by Alice Walker
Possessing the Secret of Joy
Alice Walker
Contents
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten
Part Eleven
Part Twelve
Part Thirteen
Part Fourteen
Part Fifteen
Part Sixteen
Part Seventeen
Part Eighteen
Part Nineteen
Part Twenty
Part Twenty-One
This Book Is Dedicated
With Tenderness and Respect
to the Blameless
Vulva
PREFACE:
THE MOTHER’S BUSINESS
I LIKE TO TELL THIS STORY because it sounds unlikely. There we were, filmmaker Pratibha Parmar and I, on a plane from Tamale to Accra, in Ghana, West Africa. We had boarded this plane because there was no other, and the alternative to flying to the capital was a seven-hour drive over so rough a road that on our way to Tamale by car a few days earlier we experienced every imaginable discomfort. We had arrived at our destination faint from heat and hunger and covered in red dust.
The plane was an old army transport, painted in brown and dull green camouflage; Pratibha mentioned on entering that it seemed to be made of tin. Inside the plane there were no seats. We found places on the floor for our parcels and her various cameras, and found ourselves surrounded by other adults who had also impassively entered the plane, attached to their children, their chickens, and their goats. Actually the feeling of being a village flying through the air was quite restful.
What struck us as the plane took off, however, was that it had no windows. Rather, there were window holes but no panes of glass or plastic in them, just strips of rubber; we immediately stuck our hands right through. We also soon noticed that the plane didn’t fly very high, cruising after climbing just a few hundred feet above the treetops.
We didn’t dare look toward the front of the plane to locate the pilot, whom we could hear joking with someone behind him. I think we prayed. As the plane lumbered along we looked each other in the eyes. One of us said: Well, here we are. This may well be our last flight together. Or, separately, the other no doubt replied: Is it worth it? Yes, said the other, for we are on the Mother’s business; if we stand She supports us and however we fall She will catch us. We then turned our attention to our neighbors, exchanging greetings and smiles and passing out the Polaroids Pratibha took, and almonds, while accepting bananas and groundnuts. It was a short flight.
No doubt the presence of groundnuts reminded Pratibha of an earlier time she and I had traveled to Africa on the Mother’s business, some years before when we were making our film, Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women. Then too we had had a memorable experience. Traveling by van from the Gambia to Senegal on a road so treacherous most vehicles chose to bump alongside it rather than on it, we had come upon a huge lorry that had been piled impossibly high with groundnuts and had overturned. Pratibha could not believe my glee—not that the lorry had overturned; thankfully, no one was hurt—but to see so many groundnuts. For me, it was peanut heaven to sit and lie beside a veritable mountain of these nuts that I have adored since I was a child.
Now, half a decade later, we were returning from a meeting of Female Genital Mutilation abolitionists held in the tiny, dusty town of Bolgatanga, Ghana, a gathering attended by women and men dedicated to the eradication of the millennia-old practice in many African countries and cultures of genital cutting of female children and young women. It had been three days of intense testimony, much sadness, anger, weeping. Understanding. Pratibha and I had been among the weepers several times during the gathering, because it was overwhelming to see that so many Africans, from many and diverse places, had come to discuss ending something that so deeply scarred and undermined the health and well-being of the continent of Africa itself. We cried at everything, really. The anger of the young woman whose parents had thrown her out for refusing to be cut: holding her child in her arms, she challenged her parents and all parents to have the courage to support their daughters’ right to be whole. The sorrow of our best friend at the gathering, a tall, thin, gentle Ghanaian man, head of the local Amnesty International, whose story of being facially cut as a child pierced our hearts. The regal, beautifully dressed woman, a judge from Mali, who spoke eloquently of her daughters’ mutilation under the traditionalist eyes of her mother, their grandmother, while the judge was away from home. The awakened look on the faces of all who attended was well worth the journey to get there. To our great relief and happiness, we were welcomed and embraced by almost everyone. After Pratibha screened our film, there was the joyous feeling of being on a journey together, and sharing with the women in the film the certainty that, though probably not in our lifetimes, we will, through our descendents, see the end of it.
I was just twenty when I first overheard something about female genital mutilation (FGM) while helping to build a school (out of sisal stalks, all that these very poor, dispossessed-by-British-colonialists people had) for children near Thikka, Kenya. I was then too young and ignorant of patriarchal control of women even to grasp what I had heard. Besides, what was there to be cut off? And why? It would be another twenty-odd years before I felt empowered, by study, travel, conversations with mutilated women, and years of being an editor at Ms. Magazine—the feminist magazine that dared to encourage public discussion about FGM by occasionally publishing pieces that protested it—to begin the work that, in all honesty, felt like it was mine to do from the start. Even in that moment of overhearing “something” about the practice of cutting young girls. Why me? Because such information caught my ear, snagged my imagination, and never left me, not once, in all those years? I believe in such gifts.
And so, with the blessings of my Africans-in-America ancestors in the form of the massive bestseller The Color Purple, and after writing The Temple of My Familiar—a long, loving, thank-you novel to said ancestors—I wrote the book that began the journey toward my seat on the floor of the Ghanaian plane, Possessing the Secret of Joy. I would have written this novel in any case, but what a delight to have enough money, space, and time to give it my complete attention. I did not have to teach or do speaking engagements, as I had done while writing The Color Purple. I did not have to worry about heating bills or car notes. Or school fees. Whether to buy winter boots this year or wait. Could I afford new glasses? It was heaven to feel the support of the women and men in this novel as they gathered themselves into flesh that walked around on the page after living for so long as shadows and tortured spirits in my consciousness.
The world is teaching us more every day of earth’s hard realities; it seems that part of my mission is to encourage a closer look. Many who read this novel will not be prepared for the world that it exposes. I understand. I recall my own innocence at the age of twenty, with nowhere to put information about previously unheard-of violence against women that so shocked me. However, for those who wish to feel with the people who are immersed in the suffering through and occasional triumph over female genital cutting, this book is a good place to start, if only to criticize my approach (which has been done by some readers, and which—understanding an instinctive need many feel to protect the people of Africa, battered for so long by misrepresentation and disdain—I accept without resentment. I have done the best that I could with a challenging subject; perhaps my writer’s shortcomings might be viewed against the magnitude of the calamity).
After writing Posse
ssing the Secret of Joy, I asked Pratibha to make a film with me about the practice. Warrior Marks became a vigorous and fruitful adventure, as did our touring of it over several countries in Africa and Europe, and also in England, Japan, Cuba, and the United States. We talked ourselves hoarse on the subject in city after city for a couple of years. Going into my tenth year of giving the campaign against female genital cutting virtually all of my activist energy, I realized I needed to retreat. During the trial in Paris of a Gambian woman whose infant daughter bled to death after being cut by a “circumciser” she met in the park, the ongoing, increasingly global nature of the struggle impressed itself upon me. It wasn’t as simple as burnout; it was a deep recognition that, as with many of the planet’s urgent crises, it will take all of us working together to turn things around. It was also extremely draining to find that I, rather than the eradication of FGM, was becoming the subject of many people’s discourse. Years after I wrote and published Possessing the Secret of Joy there were those who claimed I made the whole FGM thing up, and protests met me at more than one college campus where I was accused of maligning Africa and men (and women of African descent). There were those who assumed I sought control of the subject and jealously guarded their “turf” as the discussion became debate in some places. Two doctors whom I was later told had performed female genital cutting procedures in the United States were some of my most persistent critics. One of them sent me a photograph of a child whose incision had healed to show me how smoothly and “cleanly” it was done.
Although I have removed myself from the FGM arena in recent years, the reader will sense that all of my love remains with the characters in this novel, just as all of it moved forward to embrace characters to come. The everlasting elasticity of love is what makes creativity possible. Pratibha and I have tried, unsuccessfully so far, to interest a major American filmmaker in making a film based on the novel. We are convinced it could halt the practice of genital cutting in many places—in cities in the West and in Africa, for example—overnight. Such is the power of cinema in people’s lives, especially in the lives of people who do not read. We will continue to hold the belief that this collaborative venture is possible, and when it arises we will be ready for it.
What does it mean to possess the secret of joy? Where is the secret to be found? Where must we search for it? Looking back on my life I see moments when the secret of joy became plain to me and I began to dance its dance. In Possessing the Secret of Joy I pass this on. Human beings do terrible things to each other, yet we are healers, too. In the midst of my darkest ruminations about a practice that affects over a hundred million women and girls, with more becoming its victim every day, I leaned on the wisdom and grace of many a psychiatrist and psychologist. One of them, Dr. Carl Jung, entered the novel as Mzee, “the old man,” who tenderly begins to guide Tashi,*[1] the character who was mutilated, back to mental health. My favorite thought most days about the suffering of our planet is that some of us, many of us, recognize the perilous journey we are on and its unexpectedly thrilling allies and joys—and we are preparing ourselves, of necessity, to withstand many a shock, as we continue on our way.
Alice Walker
Temple Jook House
Mendocino, California
Fall 2007
_________________________
[1]*The lover and later wife of Adam, in The Color Purple.
There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.
The children stood up with us in a simple church ceremony in London. And it was that night, after the wedding dinner, when we were all getting ready for bed, that Olivia told me what has been troubling her brother. He is missing Tashi.
But he’s also very angry with her, she said, because when we left, she was planning to scar her face.
I didn’t know about this. One of the things we thought we’d helped stop was the scarring or cutting of tribal marks on the faces of young women.
It is a way the Olinka can show they still have their own ways, said Olivia, even though the white man has taken everything else. Tashi didn’t want to do it, but to make her people feel better, she’s resigned. She’s going to have the female initiation ceremony too, she said.
