Nature, the Cathedral of the Future: An Eco-Womanist Reading of Alice Walker

Abstract

Alice Walker’s perception of divinity in living and non-living beings underpins her ideology of eco-spirituality, which poses faith in the existence of a Universal Spirit that protects, sustains and nourishes all the animate and inanimate beings on earth. She extends the range of her celebrated notion of ‘womanism’ to encompass an all-inclusive balance of living as well as non-living beings, which is precisely what makes womanism different from other theoretical and ideological viewpoints. This paper expatiates on the theme of ecowomanism in Alice Walker’s writings to substantiate that the destiny of the woman of colour as well as the Earth has been the same, both neglected and degraded by the patriarchal values of society.