Looking for happiness | Book Shelf

Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy is definitely not a book for the faint hearted. In this painful yet powerful book, Walker tells the story of a woman, like many, who has suffered from one of the most demeaning acts of humiliation and degradation- female genital mutilation.

In this book, Walker tells the story of Tashi/ Evelyn (the name she uses when she immigrates to America), a minor character who appeared in The Color Purple. An Olinka woman (a fictional African nation), Tashi grows up with a deep-seated knowledge that an uncircumcised woman is impure and that to be accepted as a real woman by the Olinka people one has to go through the female initiation ceremony.

It is this decision, this need to be accepted, that changes her life forever. Forced to live with the terrible consequences of her decision, she is unable to move forward from this traumatic experience. As repressed painful memories from her childhood- the death of her beloved sister-Dura, are brought into the surface again- she struggles with her own madness, her need to be whole again, the price to finding liberation and to learn the secret of joy.

This story is told by the different personas that Tashi adopts and the different people in her life. Their perspectives make the story telling of this book simply beautiful and give layer to this complex topic. Walker's compassion, understanding even wit is poignantly brought out by her lyrical writing and though her writing is subtle, it is definitely provocative. Even the way she uses flash-forwards and flashbacks is well managed and effective in explaining Tashi's final actions to us. However, her vivid descriptions and the enormity of this topic make this one of the hardest books I've ever read.

Alice Walker's depiction of this age old misogynistic practice that disguises female subjugation, degradation and humiliation with myths and traditions is insightful in raising political and ethical issues. She sheds light on the danger, the risks, the psychological and physical damage that women undergo due to this procedure.

Walker's presentation of the view of M'lissa, the tsunga, the women who performs mutilation makes us see that even the torturer, the wrong doer, is a victim of societal practices. It is also to alert that it is society, culture that allows this horrifying practice to prevail through generations of women who are taught that female sexuality is sinful. Writing this book, Walker has broken a taboo that states that even though this practice is condoned, it is in no way acceptable to talk about.

This book is as relevant today as it was when it came out in 1992. Even today, millions of women living in African, Far Eastern, Middle Eastern countries are genitally mutilated. Tashi's individual story is an outcry, a plea for women and men throughout the world to understand the terrible thing that is done to women. Mostly, it is to show that until procedures like this are eradicated from the world, female subjugation, and oppression will never be a thing of the past.