ABSTRACT
Alice Walker. Theodore O.Mason, Jr. discusses The Third Life of Grange Copeland in terms of the imagery of enclosure that has been used by black writers since Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass to express the experience of marginalization and domination; Joseph A. Brown, Jr., analyzes Meridian from the perspective of the title character who, he argues, undertakes a mystical journey, which conforms in outline to the African-American religious tradition of inner growth; Keith Byerman uses a theoretical perspective borrowed from Jacques Lacan to identify the “womanist” characteristics of Walker’s narratives, and to determine whether, in her attempts to deconstruct the patriarchal order, Walker does not become complicit in the perpetuation of that very order; Jacqueline Bobo documents the controversy aroused by The Color Purple-both the novel and the film; and Keith Byerman and Erma Banks have compiled a very useful short bibliography of books and stories by Walker and criticism of her work, which complements their 1989 book-length bibliography (see below) and that compiled by Louis H.Pratt and Darnell D.Pratt (Alice Malsenior Walker: An Annotated Bibliography, 1988).
