Brown calls Meridian Walker’s “first extended meditation on mysticism” (313), a process in which “the mystic must make her return among the people and … give them a sense of their being that is expanded in its horizon because of the sights the mystic has seen and knows to be true” (316). This cultural role is linked to African traditions [EK1]and, in Meridian, invokes the title character’s sensitivity and righteousness as a sign of her connection to social power. Meridian’s nonlinear narrative acts like “a visual representation of the term revolution, the moving backward to move forward beyond the point at which you began” (Christian 207). Brown (and Christian) consider this “wheel” as enlightening, as the characters and readers engage with a middle space that allows them to “see the world as it really is, bounded and encircled by the world of eternity” (Brown 316).[3] Walker’s narrative experiment produces a holistic vision of a new way to experience and heal political trauma: in mystic awareness that transforms the body and soul. Brown and Christian’s reading proposes, as Judylyn Ryan argues of Zora Neale Hurston, that Meridian is “the priestess” “who … carries within herself the life-force that must be distributed to the community… frequently perceived as liminal, the priestess symbolizes Black women’s illicit, self-styled, and veritable agency” (62). Meridian illustrates that a key power of social movements[4] is the ability to give agency, to liberate the vitality of individual human lives by linking participants with a sense of something larger than themselves. This is the path of connection between Meridian’s civil rights trauma and her liberation: her leadership unites the spiritual and physical/political realms.
Walker’s work—like the work of a number of her peers—illustrates, however, that this priestess role is a heavy burden, for “what distinguishes the priestess is the willingness to become the sacrifice offered on behalf of spiritual/cultural community” (62). Meridian’s quest can be read as an exploration of how to be a leader without requiring this self-sacrifice, the burden of what Candice M. Jenkins calls “the salvific wish”. How can one execute powerful spiritual and political leadership without damaging a powerful self? In linking Meridian’s mysticism with her trauma recovery and civil rights action, Walker suggests a “route to truth”. As Barbara Christian has argued, Walker’s work is infused with “her contrariness, her willingness at all turns to challenge the fashionable belief of the day… there is a sense in which the ‘forbidden’ in the society is consistently approached by Walker as a possible route to truth” (“Wayward” 458). As I have noted above, this strategy is mirrored in her characterizations: in Meridian, Meridian must travel alone. As Rudolph P. Byrd insists, “Walker’s models reveal more than truth; they also reveal direction” (377). This trope of solitary pursuit resulting in spiritual awakening reinforces a sense of African traditions, linking Walker’s heroine with priestess archetypes; but Walker’s unique use of civil rights struggle demonstrates the liberatory power of truly self-possessed black female leadership, a model that has its roots in 19th century black women’s spiritual narratives.
[1] Trauma studies is an established new area of literary studies; works such as Laurie Vicroy’s Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction and Suzanne Henke’s Shattered Subjects integrate… etc.
[2] This tension between otherworld/spiritual awareness, and incoherence and/or mental illness, recurs in The Salt Eaters, in which both Minnie Ransom and Old Wife are marked as simultaneously crazy and spiritually advanced.
[3] Hall argues that the novel advances Walker’s early project of merging personal and political selves together through art for the good of black nationalism. Hall suggests that this version of time is repressive, “a structural representation of issues and attitudes which entrap Meridian” (97) from which Meridian finds “release” in the novel’s final chapter of the same title and at the same time offering “a variety of interpretative possibilities” (101). What do I think?
[4] Echoing Meridian’s subversive role across movements, Benita Roth notes that the memo circulated in 1965 by white SNCC members Hayden and Christensen was initially attributed to Ruby Robinson.
[EK1]Say more about how Brown links Meridian to African traditions, and about mystical healing in African traditions?
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