An Eco-womanist Interpretation Of Now Is The Time To Open Your Heart

Alice walker is one of the most outstanding black female writers in contemporary Afro-American literature. She is fruitful and most of her works are related to the oppression of women and race, the relationship between human and nature. Her womanism reflects a kind of ecological concept through emphasizing the overall survival of women, men and nature. It is a kind of eco-womanist doctrine and mainly embodies four features: anti-sexism, anti-racism, afro-centrism, and humanism. Anti-sexism and anti-racism insists on the black’s self-consciousness of women and nation; Afro-centrism tries to find the cultural and spiritual home of their nations by carrying forward African traditions and looking for the root of black culture; Humanism stresses that love and equality are so essential that women should unite men and the white through tolerance and forgiveness, return to nature, and settle in a harmonious society.Her novel Now is the Time to Open Your Heart is her first work in the 21 st century. In the novel, she extends her concern for race and gender to the whole human world. The novel reflects the ecological, spiritual and survival crisis faced by modern people through Kate’s ecological tour searching for herself. It is one of the representative works related to eco-womanist issues, and therefore becomes a classic. Critics tries to interpret the work from a womanist or feminist perspective, few scholars analyzes it from the perspective of eco-womanism, and most of them are not comprehensive enough. On the basis of the previous researches, this paper attempts to have an eco-womanist interpretation of the novel, analyzing the embodiment of racism, sexism and naturism in the novel so as to reveal the importance of building a harmonious eco-womanist society where men and women, the white and the black, human and nature coexist and dig out the solutions contained in walker’s works to the internal and external crisis faced by modern people.Three parts are included in this paper: the introduction part firstly introduces Alice Walker and her womanism, then briefly discusses the differences and connections between womanism and feminism, eco-womanism and eco-feminism, finally introduces the main content of the novel and combed the research status of domestic and foreign scholars on the work. When it comes to the body part, the first chapter attempts to illustrate the oppression suffered by women and nature under the patriarchal society; The second chapter explores the harmony between black sisters, the white and the black, men and women, human and nature and human and their ancestors during Kate’s spiritual journey; The third chapter further analyzes the cultural strategies to the oppression put forward by walker in the novel, that is to connect nature, tradition, religion with human to build a harmonious society.The conclusion part not only gives a brief summary to this article, but also points out that male-domination leads to both women’s survival crisis and the serious ecological environmental problems, bringing serious blow to the global ecological system. It enlightens us that we should think from an eco-womanist perspective towards today’s increasingly serious ecological crisis, and try to solve it.