The Analysis of Possessing the Secret of Joy in a Post-Colonial Framework

IntroductionAlthough there are different ideas stated by the people of African descent in the African Diaspora, there is one fact: Black people in Africa and in the African Diaspora will face more common experience than is usually known and have the right to speak to these experiences. Marse Conde, the Guadelopian writer whose different novels crisscross the African Diaspora, in a book called Conversation with Marse Conde has argued that:Members of the African Diaspora should not remain isolated within their national shells. It's not the pan African per se but rather a way for Diaspora members to claim a common heritage. (Pfaff 69-70)From this view, one may understand that Alice Walker was right to write about Afro-American missionaries going to Africa to civilize the uncivilized and to speak about Olinka customs in The Color Purple. She also was right to express her views in relation to the inhumanity of female circumcision practices in Africa.Colonialism in Possessing the Secret of JoyIn Possessing the Secret of Joy, female circumcision can be interpreted as part of the Africa's inglorious past where men try to mutilate female genitals for their own sexual desires. The novel also contains the scenes in which Europeans and African American missionaries bring "the blessing of civilization" by forbidding the Olinka practice of female circumcision. According to Achebe the basic point to a "colonialist mind" is "its claim to a deeper knowledge and a more reliable appraisal of Africa" than the Africans have shown themselves 'capable of:To the colonialist mind it was always of the utmost importance to say: "I know my natives," a claim which implied two things at once: (a) that the native was quite simple and (b) that understanding him and controlling him went hand in hand understanding being a pre-condition for control and control constituting adequate proof of understanding (Ashcroft, 74).Possessing the Secret of Joy borrows its title from a colonialist text, African saga by an Italian woman who was raised in Kenya. It also keeps the same colonialist discourse throughout its narrative until Tashi, Olivia, Benny, Pierre, Ray and Mbati re-read Mirella Ricciardi's understanding of the African and add a post-colonial spin. The excerpt from Mirella Ricciardi's African saga which is written in the preface of Possessing the Secret of Joy is completely colonialist, because Mirrella Ricciardi claims "deeper knowledge and more reliable appraisal" of Africans and also she portrays them as "as quite simple." First, she says she was always on good terms with "the Africans and enjoyed their company," though commanding them on the ferm was something else insofar as they had watched her grow up. Second, Mirella Ricciardi claims that thanks to her extensive safaris, she "had begun to understand the code of birth, copulation and death" whereby the Africans lived. Furthermore, she knows black people so well that she feels comfortable in claiming that they "are natural" and "possess the secret of joy" that helps them endure and "survive the suffering and humiliation inflicted upon them" because they are "alive physically and emotionally," but confesses that she had not been able to deal with "their cunning and their natural instincts for self-preservation."In the text of Possessing the Secret of Joy, several moments of precolonial, post-colonial and neo-colonial Africa can be seen. These moments are connected, directly or indirectly, to Tashi and other characters. From the beginning of the novel, Olivia talks about the days when she and her parents, African American Christian missionaries, made their way "through jungle, grassland, across rivers and whole countries of animal" to reach to the Olinka village. Olivia also portrays the young Tashi's hand as "a small dark hand and arm, like that of a monkey" (7). In the next pages the monkey becomes a metaphor to describe the Olinka young people who are affected by ADDS. …