[Some] receive the news of the death of God and the questionableness of authority with great enthusiasm. Like servants released from bondage to a harsh master or children unbound from the rule of a domineering father, such individuals feel free to become themselves.

(Taylor 45)¹

The Color Purple, Alice Walker's novel of black feminist awakening, is also a model for the reconstruction of a black feminist literary tradition. If the existence of such a tradition had previously been marked by the “white page” and historical silence, Walker subverts the space by embracing the absence. By attacking patriarchy (and patriarchal culture) at its Christian foundation, Walker celebrates the emptiness which is and has always been full. Working within and expanding the gaps, her work suggests new possibilities for the “sacred” as a tool in literary reconstruction. Her novel is at once “holy,” a celebration of “wholeness,” and, indeed, a hole. It is the descent necessary for the resurrection, the symbolic reversal of Christian tradition which makes lasting change possible.

If orthodox accounts of literary tradition and history treat influence and “development” with simplistic and apolitical interpretations of “genius,” contemporary theories, like that of Harold Bloom, retain an attachment to a patriarchal ground. Bloom's Freudian ordering of the literary universe, in a succession of anxieties and dissatisfactions in the rupture of communication between fathers and sons, cannot provide even the briefest contextual outline for a black women's literary tradition.² His “daemonic” reversal, however, can be appropriated: A “misreading,” the creative failure of a son's writing/righting his anxiety, can become a “mis(sed) reading,” the creative success of the daughter's writing/rite-ing within the full emptiness of the page and history. Indeed, Paule Marshall has described her own literary output as writing those works that she would have liked to have read.³ Alice Walker has also textualized this “desire” and has noted the forgotten power (and tragedy) of the silenced voice.

Walker makes clear the relationship between the emptying of the literary space and the fulfillment of female identity through her novel's epistolary structure, which subverts the predominantly male code of the Western literary tradition. This grounding celebrates an escape from history while retaining a faithfulness to the transformative power of art. It is also significant that Western and African expressive traditions combine in the epistolary mode, which is the literary/literal equivalent of call and response. Similarly, the revision of the sentimental tradition retains the importance of sororal connections and focuses attention on female bonding. Walker's women transform their own lives as Alice Walker transforms the tradition: Literary codes and conventions are seen to parallel social and sexual relations.

I would like to argue, however, that Walker's greatest accomplishment within The Color Purple is its claim for “space” through the critique of patriarchal theological structures that are, by implication, theocratic. If the adoption of the epistolary form subverts male codes of literary expression, Walker continues the daemonic subversion, further directing her attention to philosophical and political structures that are also limiting of black women. Even more complicated, perhaps, is her critique of anthropomorphic thought and its creative limitations. Walker's religious universe is “self-inventive”; it marks the clearing of debris through the embrace of absence. Insofar as it directs attention to the creative process, Walker's text tends towards the realm of metafiction. It is indeed an anti-story: anti-patriarchal, anti-sexist, anti-Western, etc. But it is not an act of nihilism or desperation, not a celebration of the end but of beginnings. It restates the power of literary creativity in a profoundly social manner.

Walker's novel begins with a threat: “You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy” (3). The irony of the triple negative goes unrecognized, and the chief significance of the voicing lies, perhaps, in its threat to the matriarchal bond. The emergence of a voice of challenge could result in the disruption of the mother-daughter covenant. The threat (based upon the sexual violation of the female) cannot be acknowledged through a cry for help or even sympathy. Celie must turn toward a personal, but distant, God. Celie's “Dear God” marks not only the emergence of a literary form (the epistolary novel) but also a ritual form (prayer). Walker immediately (if somewhat cryptically) directs our attention toward the efficacy of this ritual form: In Celie's “I am,” Walker simultaneously deletes/revises the present tense of the verb to be and the Biblical self-designation of the Hebrew God. This radical, yet subtle, transformation is highly suggestive. Its deletion may signal a passionate turn from the Biblical religious tradition in which many black women have historically found self-definition. Equally as crucial, however, is Walker's empowerment of her seemingly impotent protagonist. The “word” has been spoken; the refuge of the traditional ritual (and literary) form is temporary.

Celie has also asked for a sign. At this point in her narrative she perceives herself as powerless, and looks for external authorization. Although writing God, she is unable to right her situation. Somewhat immediately, however, the beneficence and the righteousness of this God is called into question. “My mama dead” (4), Celie tells us in her next letter, despite her attempts to satisfy the demands of her father's curse. The victim of incest, Celie had told her mother upon the birth of her child that it was “God's” (4). Destructive patriarchal power is associated with God even though this same power is Celie's textual partner. Walker thus begins the process of clearing. Her protagonist has (in the first two pages) spoken the unspoken (the “I am”) and radically revised the mythic story of Christ's birth. Celie's path to selfhood involves the evaporation of patriarchal Christianity.

Celie's marriage to Mr. ——— continues the pattern. Her husband, in a further reference to the Old Testament God, is also unnameable. This textual deletion signifies her “partner's” absolute distance, his inability to comprehend her history and future. He perceives her as livestock, and denies her not only love but humanity. She discovers her lost child in the possession of a “Reverend Mr. ———” (15). From no Mr. ——— will she receive “God help” (5). In retribution, Walker ironically denies identity to the powerful, whom she playfully makes into objects of ridicule; they possess titles of pseudo-respect, but lack “Christian” names.

It is from Nettie that Celie first learns that resistance is necessary: “You got to fight. You got to fight” (17). But as that lesson is first being learned, Nettie's safety is called into question because of Mr. ———'s advances. Nettie begins their goodbye:

I sure hate to leave you here with these rotten children, she say. Not to mention with Mr. ———. It's like seeing you buried, she say.

It's worse than that, I think. If I was buried, I wouldn't have to work. But I just say, Never mine, never mine, long as I can spell G-o-d I got somebody along.

(18)

Celie's response is highly ironic, both in terms of her “never mine” comment and the silence of her respondent. It is true that that bond can never be hers. But Walker makes clear where the true bond should be. Their goodbye is completed:

I say, Write.

She say, What?

I say, Write.

She say, Nothing but death can keep me from it.

She never write.

(18)

The connection (a “literary” one) is based upon female ties. And what is of greatest significance is that Celie must learn to be patient with Nettie's silence; she must discover that there never was a silence, that the nexus was interrupted. The literary space is full. It is also significant that Celie herself seems to sense something. The salutation of her next letter is not “Dear God” but “G-o-d” (19). While clearly a reference to Nettie's farewell, the expression also explores the “white spaces” between the “letters.” Walker's revision of the textual form (of the generic convention) exposes the ritual partner as artifice.

Although Celie must endure the indignities of her life without Nettie's support and aid, Celie's familial universe is not to be without female nurturance. Harpo's marriage to Sofia introduces Celie to an alternative mode of coping. Sofia “modifies” the requirements of marriage and child rearing. She rebels against the authority of her own father, and she is unwilling to behave deferentially to any man. Sofia's rebellion becomes a cause for Celie to reflect:

I think bout this when Harpo ast me what he ought to do to her to make her mind. I don't mention how happy he is now. How three years pass and he still whistle and sing. I think bout how every time I jump when Mr. ——— call me, she look surprise. And like she pity me.

(34)

Jealous of Sofia's autonomy, and uncomfortable with her pity, Celie suggests that Harpo beat her. Harpo's lack of success in taming Sofia and her own conscience conspire to make her realize her “sin.” Not even “think[ing]” about the Bible (37) relieves her anxiety.

Sofia's confronting Celie with the fact of her betrayal leads to her considering a new possibility. Celie tells Sofia how she perseveres:

Well, sometime Mr. ——— git on me pretty hard. I have to talk to Old Maker. But he my husband. I shrug my shoulders. This life soon be over, I say. Heaven last all ways.

