The World Has Changed (31 page)

 

J.T.: In talking about Africa, I know that you’ve written things about the goddess in Africa and about the original goddess. I know there was an article you wrote about Medusa possibly being the precursor to Athena. Can you talk about that?

 

A.W.: You have to take the very long view of history. If, in fact, the first people were Africans, if all of us are Africans, and if, in fact, worship is innate, and if, in fact, the ancient people were just as clever as the modern people, and if, in fact, you can say the woman’s body, in the way that it gives birth and replenishes people, is a sort of symbolic earth in that the earth also gives birth and peoples the world with trees and flowers—they’re connected, I think, in the psyche, in the ancient psyche. Then I think you can say that, of course, the ancient people of Africa were well aware of goddesses (which they still actually worship—Yemaya and other goddesses in Africa). I also believe that Medusa—the Greeks, you know, actually had a lot of interactions with Africans and learned a lot from Africa and wrote about their interaction with the Egyptians, who were Africans. For some people, it’s hard to imagine that the ancient Egyptians were black. But all you have to do is remember that the ancient Massachusetts people were red, so that should help a lot. They tend to look at you as if Egypt was somewhere over in Germany. But in fact these were African people. So the Greeks learned from them. My feeling is that the African woman’s hair was the Medusa snakes and the fierceness of the African woman warrior turned these people to stone.

 

J.T.: What would you say the snakes represented in the African culture? I know in the Christian culture, it’s the bringer of evilness.

 

A.W.: Well, yes, it represents us: it represents women, and it represents black people. That’s why it’s always put down. But that is also why—because it represents earth people and women in all earth cultures, and especially in societies of women—the snake is revered.

 

J.T.: Do you use the goddess rituals in your life now? Thinking of Mother Earth, you said earlier that Mother Earth is really like the heaven, and, I think, in a feminine way.

 

A.W.: The earth, I think, is really all the goddess I need. But at the same time, I understand that what you are doing when you make goddesses (people do create gods and goddesses), you are making forms that represent certain realities, certain spiritual realities, material realities of the earth. You see this a lot in ritual culture, where they have goddesses who, if you talk to them, you pray to them, they bring you rain. Well, you can understand that what they’re really saying is that there’s a spirit, the way the whole thing works is very spiritual, and that the rain comes because you have a connection. Somehow the goddess is your connection to the forces up there.

 

M.T.: You write about acting out your vision and the importance of living your vision. Could you speak about that?

 

A.W.: I was writing about that in the context of
The Temple of My Familiar
, because it represents my great vision. The great vision is a Native American notion, or earth-peoples notion, that everybody has a great vision. It doesn’t mean as great as anybody else’s. It just means that it’s the biggest one you’ve had. What happens is that, at some point in your life, you begin to feel and to see in yourself, in your own being, how it all comes together, how you’re connected, not only materially but through time. You do have a duty to make this visible for other people to use, basically. But it’s also very good for you and if you swallow, if you repress it, if you pretend you don’t get the message, then I think things go very badly for you. That was how I wrote
The Temple of My Familiar
, feeling very much that, during that period of my
life, I understood the way things are connected, and I needed to share that.

 

M.T.: Alice, I hope you keep going on sharing your vision and living your vision. Thanks.

 

A.W.: You’re welcome.

 

J.T.: Thank you, Alice.

EVELYN C. WHITE:
By the Light of My Father’s Smile
is your first novel in six years. What prompted such an overtly sexual theme?

 

ALICE WALKER: At the end of the novel there’s a poem that says, “When life descends into the pit / I must become my own candle / willingly burning myself / to light up the darkness around me.” Because there’s no sense of safety anywhere, no place we feel we can go that’s not polluted or poisoned, for a lot of people life has pretty much fallen into the pit. When I was working on my last novel,
Possessing the Secret of Joy
, I realized that sexuality is the place where life has definitely fallen into the pit for women. The only way we’ll ever change that is by affirming, celebrating, and acknowledging sexuality in our daily lives.

Women must begin to write more truthfully about the profound mystery of sex. I think that race is also a mystery. Which is to say that neither can be fully comprehended except as deeply mysterious expressions through which we can learn profound lessons about life. It is almost impossible not to learn something about yourself in the sexual act. So it’s important for women to be alert to the spiritual growth and self-discovery they can attain by paying close attention to their sexuality.

I was also thinking about how organized religion has systematically undermined and destroyed the sexual and spiritual beliefs of millions of indigenous people. There have been people on earth who didn’t think about sex the way white, Western men do. It is very painful to think that the “missionary position,” which reinforces patriarchal, male dominance over women, was forced upon people who once loved having women freely express their sexuality, whether they were on the top or bottom.

 

E.W.: Given the prevalence of patriarchal repression of female sexuality, what was the process you had to go through to get to the extremely erotic language in your book?

 

A.W.: I think the process started with wanting myself. Women have to understand that regardless of who does not want us, we have to want ourselves. Then we can begin to see and appreciate other women and the amazing possibilities of self-love and acceptance we can find in our union with each other. We can sit back and wait for men to love us until we are blue in the face, but since I loved women already, I decided, why wait?

There is also a place of humility that comes from really understanding that we have all entered this plane through the legs of a woman. And that it is a holy place. My love of women intensified during all those years I researched female genital mutilation and thought about women holding down other women and girls to destroy that holy and profoundly sacred temple. I feel this novel is connected to
Possessing the Secret of Joy
because, after writing about the debasement and sheer hatred of female sexuality, my spirit needed to write about the joy, the pleasure, promise, and growth. And I wanted to show how women can grow in a relationship with each other.

