Ideal Paradise: Alice Walker's Eco-Womanism In The Temple Of My Familiar

Alice Walker is an Afro-American novelist,poet,short story writer,and editor who fulfills an important role in the American literature.Her famous novel The Color Purple was awarded both the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize and gained considerable attention in the American society which led to extensive discussion of her work.She sets a good example for subsequent black women writers and gives them the hope and strength to continue writing.The Temple of My Familiar was finished in 1989 and took Alice Walker eight years of hardworking to complete.This book was considered as an epic masterpiece and one of the most important novels in the latter period of her creations.This thesis is mainly aimed at analyzing and exploring the three aspects of anti-sexism,anti-racism,and the opposition of nature discrimination so as to study the connotation of Walker's eco-womanism and the evolution and transcendence of her womanism.This thesis includes five parts.The first part is the introduction which briefly presents Alice Walker and her works and sketches the connotation of the eco-womanism and gathers together the studies and outcomes of The Temple in our country and elsewhere and relates the structure,content,significance of the thesis and the direction of the research.The first chapter mainly explores the anti-sexism and Alice Walker's advocacy of love and redemption and analyzes the plight and salvation of the oppressed women and the male dominator's alienation and recovery from the perspective of personal issues.The second chapter explores the anti-racism and Walker's advocacy of nonviolent resistance in detail and analyzes the white supremacy and colonization and the harm and oppression caused to the black tribes and the black men and women's different nonviolent resistance to the racism from the perspective of communal issues.The third chapter mainly analyzes the opposition to the nature discrimination and Walker's call for a return to nature and to recover a harmonious human nature.It studies the ecological crisis and the imbalance in the environment and Walker's adherence to Afro-centrism and pursuit of ecocentrismfrom the perspective of ecological issues.The last part is the conclusion.Based on the womanism which is concerned about the black nation's sexism and racism and emancipation,Alice Walker's eco-womanism pays attention to the survival and wholeness of all human beings and she manages to secure the emancipation of all human beings and tries to achieve harmony and health in human life by forgiving and tolerating the men and returning to the nature and regaining the lost ideal paradise..