You ought to bash Mr. ——— head open, she say. Think bout heaven later.

(39)

Sofia's suggestion participates in the clearing of the patriarchal theological ground that is part of Celie's imprisonment. Outright rejection of the future-oriented strategy is difficult, yet Sofia's combative personal style is not appropriate for Celie. Still, the suggestion introduces levity into a confrontational situation. It provides an occasion for the establishment of female bonds through the introduction of a maternal art form:

Not much funny to me. That funny. I laugh. She laugh. Then us both laugh so hard us flop down on the step.

Let's make quilt pieces out of these messed up curtains, she say. And I run git my pattern book.

(39)

Whatever Sofia's contribution to Celie's enlightenment, it remains for Shug Avery to disrupt her world view radically. Shug, Mr. ———'s blues-singing lover, is clearly a threat to the patriarchal establishment, as the preacher signifies by taking Shug's “condition for his text” (40). Shug's lifestyle is a rejection of the values of the Christian-based community, and suggests both marginalization and survival. Despite her horrible condition when she enters Celie's household, she finds a way to endure:

Ain't nothing wrong with Shug Avery. She just sick. Sicker than anybody I ever seen. She sicker than my mama was when she die. But she more evil than my mama and that keep her alive.

(43)

Despite Shug's “evil,” her entrance into Celie's life represents the emergence of a new religious consciousness: “I wash her body, it feel like I'm praying” (45). And surprisingly, Shug's presence seems to lessen the tension between Celie and Mr. ———; their co-commitment to her health marks a new understanding in their relationship. Shug's presence also marks Celie's ability to conceptualize things differently, to imagine another real existence: “First time I think about the world” (52), Celie considers, in clear opposition to the “other-worldly” orientation that Sofia has warned her against.

Shug's attentions to Celie are crucial to Celie's emergent self-identification. Shug helps to make Celie aware of her own sexuality, and ironically “redefines” her as “virgin” (95). Significantly, Shug as “writer” draws attention to Celie. Her “Miss Celie's song” punctuates her importance in Celie's growing self-awareness: “First time somebody made something and name it after me” (65). Still, Shug's contribution to this naming and liberating process is limited. Like Sophia, Shug cannot provide Celie with her distinctive individuality. But by encouraging Celie to provide this answer for herself and to reject the Biblical injunctions, Shug, like Sophia, participates in the theological clearing.

There is still much radical redefinition to be done. When Sofia gets into trouble for “sassing,” Celie imagines a dramatic solution:

… I think bout angels, God coming down by chariot, swinging down real low and carrying ole Sofia home. I see 'em all as clear as day. Angels all in white, white hair and white eyes, look like albinos. God all white too, looking like some stout white man work at the bank. Angels strike they cymbals, one of them blow his horn. God blow out a big breath of fire and suddenly Sofia free.

(80)

But Celie, Shug, and Harpo's mistress Squeak do not wait for this solution. They conspire to have Squeak confront the warden in the hope of using her past to gain favor for Sofia. While their plan has limited success, it is their decision to combat patriarchal power with black female solidarity that is noteworthy. Their ability to “conspire” is significant; their “plot” is Walker's. The silence that is framed in otherworldly hope is replaced by a worldly female bonding.

Celie's discovery (with Shug's assistance) of Nettie's letters marks the radical turning point of the novel. Hidden by Mr. ——— (now named Albert), the letters are the powerful connecting metaphor for the reconstruction of a black feminist literary tradition. The text and the tradition have never been missing. They have been disguised and sequestered because of the letters' liberating power. Albert's desire to “keep” Celie, to shape her for himself, to proscribe her existence, is most powerfully expressed in his attempts to break sororal bonds through the denial of a textual connection with Nettie. The discovery of the letters, a product of ongoing self-redefinition, further promotes that process.

