From Publishers Weekly
Pulitzer Prize winner Walker illustrates the truism that violence begets violence in this strong-voiced but often strident and polemical novel, a 17-week PW bestseller, which focuses on the practice of female circumcision in African cultures. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
A peripheral character in The Color Purple ( LJ 6/1/82) and The Temple of My Familiar ( LJ 3/15/88), Tashi becomes the focus of this welcome new work. Tashi, who marries Celie's son Adam, submits to female circumcision partially out of loyalty to the threatened tribal customs of her people, the Olinka. As a result, she endures physical pain and long-lasting emotional trauma. Not a sympathetically drawn victim, the tortured Tashi stretches to bridge two continents and to understand why women must undergo this torture, even at the hands of their mothers, for the pleasure of men. Though she often succumbs to madness, Tashi eventually takes possession of the secret of joy. Her compelling story is every Eve's account of those "whose chastity belt was made of leather, or of silk and diamonds, or of fear and not of our own 'flesh.' " This is not a sequel to Walker's previous novels, but it easily equals, if not surpasses, their excellence.-Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., ColumbiaCopyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Tashi-Evelyn Johnson, the African heroine of Possessing the Secret of Joy, submits to the ritual female circumcision and spends the rest of her life trying to understand its meaning and live with its consequences. This story, which is told from the different perspectives of Tashi and her family, flows from one character's recollection to another, not always chronologically. Having two exceptional readers, Alice Walker and Joe Morton, helps the listener differentiate between the characters. Both speak in pleasant, well-modulated voices, and Morton is particularly adept in conveying different accents. Enchanting music from an embaire, an African log xylophone, signals the end of each cassette. A.A.B. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
Here and there tantalizing remnants of the writing that made The Color Purple such a critical success, but for the most part Walker's latest is held hostage to an agenda--the eradication of female circumcision in Africa and the Middle East--a cause to which she will be contributing a portion of the royalties. A range of voices, including husband Adam, son Benny, and the character Tashi herself, tell the story of the Olinka girl who made a brief appearance in The Color Purple. Married to Adam, the young African-American missionary who took her back to the US, Tashi has suffered intermittent periods of madness since she was brutally circumcised as an adolescent in a remote guerrilla camp in Africa. It's a madness that has required hospitalization and treatment by a range of analysts, including the great Jung, who puts in a cameo appearance here. Though her older sister had bled to death from the effects of the operation, Tashi chose to have it done because she felt it would make her ``...completely woman. Completely Africa. Completely Olinka.'' The operation also was responsible for a difficult delivery in which her son Benny was brain-damaged. Helped by therapy, her grief turns to anger: she returns to Africa and murders the old woman who performed the operation. Sentenced to death, Tashi, who feels neither guilt nor fear of death, is finally at peace because an anthropologist tells her about the mythic causes of the practice: the early African woman, ``the mother of womankind,'' was ``notoriously free'' of both sexual guilt and circumcision; invading tribes and Arabs were responsible for its imposition. Dying, Tashi finally possesses the ``secret of joy'': the resistance to what is evil. A pastiche of New Age mysticism, dubious history, and feminist ideology tied to a storyline that points a moral, heavily underlined, rather than one that grows out of a tale. Female circumcision is a terrible travesty, but neither it nor Walker's talent is well served by this overwrought novel. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Mary Hope Whitehead Lee
Through intense character development, innovative plot structure, and dazzling manipulation of point of view, Possessing the Secret of Joy attacks the practice of female genital mutilation and the mythologies various cultures use to sustain this horrific practice. Well into her adolescence, Tashi chooses to have a clitorectomy -"the only remaining definitive stamp of Olinka tradition" - to help ensure the solidarity and preservation of her African tribe. She almost dies, but she survives and marries. It is only later that she comprehends the full implications of what has happened to her and is filled with a desire for revenge. While many would abhor the action she takes, it ultimately frees her. In Tashi's living and bedroom, with medical doctors and on a psychiatrists' couches, in tribal villages and in an African jail and courtroom, Tashi works to understand and overcome her pain and rage. The novel is witnessed through Tashi, her husband and son, other family members, acquaintances, friends, and enemies. Tashi's suffering is neither silent nor singular; that "mutilation," "enslavement," "the domination of women," and "the collaboration of our mothers" constitute the unholiest of alliances can no longer be denied after one experiences Alice Walker's telling of Tashi's tale. This is a "magical journey," an initiation into ways of knowing, and an indictment of all that is cruel. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.

