update

Task list Walker chapter December 2007

1. the healing power of language; address how language is powerful by looking at Celie and at Kate’s stuff

2. What is a spiritual parable?

3. What is a healing narrative?

4. What is the role of the unconventional relationship structure in this healing process?

5. What is the relationship of womanhood/femininity to spirituality in TCP and NOTH?

from an email:

ummm. so, for instance the chapter I'm working on now argues that Alice Walker's late work, which everyone hates because she presents herself as a New Agey Buddhist, is actually only different from her early work (which everyone loves) in one way: instead of arguing for black women's empowerment by learning to love and accept their bodies, she's arguing that women can empower themselves by making their spiritual lives at the center of their experience. It is a radical shift, since in her earlier stuff, especially The Color Purple, she was all about encouraging radical embodiment as a strategy for dealing with oppression. But people basically just think she has lost her fucking mind, and I'm trying to say it's more complicated than that.