Nettie writes in one of her first letters:

I remember one time you said your life made you feel so ashamed you couldn't even talk about it to God, you had to write it, bad as you thought your writing was. Well, now I know what you meant. And whether God will read letters or no, I know you will go on writing them; which is guidance enough for me.

(110)

The artifice of Celie's writing structure is revealed; “God” functions as a sardonic surrogate partner in the silence created by the very patriarchal power it represents. This “revelation” produces a most dramatic change in Celie's character; Shug must try to convince her not to kill Albert, in a rage even Sofia can't conceive:

Don't kill, she say. Nettie be coming home before long. Don't make her have to look at you like us look at Sofia.

But it so hard, I say, while Shug empty her suitcase and put the letters inside.

Hard to be Christ too, say Shug. But he manage. Remember that. Thou Shalt Not Kill, He said. …

But Mr. ——— not Christ. I'm not Christ, I say.

(122)

Celie distances herself not only from the “Christ[ian]” response, but also from the tradition itself. The convincing part of Shug's argument is that Celie should not risk severing her tie to Nettie. The appeal to “Christ” is an appeal to an old rhetoric that has little hold upon Celie any more.

Walker powerfully challenges her reader (and herself) in the demythologizing of tradition by making Nettie a missionary. However, Nettie's experience in colonial Africa, rather than being a retreat, further unravels the ties between institutional Christianity and black oppression. Nettie's letters tell of the power of being faced with “the Olinka God” (131), and of physical and cultural destruction. The necessary ignorance of imperialism and the new vision of cross-cultural perspective make Corrine and Samuel appear provincial. Nettie's faithfulness in the face of such inconsistency and violence requires a radical reorientation. The “rules,” it seems clear, have changed, and this shift is linked to Nettie's tie to Celie. Nettie does recognize the negative power of the vocation she represents, and distances herself accordingly. The “fact” of her one-way correspondence with Celie seems to speak to a gap in her call. “I would give anything for a picture of you, Celie,” writes Nettie. “… the picture of Christ which generally looks good anywhere looks peculiar here” (135). Nettie has had to redefine her purpose:

My spirits sort of drooped after being at the [Missionary] Society. On every wall there was a picture of a white man. … We are not white. We are not Europeans. We are black like the Africans themselves. And that we and the Africans will be working for a common goal; the uplift of black people everywhere.

(115)

Celie, similarly, ceases to write to God when she learns from Nettie that “Pa is not our Pa!” (150). While literally representing the unraveling of Celie's complicated genealogy and the removal of the stigma of incest, this statement symbolically marks their joint recognition of the superfluous demands of a restrictive theocracy. The Christian “father” is not their father, not their spiritual reservoir. But, as Nettie warns (“… unbelief is a terrible thing” [158]), a retreat into nihilism is not the answer. Celie must re-learn belief in a way that replenishes the spirit as it redefines the self.

Shug also recognizes the danger in absolute rejection:

Just because I don't harass it like some peoples us know don't mean I ain't got religion.

What God do for me? I ast. …

She say, Miss Celie, You better hush. God might hear you.

Let 'im hear me, I say. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.

She talk and she talk, trying to budge me way from blasphemy. But I blaspheme much as I want to.

(164)

Celie's claiming the power of the curse is significant. It is the most dramatic form of radical revision, but also the most dangerous.⁴ Shug's and Nettie's attachment to some “form” of a god makes clear that Celie's anger endangers her bond with them; an absolute negativity could shut them out. Celie herself recognizes the risk:

All my life I never care what people thought bout nothing I did, I say. But deep in my heart I care about God. What he going to think. And come to find out, he don't think. Just sit up there glorying in being deef, I reckon. But it ain't easy, trying to do without God. Even if you know he ain't there, trying to do without him is a strain.

