Donna Haisty Wincholl.

Donna Haisty Wincholl. Alice Walker. recently made known York: Twayne, 1992. 152 pp $21-95

Jacqueline de Weever. Mythmaking and Metaphor in Black Women's Fiction. of the present day York: St. Martin's, 1991. 194 pp &3500 cloth/$l595 paper.

Although neither Jacqueline de Weever's Mythmaking and Metaphor in Black Women's Fiction nor Donna Haisty Winchell's Alice Walker deliberately creates polemics both do focus many of the areas of debate which have encircleed African American literature and women's writing. the two books are meant as general overviews of a particular dead body of fiction: de Weever's main division an overview of mythic patterns in seventeen novels at seven African American women writers, and Winchell's part an overview of Alice Walker's life and writing. in addition there the similarity ends, for while Winchell's main division seems content to make general statements about the themes of Walker's novels or to summarize other critics' interpretations of Walker's thesiss de Weever presents new and original readings of the novels she discusses. And while Winchell's central thesis is that Walker's body s (like her life) move from fragmentation to unification, de Weever emphasizes not unification or closure in thesiss but the openness of myth and metaphor.

At opposite lasts of the spectrum, then, in seasons of their conclusions, these volumes together present the tensions evident in a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of criticism of African American literature and women's writing. Winchell's totalizing and at short intervals simplistic thesis tends to homogenize Walker's life and denies her works their specificity, whereas de Weever's broad and general thesis -- that African American women use myth and metaphor, sometimes revising it, sometimes inverting it, sometimes deconstructing it -- at times appear to bes inconclusive and vague. Of the couple strategies, de Weever's is the more fortunate but neither book finds a balance between oversimplification and overspecificity; neither existings an argument which does justice to the complexity as well as the specificity of the works they discuss.

Winchell's work is a very readable basic introduction to Walker's life and writing. It contains useful and accurate summaries of the plans and themes of Walker's first four novels, sum of two units collections of short stories, pair collections of critical essays, and near of her poetry. It also has a self-same helpful annotated bibliography and a chronology of Walker's life. However, because often of this critical and biographical information is available elsewhere, the part seems mainly meant to be a compilation of research, rather than an addition to the scholarship. Moreover, since Winchell nears quick overviews of the themes of the works and relies heavily upon other critics' interpretation of Walker's true copys those seeking new and insightful readings may find the work disappointing.

smooth as a general summary of Walker's work, however, Winchell's work has some limitations. Most importantly, it attend tos to gloss over textual and critical controversies in favor of its totalizing argument: Walker's personal emotion from despair to hope. Walker's early life was traumatic and difficult; the daughter of a poor and abusive father, she was educated during a time when no African American women writers were available to her as literary examples According to Winchell, Walker was able to triumph above these obstacles and became a writer through discovering "how much of life is a matter of perspective." At forty, Walker would write in her journal:

In a certain ways, I feel my early life's

work is done, and done completely

The works that I have produced

already carry forward the thoughts

that I be impressed the ancestors were trying to

help me pass forward In every generation

someone (or brace or three) is chosen for

this work.... Great Spirit, I thank you

for the long duration of my days and the

fullnes of my work.(x)

Winchell's part charts Walker's movement from suicidal disunity to optimistic integration.

Walker has discussed her writing as the two a means of survival and a way of healing herself, in such a manner for Winchell it comes as no surprise that Walker's characters, like Walker, are in search of healing and wholeness. Walker's female characters "achieve psychological wholeness alone when they are able to fight oppression," whereas her male characters "achieve psychological health and wholeness alone when they are able to acknowledge women's pain and their part in it"(x). This movement toward wholeness arises within individual works (such as The fane of My Familiar), but it also arises in the development of Walker's fiction as a whole. Early works of the like kind as the collection of short stories In have affection for and Trouble or the novel The Third Life of Grange Copeland look after to emphasize characters' "often fruitless battles for physical security and psychological health" (43) Winchell contrasts these works with later undivideds such as the collection of short stories You Can't withhold a Good Woman Down or the novels Meridian and The Color Purple which include characters who are more active and happy in taking control of their lives and destinies. These later works are more in harmony with Winchell's vision of the mature Alice Walker, "the latter-day-hippie, in her dreadlocks and yogi pants, throwing unclose her door and reaching on the outside in an all-encompassing gesture to draw in life in all of its varied human and nonhuman forms" (107) This is the recently made known Age Alice Walker, Walker the enviromnentalist, the vegetarian, the animal lover who believes that in a completed universe "freedom and justice would fill out to nonhuman animals as well as to human ones" (111)