By the Light of My Father's Smile, divinity, nature, Possessing the Secret of Joy, sexuality, self, spirituality, The Color Purple, Walker, Western dualism, wholeness, women

The chapter explores the issue of sexuality in three of Alice Walker?s novels?The Color Purple, Possessing the Secret of Joy, and By the Light of My Father's Smile?while highlighting Walker?s holistic understanding of the self and the place of humans in the sacred web of life. It argues that influenced by indigenous (pagan) spiritualities, particularly African and Native American, Walker rejects Western dualism and reclaims sexuality as a sacred practice wedded to both personal wholeness and humans? bond with nature, divinity, and Creation, which she sees as inseparable part of the former. It further demonstrates how integrating the personal, sexual and spiritual into a whole in her novels, Walker insists that women must reclaim their bodies and the joy or feminine jouissance that they can experience through them in order to liberate themselves from the patriarchal order, which has denied them the right to full selfhood.