(164)

Celie and Shug try to renegotiate an identity and existence for “God.” Shug's lesson for Celie includes recognizing that “God” isn't necessarily to be found in the institutional church, nor should “its” image be old, white, and male. Most radically, Shug rejects anthropomorphic conceptions completely:

Here's the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don't know what you looking for. …

It? I ast.

Yeah, It. God ain't a he or a she, but a It.

(166-67)

Shug's rejection is the action that makes possibility; hers is a signifyin' theology that clears the way for Celie's selfhood. It reveals that Celie's writing has not been directed outward to a distant, uncaring entity, but inward, satisfying her own creativity.

But Celie must still act for herself. If Shug's lesson has provided a further opening, Celie must enter it, and claim her inheritance.

Well, us talk and talk bout God, but I'm still adrift. Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. …

Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain't. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up flowers, wind, water, a big rock.

But this hard work, let me tell you. He been there so long, he don't want to budge. He threaten lightening, floods, and earthquakes. Us fight. I hardly pray at all. Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.

Amen.

(168)

Shug's ironic use of the orthodox account of the Genesis story becomes a tool in Celie's liberation. “Man” has corrupted the creation, and Celie must resort to conjuration to protect herself.⁵ The “Amen” that ends Celie's account is a powerful one. It has been conspicuously absent from her other letters (“prayers”) despite their traditional form. The “Amen” is not a note of ritual assent, but its negation. This amen indicates the power of the “specified” rather than consensus.

If conjuring provides the psychic power to prevent Celie's regression into total subservience, the “curse” is the radical negation that makes selfhood possible. “It's time to leave you and enter into the Creation,” (170) she tells Mr. ———. More powerfully still:

I curse you, I say.

What that mean? he say.

I say, Until you do right by me, everything you touch will crumble.

He laugh. Who you think you is? he say. You can't curse nobody. Look at you. You black, you pore, you ugly, you a woman. Goddam, he say, you nothing at all. …

I'm pore, I'm black, I may be ugly and can't cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I'm here.

Amen, say Shug. Amen, amen.

(176)

Mr. ———'s inability to understand “what that mean” becomes definitive of a separate tradition of voice and text. Celie's curse brings havoc upon the patriarchal household, and makes a claim for her own space within creation. Her acknowledgment of Mr. ———'s disclaimer negates its power and rejects its attempt to define appropriate roles and standards for black women. Finally, Shug's recitation of the dissenting a-men reminds the reader of the theocratic ground being cleared.

But Celie's curse is affirmative as well as negating. It instigates a new order. Not only is the restoration of Celie's family imminent, but significant changes in character are also promoted. We are told of Mr. ———'s new grooming habits and work ethic. Harpo's relationships with Sofia and his father are improved. We are even told of Harpo's going to sleep with his father in order to keep him company (191). Symbolically, the curse provides the motivation for the lamb to lie down with the lion, while it literally continues to revise gender roles.

Now Celie's troubles can be confronted in a different way. When Shug is about to leave her for a young man, Celie responds, “I write” (212). As Shug's explanation becomes more desperate, Celie's response becomes like a chant, and Walker again directs our attention to the value and function of the hidden tradition. The voice that empowers the curse also promotes and defines the tradition. Celie's “I write” (and, perhaps, I right) begins to provide the reader with access to that map of mis(sed) reading.

Walker's clearing of the theological ground has not been approved of universally. Indeed, the publication of her latest novel, The Temple of My Familiar, has heightened criticism that Walker has adopted a mushy New Age philosophy to confront a historical Christianity that has misled and misplaced black women. Gerald Early may have been Walker's harshest early critic when, in responding to The Color Purple, he suggested that Walker is guilty of a “fairly dim-witted pantheistic acknowledgment of the wonders of human potential that begins to sound quite suspiciously like a cross between the New Age movement and Dale Carnegie” (272). Such criticism would be appropriate if Walker claimed her novel to be “real” in the mode of either Toni Morrison or Richard Wright. But Walker may more correctly belong in a tradition of black mysticism, with Rebecca Jackson, Jean Toomer, and Howard Thurman as ancestors, and Henry Dumas as contemporary.⁶ Indeed, Early goes too far when he suggests that