ANNOTATION

The acclaimed author of The Color Purple presents a provocative story of a young tribal African woman who lives most of her adult life in America. Tashi submits toher people's custom of genital mutilation. Severely traumatize d by the experience, she spends the rest of her life battling madness, trying to regain the ability to recognize her own reality.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A New York Times bestseller, this is the story of Tashi Johnson, a tribal African woman now living in North America. As a young woman, a misguided loyalty to the customs of her people led her to submit to the tribal initiation rite of passage. Severely traumatized, she spends the rest of her life trying to reconcile her African heritage with her experience as a modern woman in America. Previously published by Pocket Books. (Trade)

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Pulitzer Prize winner Walker illustrates the truism that violence begets violence in this strong-voiced but often strident and polemical novel, a 17-week PW bestseller, which focuses on the practice of female circumcision in African cultures. (June)

AudioFile - Adeane A. Bregman

Tashi-Evelyn Johnson, the African heroine of Possessing the Secret of Joy, submits to the ritual female circumcision and spends the rest of her life trying to understand its meaning and live with its consequences. This story, which is told from the different perspectives of Tashi and her family, flows from one character￯﾿ﾽs recollection to another, not always chronologically. Having two exceptional readers, Alice Walker and Joe Morton, helps the listener differentiate between the characters. Both speak in pleasant, well-modulated voices, and Morton is particularly adept in conveying different accents. Enchanting music from an embaire, an African log xylophone, signals the end of each cassette. A.A.B. ￯﾿ﾽAudioFile, Portland, Maine

Book Review San Francisco Chronicle

As compelling as The Color Purple.

San Frani

As compelling as The Color Purple.

Kirkus Reviews

Here and there tantalizing remnants of the writing that made The Color Purple such a critical success, but for the most part Walker's latest is held hostage to an agenda—the eradication of female circumcision in Africa and the Middle East—a cause to which she will be contributing a portion of the royalties. A range of voices, including husband Adam, son Benny, and the character Tashi herself, tell the story of the Olinka girl who made a brief appearance in The Color Purple. Married to Adam, the young African-American missionary who took her back to the US, Tashi has suffered intermittent periods of madness since she was brutally circumcised as an adolescent in a remote guerrilla camp in Africa. It's a madness that has required hospitalization and treatment by a range of analysts, including the great Jung, who puts in a cameo appearance here. Though her older sister had bled to death from the effects of the operation, Tashi chose to have it done because she felt it would make her "...completely woman. Completely Africa. Completely Olinka." The operation also was responsible for a difficult delivery in which her son Benny was brain-damaged. Helped by therapy, her grief turns to anger: she returns to Africa and murders the old woman who performed the operation. Sentenced to death, Tashi, who feels neither guilt nor fear of death, is finally at peace because an anthropologist tells her about the mythic causes of the practice: the early African woman, "the mother of womankind," was "notoriously free" of both sexual guilt and circumcision; invading tribes and Arabs were responsible for its imposition. Dying, Tashi finally possesses the "secret of joy": the resistance towhat is evil. A pastiche of New Age mysticism, dubious history, and feminist ideology tied to a storyline that points a moral, heavily underlined, rather than one that grows out of a tale. Female circumcision is a terrible travesty, but neither it nor Walker's talent is well served by this overwrought novel.