Black female writers' perspective on religion: Alice Walker and Calixthe Beyala

Journal of Third World Studies, Spring 2002 by Mainimo, Wirba Ibrahim

However, a dramatic transformation takes place with the timely arrival of Celie's ferociously self-assertive and independent lesbian friend, Shug Avery. While admonishing Celie that "ain't no way to read the Bible and not think God white," Shug Avery dismisses Celie's God as patriarchal and then presents a sea of her own spiritual experiences into which Celie readily casts her bucket deep down:

My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other People. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it came to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all.. God love all them feelings. And when you know God loves `em you enjoys `em a lot more.35

According to Shug Avery, all attempts at reifying God constitute patriarchy's ploy to sustain its continued domination and subjugation of women. Consequently, the problem is not so much the bearded old white God as it is man in general. Shug Avery contends that,

He [man] try to make you think He everywhere. Soon as you think He everywhere you think he God. But He ain't. Whenever you trying to Pray and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost ...36

Never in the history of black fiction has there ever been such a frank, unembellished and wry denunciation of "God" as a phallocratic concept. It is like both writers to treat issues, considered in most black literary circles as taboo and cloaked in metaphors, in a linguistic register stripped of abstract symbolisms and metaphors. Here, as in most other cases, Walker identifies the plight of the black woman with imposed silence: aspects of patriarchal misogyny are considered sacred and hence buried in silence. Yet Walker and Beyala will strip them of such silence and lay them bare for what they are.

Celie's initiation into a newfound, womanist experience of God is, therefore, complete and her God now ceases to be a thickly bearded white man. Rather, He becomes a sublime feeling born of natural phenomena-birds, trees, air and people. And following Shug Avery's order to conjure up "flowers, wind, water, a big rock"37 to parry sexist oppression and domination, Celie literally becomes a conjure woman (an archetypal female image during slavery denoting a slave woman who could overcome the inhuman cruelty of the slave master by conjuring or casting aspersions on him). Celie successfully puts this lesson to test in her first open defiance of her chauvinistic husband, Albert (whom she repeatedly but also significantly refers to as Mr.). In that particular incident, Celie takes recourse to natural phenomena (trees) as she curses her husband. The latter begins to atrophy physically and psychologically as a result and only regains his health when he takes steps to cast off the slough of sexism. This scene shows Walker's urge to draw from the black oral tradition-a conjure woman, a witch that can curse-to treat themes relating to modern religions.

Celie's whole-hearted subscription to Shug Avery's womanist vision of the world effects a tremendous degree of autonomy and self-assertiveness in her. It leads her into what may be termed "bodacious" religion-ritualistic body contacts (bath, massage) that engender spiritual rebirth. Bathing or massaging her friend, Shug Avery, triggers tremulous sensations in Celie and transforms her formerly "dead" body (rendered dead by her husband's battering and sexual abuse) into a living object. This helps to kindle and even revolutionize her sexuality: she wrenches her body from male sexual gratification and then begins cultivating overt lesbian urges toward Shug Avery until both women finally settle as full-blown lesbians. A conflation of the spiritual and sexual results from their body contacts and orchestrates autonomy and self-sufficiency which, from a feminist standpoint, is the keystone to real liberation. The following constitutes a full lesbian encounter between Celie and Shug: