ECOLOGIES OF BLACK WOMANHOOD: A COMPARATIVE ECOFEMINIST READING OF TONI MORRISON'S TAR BABY AND ALICE WALKER'S THE COLOR PURPLE

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the interrelated dynamics of patriarchal oppression, the racial marginalization of women, and the exploitation of the nonhuman world, using an ecofeminist comparative approach to analyze Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby (1981) and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982). Many theorists and scholars have described ecofeminism as a means of identifying and analyzing the interconnected historical, material, and conceptual structures that dominate women and nature (Mies & Shiva, 2014, p. 14; Zein & Setiawan, 2017, p. 2). At the beginning stages of ecofeminism, Western capitalist patriarchy was supported by an array of dualistic thinking, culture, nature, mind, body, subject and object, to substantiate that all subjugation should apply to both human and nonhuman bodies (Avcil, 2021, p. 941; Merchant, 2005, p. 194). The traditional ecofeminist models have been criticized for their failure to adequately represent the intersectionality unique to Black women who have experienced both gender and ecological oppression as a result of slavery, colonization, and ongoing racial discrimination (Power, 2020, p. 73). Therefore, an ecofeminist analysis must involve multiple species as well as multiple forms of oppression to provide a thorough explanation of how African American women interact with their social and physical environments. The central research question in this study concerns Morrison and Walker's portrayals of the relationship between the natural environment and their Black female protagonists. It seeks to answer the question, "How do Toni Morrison's Tar Baby and Alice Walker's The Color Purple use the non-human world and ecological relationships to express postcolonial resistance, spiritual healing, and self-actualization in the face of intersectional oppression towards women?

Both novels contribute distinct and overarching ecocritical concepts of Black womanhood. Tar Baby removes Morrison from anthropocentric stories and gives the environment the status of a postcolonial protest entity (Wardi, 2011, p. 1). The environment and animals at Isle des Chevaliers, Avenue des Fleurs represent a political, activist realm and bear witness to the suffering colonialism inflicted on the land and animals (Morrison, 2004, p. 9). Finally, Morrison uses Jadine's cultural disconnect from her roots, as well as the colonial division of both land and people, to demonstrate the parallel between them (Al-Halbosy, 2019, p. 145). In contrast, in The Color Purple, Alice Walker provides an eco-feminist perspective toward the natural world and incorporates concepts of spiritual healing and reciprocal responsibility. The transformation of Celie from a person abused without a voice into an empowered agent is profoundly tied to her change in perception of God, whom she now sees as present in the natural world (p. 135). Literary ecofeminism therefore provides a transformative place through which both the healing of one's own self and the healing of the earth can occur together. This chapter uses comparative analysis to demonstrate that both Morrison and Walker have dismantled patriarchal, anthropocentric structures and offered insight into Black women's ability to act for themselves within their relationship with the more-than-human world.