Description
Book SynopsisCatapulted to fame in 1982 with the publication of her third novel—the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Color Purple—Alice Walker has become one of America’s most celebrated and divisive authors. With books such as Meridian and The Third Life of Grange Copeland, Walker’s writing has frequently been cited for messages in support of civil rights and feminism. Above all, however, Walker is a spiritual seeker. Her works are dominated by the search for truth, wholeness, and the spirit that connects everyone and everything.
In Alice Walker’s Metaphysics: Literature of Spirit, Nagueyalti Warren examines the philosophy and worldview present in all of Walker’s writing. Warren contends that Walker is a literary theologian, citing the transformative changes that take place in the author’s fictional characters. Warren also points to Walker’s bravery in approaching taboo subjects, her generosity of spirit, and her love for humanity, which are represented throughout her poems, novels, short stories, children’s books, and essays. This analysis is further supplemented by primary sources from Walker’s unpublished material, including notes and scrapbooks.
By exploring the spirituality evident throughout the author’s work, this volume shows how Walker challenges readers to recognize and understand their responsibility to the earth—and to one another. Providing a fresh, accessible look at one of the twentieth century’s most prolific women writers, Alice Walker’s Metaphysics: Literature of Spirit will appeal to both academics and fans of the author’s varied literature.
Trade ReviewWarren's in-depth study covers her scholarship on Walker over the last 30 years. Writing that Walker had an "early inclination toward mysticism,” Warren (Emory Univ.) explores Walker’s unique view of the spiritual by analyzing both her published and unpublished work. Warren claims Walker as a “spiritual theologian” who finds a way to show the transformative nature of humanity through characters who care about the world and the people in it. In the book's ten chapters Warren explores connections between Walker's mysticism and the various topics that interested her, including poverty, emotional development, civil rights, and religion. Valuable to those interested in a deeper look at Walker’s personal spiritual beliefs, this book joins a conversation Warren began in her edited volume AliceWalker (2013). Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.
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After a full career of academic research and teaching Alice Walker’s work, Nagueyalti Warren has produced a thorough, illuminating, and resonant analysis of Walker’s metaphysical imagination. Warren’s book heightens the understanding of Walker’s complex literary sensibility. -- Sally Wolff King, Ph.D., Woodruff Health Sciences Center historian, adjunct faculty, Emory University School of Medicine, Emory University
In Alice Walker’s Metaphysics, Warren astutely recognizes in Walker’s eclectic body of work a knowing that is beyond a centrist’s understanding of religions and theologies, indeed a spiritual knowing that occupies expanding circles of mysticism. -- Joanne Veal Gabbin, executive director, Furious Flower Poetry Center
Nagueyalti Warren carefully examines Alice Walker’s reading history, the archival records of how Walker composed her works in various genres, and how contemporary students respond to the issues Walker raises—all to build and refine a strong case that Walker is anything but a dabbler in new-age superficialities. Warren’s Walker is a seriously sermonizing pagan, a profoundly and consistently mystical maker of literature. Warren’s analyses of the famous story “Everyday Use” and of The Color Purple are especially useful. -- Marshall Bruce Gentry, Georgia College
Alice Walker’s Metaphysics: Literature of Spirit by Nagueyalti Warren (Emory University) revisits Walker’s entire canon through close and contextualized readings, grounded in Warren’s assertion that Walker is a mystic and that her works must be understood through the framework of Walker’s spirituality. Warren’s original analyses challenge conventional readings of several of Walker’s novels, poetry, and essay collections. A particularly valuable contribution of Warren’s work to the field of Walker studies is her incorporation of material from Walker’s personal papers in her comprehensive study. -- Carmen R. Gillespie, Bucknell University
Alice Walker’s Metaphysics is a comprehensive and intensive study of the author’s fiction, essays, and poetry not only as art, but also as remedy to ills of injustice and immorality. Through consistent and meticulous inquiry, Nagueyalti Warren elucidates the spiritual underpinnings of Walker’s work and concludes, “only justice for every living thing will save humankind. A single savior will not be the redeemer.” This is a brilliant book that moves from the stale and inhuman idea of literary criticism by making central our real human need for literature. -- Jericho Brown, author of The Tradition
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Chapter 1: Dark Beginnings
Chapter 2: Spirit in the Dark
Chapter 3: What we Love, We Save
Chapter 4: Amazing Grace
Chapter 5: Dear God
Chapter 6: Entering the Temple
Chapter 7: Sexual Healing
Chapter 8: Opening to Spirit
Chapter 9: When the Other Dancer is the Self
Chapter 10: Mystic Walker
Selected References
Index
About the Author
