Re-reading Alice Walker

For reasons I don't want to go into here, I decided to re-read Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy after nearly twenty years.  It tells the story of Tashi, an Olinka girl briefly mentioned in Walker's more famous The Color Purple, and imagines her life in Africa and America.  More importantly, it directly confronts an African tradition of female circumcision (or, as Walker puts it, female genital mutilation) - a topic which became for Walker a kind of cause celebre'. 

I will confess that on my first reading, I didn't understand at first what it was that was being described, it was so far outside my ability to imagine.  It was, as I'm sure Walker intended it to be, horrifying, but at the time I didn't know what to do with that (not that I know now).  After reading it, I think I decided that it was a practice that happened half a world away from where I safely live, and is safely in the past.  I was wrong.

A little Internet research has revealed the startling statistic that Excision and circumcision are reportedly practised in Sierra Leone by all Christian and Muslim ethnic groups, with the exception of the Krios who live in the western region and in Freetown. The mutilations are performed as part of the initiation rituals of the Bundo and Sande secret societies. According to the World Health Organization, the prevalence rate was 90% in 1997. However, the IPU has no first-hand official statistics or other details on this subject.  Those of you who know me understand why this statistic is of particular interest to me. 

Walker's description of this practice as a kind of sexual binding of women akin to foot-binding in China  seems especially apt.  By crippling women and physically taking control of her body in this way, she is both damaged and enslaved to men.  What is so threatening in a woman's sexual power that we must remove it entirely and render her incapable of pleasure?  That doesn't even address the issue that millions of women girls (the procedure is commonly performed on the very young) die during and immediately following the procedure from blood loss and infection, that millions of others are unable to give birth or those who are frequently suffer from further complications brought on by scar tissue....

So book report....It's an amazing book - Walker has a way with words that makes you want to write sentences and phrases on your walls so that you can look at them and think about them over and over again, and she has a quiet way of inciting your anger and outrage that just builds and builds (I'm sure you've noticed from this post).  It's a tough subject, but not one worth ignoring.