59 pages • 1 hour read
Alice WalkerThe Temple of My Familiar
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1989A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Feminine Experience
Content Warning: This book contains descriptions of racial and gender oppression, and the attendant isms and discriminatory language; rape and sexual violence; and substance addiction.
Alice Walker’s work consistently highlights the lives and experiences of women, and The Temple of My Familiar is no exception. The main threads of the book are presented through the female characters Carlotta, Fanny, and Lissie. There are also men who feature prominently in the book, including Arveyda, Suwelo, and Hal; however, their struggles and character arcs are directly linked to the women in their lives and thus the feminine experience. Hal’s journey involves learning to really see and accept all of Lissie’s selves; Arveyda learns more about Carlotta’s mother, and eventually his own, as he repairs his relationship with Carlotta in time; and Suwelo’s journey of self-awareness is focused on understanding and appreciating the lived experiences of women, as he faces how and why he has mistreated both Fanny and Carlotta in the past.
The feminine experience is also centered in the context of the other two central themes of the book: The Historical Trauma of Colonization and Spirituality in the Diaspora. For instance, Fanny’s conflict is two-fold: She experiences disappointment in Suwelo as a man for discounting the feminine experience altogether, but she also feels deep anger toward the white man for oppressing Black peoples. This is mirrored by Nzingha’s anger, stemming from her own experiences at university abroad, as well as her mother’s life. Nzingha’s mother experiences oppression and neglect by both white and Black men. Lissie’s lifetimes and the stories from Zedé’s culture yield the perspective that this disrespect and neglect of women is a product of Western colonization. African and Indigenous religious and spiritual traditions that honored and worshipped the goddess, i.e., the woman, were completely eroded. In this way, the feminine experience intersects with multiple themes.
While focusing largely on the lived experiences of BIPOC characters, Walker does include perspectives from different racial, cultural, and social class backgrounds. Fanny and Nzingha mirror each other in the African American and African cultural backgrounds, respectively, while Fanny’s mother’s education and worldly experience is contrasted by Nzingha’s mother’s life. Characters like Tanya and Mary Jane Briden also briefly draw focus as white women who are empathetic to and allied with the struggles of Black people. However, Tanya and Mary Jane also come from different ends of the economic spectrum, as Tanya’s family is poorer than Celie and Shug’s, and Mary Jane comes from great wealth and privilege. Thus, even while centering female characters in the book, Walker draws on a variety perspectives and explores how gender dynamics play out in different scenarios. This shows both the varied nature of and the universalities in the feminine experience.
The Historical Trauma of Colonization
The Temple of My Familiar focuses on the lived experiences of BIPOC characters. An important part of these experiences is the impact of colonization and the historical trauma it brings, which are as deeply rooted in colonialism as they are in racism and discrimination. Lissie’s memories of past lifetimes touch on the most intense horrors of colonization, such as the inhumane treatment of and sexual violence against Black peoples. However, disturbing experiences are not limited to ancient lifetimes, and the characters in the book experience the traumatic impact of colonization in their present lives, too.
The most obvious impact of colonization is the draining of material resources. Lissie recalls everyone on the Island growing up with nutritional deficiencies, because fresh, healthy food is exported for white consumption to the mainland. Similarly, Olivia grows up in Africa during a time when it is still being “ravaged” by white settlers; Ola and Nzingha’s mother have to fight to overthrow the regime well into their adulthood.
The draining of material resources is complemented by a hateful and violent attitude toward Black and Indigenous peoples. Zedé and Jesús’s tragic story is an example of this, as is Fanny’s experience with Tanya’s grandmother, a generation later and in a different country. This kind of violence and oppression only begets more of the same, and Ola’s home country is a testament to this. Despite being freed from the white regime, Ola continues to fight with his government because of the problems that persist in the country: Black men oppress Black women, and everyone—except the rich and powerful—continues to suffer.
The impact of colonization is also felt on the individual psyche and in interpersonal relationships. For instance, the violence against her race and people lives on in Fanny’s psyche, manifesting as compulsive fantasies of harming white people. Similarly, Nzingha struggles with and is unable to complete a university education because of how her culture and people are perceived within a Western framework. At a relationship level, Hal’s fear of white people is one of the reasons Lissie is unable to open up to him about all her past selves; despite Hal’s deep love for her, Lissie turns to Rafe for true comfort.
Additionally, the impacts of colonization intersect with the themes of The Feminine Experience and Spirituality in the Diaspora. Walker examines how disregard for the former and distortion of the latter are also effects of colonization. Thus, Walker explores the historical trauma of colonization and all the ways in which it continues to have an impact on the lived experiences of the BIPOC community.
Spirituality in the Diaspora
Walker uses elements of magical realism in The Temple of My Familiar to span generations and lifetimes. As the book centers the experiences of BIPOC characters, these elements are contextualized within an exploration of spirituality in the diaspora.
Historically, religion was used as a tool by the colonizers to oppress and control the colonized. It helped eradicate the colonized land’s cultural and spiritual traditions, while imposing ideas upon its people to the benefit of the settler. Olivia’s adoptive father, Samuel, comes to realize this, hence he grows disillusioned with Christianity. Understandably, the colonized, and especially the diaspora, feel a need to establish their own interpretation of Western religion. Katherine Degos’s church and Shug’s take on the gospel are examples of this. The Gospel According to Shug, in particular, draws on the African American experience to prioritize and uplift certain values.
Besides reinterpreting and reimagining Western religion, another way for the African and Indigenous diaspora to reject the yoke of the colonizer is to reconnect with the spiritual traditions of their home countries and cultures. Through the memories of her many lifetimes, Lissie keeps alive such traditions and passes them on through stories to other generations. The presence of the “spirit” or the mystical is taken for granted in African and Indigenous cultures, as seen in Lissie’s memories, Fanny’s communing with spirits, and even Zedé’s stories from home. Still, Carlotta reconnects with her father’s culture when she begins wearing the African peacock feathers close to her heart; the bird is her father’s tribe’s familiar, and upon wearing the feathers, she begins to dream again.
The feathers also touch upon another aspect of ancient traditions: Non-Western spirituality of the past connected more to the natural world and environment than it does in the modern day. The concept of the “familiar” as it existed then represented humans’ ability to live in harmony with the natural world, as demonstrated by Lissie’s life as a lion. However, this is contrasted in the present times by Celie’s treatment of Creighton. From friend and companion, animals have become another creature for humans to dominate. Ancient spiritual traditions also heavily featured the worship of The Feminine Experience, as explored by this theme, but it is essentially absent in contemporary times.
Thus, Walker examines how the diaspora revisits and reinterprets spirituality differently from the Western ideas they have been colonized into, as well as which parts of the ancient traditions are reconnected with or lost entirely.
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