Possessing The Secret Of Joy Analysis

Possessing the Secret of Joy is the story of Tashi, an African woman of the fictional Olinkan tribe, who was a minor character in Walker’s previous novels The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar, takes the central stage in this novel. The novel is a series of interior monologues entwined with few letters that describe the story’s major events and the major character’s interpretations and reactions to those events. The chapters of the novel are named for the characters who narrate them, including Tashi, her sister-in-law Olivia, her husband Adam, and their son Benny, some of whom played minor roles in The Color Purple.
The central theme of the novel is the cause and effects of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as a cultural practice. It …show more content…
The deeply damaging physical and psychological effects of her mutilation have reached into nearly every aspect of her life. After years of Jungian psychoanalysis, including treatment by C.J. Jung himself, Tashi begins to come to terms with the madness brought on by her mutilation. Tashi later sees several psychiatrists because she goes crazy due to the trauma she has suffered before finding the strength to act. ”I could not fight with the wound tradition had given me,” she tells one therapist, an African-American woman. Tashi-Evelyn decides to do something drastic, symbolic, and murderous, to express her rage and …show more content…
When she decides to act, to return to Africa and kill M’Lissa, she gains the first semblance of an authentic self. In Africa, when she confronts M’Lissa directly and asks her why she mutilated girls,she says “A proper woman must be cut and sewn to fit only her husband”. Tashi, understanding the power of the ritual in her culture and wanting it to be stopped says, “I am weeping now, myself. For myself. For Adam. For our son Benny, the daughter, I was forced to abort… (224). These lines show the readers what really Tashi has lost in her life –