Oh, no, I said. That’s so dangerous. Suppose she becomes infected?
I know, said Olivia. I told her nobody in America or Europe cuts off pieces of themselves. And anyway, she should have had it when she was eleven, if she was going to have it. She’s too old for it now.
Well, some men are circumcised, but that’s just the removal of a bit of skin.
Tashi was happy that the initiation ceremony isn’t done in Europe or America, said Olivia. That makes it even more valuable to her.
I see, I said.
The Color Purple, 1982
When the axe came into the forest, the trees said the handle is one of us.
Bumper sticker
PART ONE
TASHI
I DID NOT REALIZE for a long time that I was dead.
And that reminds me of a story: There was once a beautiful young panther who had a co-wife and a husband. Her name was Lara and she was unhappy because her husband and her co-wife were really in love; being nice to her was merely a duty panther society imposed on them. They had not even wanted to take her into their marriage as co-wife, since they were already perfectly happy. But she was an “extra” female in the group and that would not do. Her husband sometimes sniffed her breath and other emanations. He even, sometimes, made love to her. But whenever this happened, the co-wife, whose name was Lala, became upset. She and the husband, Baba, would argue, then fight, snarling and biting and whipping at each other’s eyes with their tails. Pretty soon they’d become sick of this and would lie clutched in each other’s paws, weeping.
I am supposed to make love to her, Baba would say to Lala, his heartchosen mate. She is my wife just as you are. I did not plan things this way. This is the arrangement that came down to me.
I know it, dearest, said Lala, through her tears. And this pain that I feel is what has come down to me. Surely it can’t be right?
These two sat on a rock in the forest and were miserable enough. But Lara, the unwanted, pregnant by now and ill, was devastated. Everyone knew she was unloved, and no other female panther wanted to share her own husband with her. Days went by when the only voice she heard was her inner one.
Soon, she began to listen to it.
Lara, it said, sit here, where the sun may kiss you. And she did.
Lara, it said, lie here, where the moon can make love to you all night long. And she did.
Lara, it said, one bright morning when she knew herself to have been well kissed and well loved: sit here on this stone and look at your beautiful self in the still waters of this stream.
Calmed by the guidance offered by her inner voice, Lara sat down on the stone and leaned over the water. She took in her smooth, aubergine little snout, her delicate, pointed ears, her sleek, gleaming black fur. She was beautiful! And she was well kissed by the sun and well made love to by the moon.
For one whole day, Lara was content. When her co-wife asked her fearfully why she was smiling, Lara only opened her mouth wider, in a grin. The poor co-wife ran trembling off and found their husband, Baba, and dragged him back to look at Lara.
When Baba saw the smiling, well kissed, well made love to Lara, of course he could hardly wait to get his paws on her! He could tell she was in love with someone else, and this aroused all his passion.
While Lala wept, Baba possessed Lara, who was looking over his shoulder at the moon.
Each day it seemed to Lara that the Lara in the stream was the only Lara worth having—so beautiful, so well kissed, and so well made love to. And her inner voice assured her this was true.
So, one hot day when she could not tolerate the shrieks and groans of Baba and Lala as they tried to tear each other’s ears o
ff because of her, Lara, who by now was quite indifferent to them both, leaned over and kissed her own serene reflection in the water, and held the kiss all the way to the bottom of the stream.
OLIVIA
THIS IS THE WAY Tashi expressed herself.
The way she talked and evaded the issue, even as a child. Her mother, Catherine, whose tribal name was Nafa, used to send her to the village shop for matches, which were a penny each. Tashi would be given three pennies. She would lose at least one of them. The story she would tell about the lost penny might go like this: That a giant bird, noticing the shimmer of the coin in the glass of water in which she’d temporarily stored the pennies for safekeeping and for aesthetic enjoyment, had swooped down from the sky, flapped its wings so boldly that the glass of water fell from her hand, and when next she looked, having hidden her face from the creature for fear of its large beak and outspread wings, why—dash! No more penny!
Her mother would scold, or she’d put her hands on her hips, shake her head sadly and make a self-pitying cry to the neighbors about this incorrigible little liar, her daughter.
We were about the same age, Tashi and I, six or seven. I remember, as if it were yesterday, my first glimpse of her. She was weeping, and the tears made a track through the dust on her face. For the villagers, in gathering to meet us, the new missionaries, had raised a cloud of it, reddish and sticky in the humidity. Tashi was standing behind Catherine, her mother, a small, swaybacked woman with an obdurate expression on her dark, lined face, and at first there was only Tashi’s hand—a small dark hand and arm, like that of a monkey, reaching around her mother’s lower body and clutching at her long, hibiscus-colored skirts. Then, as we drew nearer, my father and mother and Adam and myself, more of her became visible as she peeked around her mother’s body to stare at us.