By no means am I saying that such a relationship is smooth sailing. It definitely isn’t, but there are some incredible lessons that can be learned.

 

E.W.: What did you learn about yourself while writing the novel?

 

A.W.: That I am completely scandalous, rebellious, and stubborn! All my parts were telling me to write this book because it feels like a medicine for the times. Now, I could be terribly wrong. But with AIDS, we’ve reached a point where sex is scary for most people. We have lost the sexual spontaneity that most of us thought would be ours forever. That is a major loss. The youth are scared to make love and scared not to.

 

E.W.: With all the taboos about speaking openly of the sexual experiences of black women, was there also immense satisfaction for you in crossing this boundary?

 

A.W.: Yes, breaking out is probably what I do best. It seems to me that there is so much joy going on between women that is happening as we live, simultaneously, in a death-dealing culture. It is very joyful to write about this reality.

 

E.W.: This novel will probably turn you into a sex guru. Are you prepared for that?

 

A.W.: [Laughs] Yes.

 

E.W.: What is some of the advice you’d offer to women searching for sexual bliss?

 

A.W.: Self-love is the first and hardest rule to stick by. Women need to not abandon themselves in their quest for bliss and love. You can love yourself spiritually, physically—in almost any way that anybody else can. I think that anatomically this is the reason we’re constructed the way we are.

There are many years when women get caught up in reproductive sex. It’s my experience that in their late forties and fifties, women aren’t that crazy about reproductive sex because it’s generally too late for us; it’s not that easy to conceive. But there’s something at that point that I’ve decided to call evolutionary sex. It’s a sexuality that can be with women, men, or yourself. It’s about exploring and expanding your bodily love and spiritual awareness. That’s a form of sex that is within the reach of everybody.

 

E.W.: You have an extraordinary reach and ability with characterization in your novels. Where did the characters in
By the Light . . .
come from?

 

A.W.: I do a lot of spiritual preparation, so the characters evolve from what feels like a state of grace. I also have a home in Mexico, and being there had a lot to do with it. Going there and trying to learn the language and meeting dark-skinned Mexicans got me thinking about African Americans and American Indians who came to Mexico to find freedom.

I was really struck at one point that, while I don’t live in Mexico all the time, I’d done the same thing. I had been chased to Mexico to find
peace and freedom. I’d always wanted to go deeper into what it means to be black and Indian.

In the novel, I create a band of people, the Mundo, who are neither African nor Indian, but a blend. The spirit I had to go by in creating this culture is essentially mine. It’s a reflection of how I think things should be rather than how they’ve been. Because when we look at the mess the patriarchy has made of the planet, it’s clear that we’re on the wrong path. We know that matriarchal societies existed before. It’s important that we start thinking about ancient future ways, because this way is not working.

On the other hand, it may be that the whole world is gasping its last breath. As one of the characters in the novel says about black and Indian people, the dominant Western thought has been that we’re all vanishing. And it seems as if millions of us are being wiped out every minute. But that doesn’t mean that the white men are going to be happy by themselves. Because what they’ll have left is a planet that they’ve ruined, with no idea of how to heal it.

 

E.W.: In the novel, the ancestral spirit father witnesses and comments upon the sexual blossoming of his daughters. How did this narrative approach come to you?

 

A.W.: Again, it’s my belief, based on my own self, that what women want most is to be blessed in our sexuality by our parents. As women, I believe we’d especially like to be blessed by our fathers. In that blessing, we’d like the father to know everything about us, just like when we were born, and to love us still. We want them to love what we love and bless what we bless. The only way to show that clearly was to have him witness the sexuality of his children. In the culture of the Mundo, whatever mess you’ve made during life you have to come back and deal with after you die. So in coming back, the father gets to witness his daughters’ sexual behavior.

 

E.W.: Don’t you think a lot of people are going to think this is heresy, given the sexually abusive role some fathers have played in their daughters’ lives ?

 

A.W.: Well, it’s time for the fathers to deal with the hypocrisy of their own sexual behavior and to extend themselves to their daughters in a
positive way. The worst fear many of these men have regarding their daughters’ sexuality is that the young women are having a great time. And I’m here to tell you that many of them are. So get over it, and be there for them.

 

E.W.: Any words for the forces that might want to continue the tradition of trying to ban your books?

 

A.W.: Actually, I started to put a message in this one telling those people not to even let the children see it. It’s okay with me. I know there are going to be people who will have a fit. But these are the selfsame people who every day for the last six months have been reading about the president’s semen on this young girl’s dress. The hypocrisy of it is astounding. When women get to be adults and elders, it’s time for us to speak honestly about the issues that have been shrouded in hypocrisy and murkiness.

 

E.W.: Is that how you see yourself now, as an elder?

 

A.W.: In the ancient Cherokee tradition, you become an adult when you’re fifty-two. I see myself as being between that point and the beginning of the elder state. I’m definitely in the place of speaking on these issues. There is nothing more important than looking at sexuality with honesty and openheartedness. Our children are continuing to get pregnant when they’re very young. They’re having unsafe sex—we know this because they’re having babies. The HIV rate among young black people is climbing rapidly. I feel that the heart of our dilemma as a culture and as a people is sex. I think that many fathers have not known that they could have a positive role in sanctioning their daughters’ sexuality.

 

E.W.: How do you think your novel will help such fathers?