672 The American Century: Literature since 1945But just as Beloved, for all its push beyond realism, leaves no doubt as to the
monstrous fact of slavery and its central place in the story of America (indeed, using
magic, mystery, as a measure of that monstrosity), so Paradise leaves no doubt about
the necessity for the reappearance of women like these, in some form or another, for
the survival of the republic. Paradise is a book about the failures of American
democracy (hence its setting in the bicentennial). It is about the strengths and fatal
flaws in the black community (hence its complicity in the shootings). It is about the
core meaning of the African-American story to American history (hence the
narrative connections forged with key events since 1776). And it is also a book about
the failure of patriarchy. Morrison has resisted the description of herself as a feminist.
She is right to do so because Paradise, like all her novels, is much more than a
polemical statement of a position. But, in its own way, it registers a fundamentally
optimistic belief in the recovery of the American republic – a belief that all her work
tends to share – and, in this case, at the hands of women. The beguiling mystery at
the end of Paradise is centered, just as the mystery at the heart of Beloved is, by a
powerful analysis of history, past disasters, and possible future directions. Any
doubts about that surely dissolve in the meditations of one female character as she
considers the possibility of reappearance, the return of the women shot by the men
of the township. “When will they return?” she asks herself. “When will they
reappear ... to rip up and stomp down this prison calling itself a town?” “She hoped
with all her heart that the women were out there,” the meditation concludes, “darkly
burnished, biding their time, brass-metaling their nails, filing their incisors – but out
there. Which is to say she hoped for a miracle.”
Apart from the occasional excursion into drama (Dreaming Emmett (1986)) and
critical and social theory (Playing in the Dark, En-Gendering Power: Essays on Anita
Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality (1992)), Morrison has
focused on the writing of novels, her most recent being Love (2003), set mainly in
the 1990s, which explores different forms of love – familial, romantic, self – and
childhood confusion, miscommunication, and their consequences; and A Mercy
(2008), set in early America, which examines the beginnings of slavery and the roots
of racism. By contrast, Alice Walker (1944–) has written seven novels on which her
reputation rests, but she has also produced many volumes of poetry, two collections
of short stories, several volumes of essays, and children’s books. All her work in
different genres is dedicated to what she has come to call “womanism.” This she
defines in In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens (1987) as a form of black feminism that
“appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s flexibility ... and women’s
strength.” Womanism, according to Walker, is not narrowly exclusive. On the
contrary, it is “committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and
female.” Still, she tends to concentrate on the evolution of female wholeness: the
development of identity and community among black women “in the face,” as she
puts it, “of the Great White Western Commercial of white and male supremacy.” In
her nonfiction this has led her to search out and celebrate her connection with other
African-American women, particularly writers. In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens,
for instance, is at once a memoir and a series of observations on African-AmericanGGray_c05.indd 672ray_c 05 .indd 672 8 8/1/2011 7:31:38 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 38 PM