AN EXAMINATION OF SISTERHOOD AS AN EMANCIPATIVE CONCEPT IN ALICE WALKER'S NOVELS: MERIDIAN AND THE COLOR PURPLE

Abstract

Purpose of the study: The study aims to examine the concept of sisterhood as an emancipative endeavor to empower and free the Afro-American women in Alice Walker's (1942) novels: Meridian and the Color Purple, through the liberal treatment of Black Feminism. Methodology: Qualitative research aims to form speculations or facts that are derived from secondary sources. It tries to understand Walker's liberal treatment of sisterhood, in the selected novels, through the radical black feminism, and the feminist liberal lens of bell hooks. The study considered other related critics and scholars to help further illuminate the emancipative notion of sisterhood. The study is a library-based drawn on literary and critical books and articles. Main finding: The study clarifies the emancipative notion of hooks on Walker's feminist attitude of sisterhood in the selected novels as a privilege to enhance black women's growth and to strengthen the social bond to achieve women's liberation. Simultaneously, the study criticizes the Western oppressive authority as well as the traditional one-sided thinking of mainstream feminism. By a new and liberal reading of hooks' perspective, the study illuminates that the collective power and mass struggle of Afro-American women lead to self-realization and identity. Implication: This study can be used by scholars and activists to understand how Afro-American women have been undergoing a long process of transformation by radical feminist thinking, from exploitation, domination, and oppression toward the center of social, political and cultural focus.  Originality/Novelty: A new reading of Walker's novels is utilized by the light of bell hooks' emancipative notion of sisterhood.