ELLIPTICAL PRACTICE: ANALYZING WOMANIST BUDDHIST THOUGHT IN SELECTED WORKS BY ALICE WALKER

This thesis broadly concerns Womanist thought and Black Buddhist practice in the United States, with specific emphasis on Alice Walker, a Black Buddhist practitioner, as one of the mothers of Womanism. Black Buddhist writing and practice, coupled with a Womanist orientation, has much to offer in broadening our modes of healing while living and operating within what bell hooks labels “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” Drawing upon Charles Long’s notions of African Americans as an “involuntary presence” in the United States and taking seriously the “elliptical shape of thought,” I analyze two early focal texts, The Third Life of Grange Copeland (Walker’s first novel), and two essays from the collection In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. I argue that a Womanist Buddhist reading of Walker’s earlier works in light of her later published Buddhist essays and poetry deepens Womanist understanding and contextualizes common themes within American Black Buddhist thought and practice, such as engaging with anger and cultivating nourishment.