… what Walker does in her novel is allow its social protest to become the foundation for its utopia. Not surprisingly, the book lacks any real intellectual or theological rigor or coherence, and the fusing of social protest and utopia is really nothing more than confounding and blundering, each seeming to subvert the reader's attention from the other. One is left thinking that Walker wishes to thwart her own ideological ends or that she simply does not know how to write novels. In essence, the book attempts to be revisionist salvation history, and fails because of its inability to use or really understand history.

(273; emphasis added)

Early protests too much, and begins to be cast in the role of offended defender of the patriarchal ground. Walker has made no claim as an historian; her self-identification as “medium” suggests that The Color Purple is clearly meant to be outside of the historical realm. Early is correct, perhaps, when he suggests that Alice Walker does not know how to write novels—at least novels directed or shaped by a male and Western paradigm. Walker is exploring the possibilities in the text as sacrament. “Profitless play,” suggests Mark Taylor, “can overcome the unhappy consciousness of the historical agent” (4). Walker's book is not “closed”; rejecting the telos of the historian for the “purposeless” wandering/wondering of the blues woman, The Color Purple invites the play of surfaces, the interpretation of interpretation. It dismisses history to revise the present.

To have access to a map of mis(sed) reading is to encourage a particular kind of historic consciousness. The challenge which confronts individuals interested in the establishment of a black feminist literary history is the necessity of enacting reconstruction and imaginatively identifying new historical categories, constructing theories of influence and theories of individual creation. Walker addresses this theoretical dilemma. Despite the important contribution of The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, Barbara Christian's Black Women Novelists, or even the work of the Afro-American Novel Project at Boston University to our desired historiography, we must also recognize the contribution of Walker's fictional transgression. What work can a new catalog of lost texts do towards the comprehension of black women's creative writing if we cannot also think through the problem of absent readers? If our historiographical model is to be complete, it must acknowledge a range of literary activities and desires; it must document and imaging writers and readers, perhaps even texts, written and dreamed. Walker recognizes the wound inflicted by canonical edict: literary silence, despite richness of artistic instinct, of human desire to creatively alter the world, immediate and distant. Her response is to subvert the patriarchal and racist dimensions of our culture of the word by questioning traditional theological and theocratic structures, while retaining through playful revision the interrelationship of speech, selfhood, and creativity. The creative disorganization of our very notion of tradition, while retaining commitment to humanistic values and inquiry, is no small feat. Despite a postmodern theology—an embrace of absent fathers—Walker has no desire to do away with meaning. She is clearly a woman of letters.

The reintegration offered in Celie's final letter draws attention to the conjure; it suggests to the reader the closing of a special period of time and space. “Dear God. Dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, dear peoples. Dear Everything. Dear God” (249)—not only is there psychic reconciliation, but also a sense of ritual completion, consistent with the notion of the text as sacrament. The reader emerges from the realm of the imaginary with a sense of new possibility. Most significantly, “Walker creates a new literary space for the black and female idiom within a traditionally Western and Eurocentric form” (Henderson 18). We begin to get some idea as to how to inscribe and describe the newness—ways of celebrating genius. And as Celie discovers the letters, and recovers her “missed reading,” we are directed toward a map of tradition.

This accomplishment is best marked by Walker's quote of Stevie Wonder: “Show me how to do like you / Show me how to do it.” Walker's attention to the vernacular song makes clear the ways in which her text is not a passive imitation of the Western literary form. The Color Purple is a demand for recognition, for the acknowledgment of revision within missed reading. There is irony in the source—the black and blind (literally “vision”-less) singer asking to be shown as opposed to told. Walker's creative genius is the revision of vision, asking us to see alternatively, to see where we have not seen before.

