Rewriting

Polytropic Identities

in the Postmodern African American Novel

Chapter VI

“I have Always Been a Good Girl”

(Re)Lettering the Body-Text in Alice Walker’s

The Color Purple

Each writer writes the missing parts to the other writer’s story. And the whole story is what I’m after (Walker 1983, 49).

I went in search of the secret of what has fed that muzzled and often mutilated, but vibrant, creative spirit that the black woman has inherited… And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see: or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read (Walker 1983, 239-40).

“The Writer’s Microphone:” Self-Definition as a Womanist

“Show Me How to Do It:” From Zora Hurston to Stevie Wonder

Revising 19^th Century Female Models: “She Ain’t Fresh Tho”

“Pa Is Not Our Pa:” Subversions of Religious/Patriarchal Authority

“The Color Purple:” Reflections on/of a Liberated Self

Stitching Dichotomies: “The Conversation of Sewing”

“Tuh de Horizon and Back:” Opening Perspectives