Possessing the Secret of Joy (Masterplots II: African American Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Alice Walker
- First Published: 1992
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: The 1920’s to the 1980’s
- Setting: The United States, Europe, and Olinka (Africa)
- Principal Characters: Tashi Evelyn Johnson, Adam, Olivia, Mzee (The Old Man), Bentu Moraga (Benny), Lisette, Pierre, M’Lissa
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: African Americans, North America or North Americans, Suffering, United States or Americans, Africa or Africans, Tradition, Sexism, Blacks, Sex or sexuality, Murder or homicide, Twentieth century, Gender roles, California, West, U.S., Pain, Women’s issues, Adultery, Multiculturalism, Women, Revenge, Rites or ceremonies
- Locales: Africa, California
The Novel
In Possessing the Secret of Joy, Alice Walker displays her evolving inventiveness in telling a story. The novel is a series of interior monologues interspersed with a few letters that describe the story’s major events and the major character’s interpretations of and reactions to those events.
Tashi Evelyn Johnson, as the novel’s central focus, has the first interior monologue, which begins “I did not realize for a long time that I was dead.” Subsequent monologues by Tashi and others reveal what leads Tashi to this assessment of her life....
[The entire page is 3336 words long]
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