Ethics. New York: Palgrave McMillian.
Harding, Rachel E. (2000). Candomble and Alternative Spaces of Blackness. Indiana: Indiana University Press; Tracey Hucks, “I Smoothed the Way, I Opened Doors Women in the Yoruba-Orisha Tradition of Trinidad.” In Women and Religion in the African Diaspora: Knowledge, Power and Performance. Ruth Marie Griffith and Barbara Dianne Savage(ed.). (Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins University Press, 2006), pp. 19–36; Dianne Stewart. (2005). Three Eyes for the Journey: African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious Experience. New York: Oxford University Press; Carol B. Duncan, “From ‘Force-Ripe’” to “Womanish/ist”: Black Girlhood and African Diasporan Feminist Consciousness.” In Deeper Shades of Purple: Womanism in Religion and Society. Stacey Floyd-Thomas (ed.). (New York: New York University Press, 2006), pp. 29–27; Debra Mubashshir Majeed, “Womanism Encounters Islam: A Muslim Scholar Considers the Efficacy of a Method Rooted in the Academy and the Church.” In Deeper Shades of Purple: Womanism in Religion and Society. Stacy Floyd-Thomas (ed.). (New York: NYU Press, 2006), pp. 38–53; Arisika Rasak, “Her Blue Body: A Pagan Reading of Alice Walker Womanism.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, San Diego, California, November, 2007; and Linda A. Thomas. (1999). Under the Canopy: Ritual Process and Spiritual Resilience in South Africa (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.27 Thomas, Under the Canopy: Ritual Process and Spiritual Resilience in South Africa. For example, in noting the importance of both Western forms of Protestant Christianity and forms of African indigenous religion among congregations in a South African context, Thomas writes, “The signs, symbols, and practices used in rituals build a bridge between African religion and western Protestant Christianity. While Christian symbols may seem more dominant, indigenous meaning systems are also present. Cultural signs and symbols of blended African cosmologies are evident” (p. 5).
Ibid, p. 5.
Townes, Emilie M. (2006). Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ibid, p. 2.
Hull, Akasha. (2001). Soul Talk: The New Spirituality of African American Women. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, pp. 1–2.
Wilmore, Gayraud S. (1973). Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of Afro-American People, 2nd Edition. New York: Orbis Books, p. 11.
Ibid, p. 27. Historian Charles H. Long’s argument about the significance of the African religious base for the study of African American Religion also provides invaluable insights. See Charles H. Long, (1995) “Perspective for a Study of Afro-American Religion in the United States.” In Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion, pp. 187–98. Aurora, CO: The Davies Group Publishers.
Both these women’s religious lives and spiritualities are particularly important for any study of Alice Walker’s spirituality because Walker herself studied the spiritual journeys of both these women, the essays on each fall beside each other in the volume, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. This placement I believe is no accident but rather speaks to the significance that the spiritual lives, journeys, and Gnostic and religiously pluralistic beliefs of both women who influenced Alice Walker. I believe these and other women whose spiritual journey fused different aspects of various religious traditions influenced Walker’s own fluid spirituality prompting her initially in high school and college to leave behind the Christianity of her parents in search of an inner spirit that was in keeping with women and life-affirming principles. See Alice Walker, (1983) “Gifts of Power: The Writings of Rebecca Jackson” In In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, pp. 71–82. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers; See also “Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and a Partisan View” In In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, pp. 83–92. For more on the life and spiritual path and journey of Zora Neale Hurston see, Dust Tracks on a Road (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1942, 1971). A section engaging her own personal thoughts on religion shows both her critiques of the Christianity that her own father preached and reveals her indebtedness to the rich culture, metaphors, stories and images of the black southern church tradition.
McMahon Humez, Jean. (1981). Gifts of Power: The Writings of Rebecca Jackson, Black Visionary, Shaker Eldress. The University of Massachusetts Press, p. 19.
Ibid, p. 24.
Alice Walker, “Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and A Partisan View” in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), 83–92.
Ibid., 91.
Walker, Alice. (1983). “Saving the Life That is Your Own: The Importance of Models in the Artist Life” in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, pp. 3–14. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Ibid, p. 83.
Ibid, p. 11.
Ibid. In light of the fact that at least one of the white male authors whom Walker read also implied that black peoples lacked human intelligence, trust became a central factor in how Walker determined whether her sources were trustworthy for her books and stories. As a theme, accuracy, like in the work of Ida B. Wells shows up here as well as an important mark of the black women’s literary tradition in that it solidifies and validates the actual experiences of black peoples.
Hurston, Zora Neale. (1942, 1971). Dust Tracks on a Road. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company.
Ibid, p. 193.
Pinn, Anthony B. (2001). By These Hands: A Documentary History of African American Humanism. New York University Press, pp. 171–82.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Mules and Men. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1935. Reprinted, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969. Reprinted, with an introduction by Darwin Turner, New York: Harper and Row, 1970.)
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© 2015 Ibigbolade S. Aderibigbe and Carolyn M. Jones Medine
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Harris, M.L. (2015). Womanist Spirituality: Legacies of Freedom. In: Aderibigbe, I.S., Medine, C.M.J. (eds) Contemporary Perspectives on Religions in Africa and the African Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137498052_13
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