Resistance, Woman-bonding And Self-reliance

This paper intends to explore Alice Walker's womanism survival in her 1982 novel The Color Purple by way of in-depth textual analysis in a black womanism perspective. It is argued that such a vision comprises black women's quest for liberation and survival at its core. Blessed with such female self-reliance as letter writing, quilting, sewing pants and blues singing, black women are made to survive against racial and sexual oppression, learn to fight for themselves, and stand up against the unfair treatment by helping one another.Alice Walker is a famous black woman poet, novelist and prose writer in America at the end of the 20^th century, who makes influences in the development of literary and cultural criticism, education, law and American social and political issues. She is also a radical woman, devoting herself to women's movement for a long time, appealing for protecting aboriginal culture and showing her concern for the world's problems. She always stands at the forefront of the era, criticizing, from her particular perspective, all forms of oppression, violence and injustice, the core of which is sexual and racial oppression. Putting her active viewpoints into her literary practice, she is one of the first writers to present oppression within the black community, and proposes the original "womanism" principle, a distinct concept from the western "feminism". Walker is also deeply concerned about the living conditions of the black woman, focusing on their hardship and struggle. Though there is still a lot of controversies over Walker herself and her works, she has gained more and more recognitions and supports in the current American society and even in the world. Walker is no longer simply a literary and artistic writer, but has become a defender and prolocutor of the black nationality and black women. She connects the gender issue with the race issue under the oriflamme of womanism. Walker's representative work The Color Purple is a concentrated expression of "womanism" principle in her literary practice. Through this piece of literary work, Walker tries to explore the meaning of life, elaborating her "womanism" survival, stressing the wholeness of race and self, emphasizing the development and growth of humanity, the possibility for men to change, the unity within women. The final aim of women's struggle is to establish an equal and harmonious relationship with men and to realize the wholeness and existence of humanity.In Chapter One, I intend to describe the resistance by the black women under the triple...