Struggle and Reconciliation: Alice Walker’s Trauma Narrative in The Temple of My Familiar

Yushan Jiang

doi:10.54254/2753-7064/2025.ND28222

Communications in Humanities ResearchOpen access

Struggle and Reconciliation: Alice Walker’s Trauma Narrative in The Temple of My Familiar

Research Article

Open Access

Struggle and Reconciliation: Alice Walker’s Trauma Narrative in The Temple of My Familiar

Yushan Jiang ^1*

¹ Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics

^*Corresponding author: ecj34@qq.com

Published on 23 October 2025

CHR Vol.90

ISSN (Print): 2753-7072

ISSN (Online): 2753-7064

ISBN (Print): 978-1-80590-461-8

ISBN (Online): 978-1-80590-462-5

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Abstract

Alice Walker, the renowned African American female writer, has long focused on the survival conditions and self-construction of black women. Through the use of multi-perspective narratives in her works, she vividly portrays the psychological traumas endured by this vulnerable group under dual oppression from race and gender. Her novel The Temple of My Familiar employs fragmented forms such as dialogues, diaries, oral histories, letters, and monologues to depict key characters like Lissie, Hal, Fanny, Suwelo, Carlotta, Arveyda and Zedé. Through interwoven narrative threads, it tells stories of the trauma and recovery experienced by these female protagonists. For instance, Fanny deciphers ancestral diaries and oral histories, revealing the struggles and pain endured by generations of women within her family under sexual violence, racial discrimination, and cultural fragmentation. Meanwhile, through the transmission of past-life memories, female characters in the novel gradually establish unique dialogic relationships with others, achieving post-traumatic healing and the mending of emotional wounds. Ultimately, they transform the dilapidated “temple” into a spiritual community that integrates black culture, feminine spirituality, and harmonious ecology. Therefore, this paper employs Judith Herman’s trauma theory to deeply analyze individual and collective trauma manifestations in the novel, exploring how memory and dialogue serve as therapeutic sources providing spiritual comfort and strength for women. In addition, the author hopes to enrich the current academic research on trauma literature by analyzing the multiple relationships between trauma, memory transmission and dialogue healing, and to provide valuable theoretical reference for the field.

Keywords:

Alice Walker, The Temple of My Familiar, Trauma Theory, Dialogue

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References

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