RECLAIMING SELFHOOD: IDENTITY FORMATION AND CULTURAL HERITAGE IN ALICE WALKER’S THE COLOR PURPLE AND POSSESSING THE SECRET OF JOY

Abstract

Afro-American literature has long grappled with questions of identity, cultural belonging, and its place within the broader canon of Western literature. While numerous studies have examined Black identity and feminist discourse, comparatively little attention has been paid to the historiography of Afro-American female identity through the lens of the female Bildungsroman and its relationship to cultural heritage. Addressing this gap, the present study investigates the representation of Afro-American female selfhood in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Possessing the Secret of Joy. The study adopts a qualitative research approach based on textual analysis, drawing on Black feminist theory as its primary theoretical framework. The findings demonstrate that Walker reconfigures the traditional Bildungsroman by portraying identity formation as a collective, cyclical, and culturally grounded process rather than a linear journey toward social integration. Through the protagonists’ struggles with racial discrimination, patriarchal violence, cultural displacement, bodily autonomy, and psychological trauma, Walker foregrounds the interconnected roles of cultural heritage, female consciousness, and communal memory in the construction of Black female subjectivity. Celie’s transformation in The Color Purple from objectification to self-articulation and Tashi’s struggle with identity, tradition, and bodily autonomy in Possessing the Secret of Joy reveal how Walker challenges Eurocentric models of development while emphasizing the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and cultural belonging.