Notes

1. Taylor's deconstruction of traditional theological conceptions is crucial to my reading of Walker.

2. Dianne F. Sadoff's “Black Matrilineage” offers an important consideration of the value of Bloom's work, particularly The Anxiety of Influence, for a black women's literary tradition. Sadoff also considers the value of Gilbert and Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic. I wish to argue that the notion of “re-reading” or “re-voicing” can be appropriated without adopting the psychoanalytic model (and controversy). Sadoff's work demonstrates the danger inherent in confronting that tradition: Spending an inordinate amount of time delineating the complexities of one “school” over another can divert attention from the insight's constructive potential within the literary tradition. More helpful are the essays by Marjorie Pryse and Hortense Spillers in Conjuring, by Mae G. Henderson in Sage, and most especially by Walker herself (see “Saving the Life That Is Your Own,” “Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and a Partisan View,” and “Looking for Zora” in Gardens).

3. It must be made clear that what is being asserted here by both black women writers and myself is not the non-existence of a rich tradition of literature by black women, but rather a matrix of circumstances which have in the past made (conspired to make?) unlikely the placement of black women's literary stories in the hands of a black female readership. Benignly, one might assert that a map of mis(sed) reading is an analytical tool for the use of sociologists of literature; more powerfully, I think, it should be seen as a interpretive tool for the use of sympathetic critics in the reconstruction of the unseen tradition. Again, as noted above, Alice Walker's own writing on models is crucial.

4. Mark Taylor makes clear why it must be dangerous: “In a place of a simple reversal, it is necessary to effect a dialectical inversion that does not leave contrasting opposites unmarked but dissolves their original identities. Inversion, in other words, must simultaneously be a perversion that is subversive. Unless theological transgression becomes genuinely subversive, nothing fundamental will change. What is needed is a critical lever with which the entire inherited order can be creatively disorganized” (10).

5. Pryse and Spillers have made specific use of Walker's use of conjuration in titling their text on black women's literary tradition. I would further suggest that this is a clue to a further revision of Bloom's “ratios”; for a black women's tradition of revision we might substitute signifyin' for clinamen, dues for tessara, steppin' out for kenosis, spirit possession for daemonization, curse for askesis, and the blues for apophrades. Of course, any such revision would need to challenge more substantively Bloom's assumed historical and psychoanalytic connections. Walker's challenge (and my own, I hope) is more than an assault on Eurocentric paradigms—it is a needed reassertion of American pluralism against objective theory.

6. On Walker's knowledge of Rebecca Jackson, see “Gifts of Power: The Writings of Rebecca Jackson” (Gardens 71-82). One of the most disappointing aspects of the most recent assault on Walker has been the inability of critics and commentators to contextualize her more recent concerns with reference to African-American religious history.

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford UP, 1973.

Christian, Barbara. Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892-1976. Westport: Greenwood, 1980.

Early, Gerald. “Everybody's Protest Art: The Color Purple.” Antioch Review 44 (1986): 261-78.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., gen. ed. The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers. 30 vols. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.

Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.

Henderson, Mae G. “The Color Purple: Revisions and Redefinitions.” Sage 2.1 (1987): 14-18.

Pryse, Marjorie, “Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and the Ancient Power of Black Women.” Pryse and Spillers 1-24.

Pryse, Marjorie, and Hortense J. Spillers, eds. Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction, and Literary Tradition. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985.

Sadoff, Dianne F. “Black Matrilineage: The Case of Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston.” Signs 11.1 (1985): 4-26.

Spillers, Hortense J. “Cross-Currents, Discontinuities: Black Women's Fiction.” Pryse and Spillers 249-61.

Taylor, Mark C. Erring: A Postmodern A/theology. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984.

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Harcourt, 1982.

———. In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Feminist Prose. New York: Harcourt, 1983.