The Temple of My Familiar

“His generation of men had failed women—and themselves—he mused […] For all their activism and political development during the sixties, all their understanding of the pervasiveness of oppression, for most men, the preferred place for women had remained the home; the preferred position for women, wherever they were, supine.”

Suwelo reflects on the actions of his generation of men. At this point in the story, he has not yet met Hal and Lissie; thus, this reflection is somewhat ironic. Suwelo recognizes the overt misogyny and oppression perpetrated by men upon women, but it takes him substantial time spent with Hal and Lissie to recognize how he enacts the same injustices in his own personal life and relationships. Even as he ponders men expecting women to handle the domestic sphere, he refuses to use Fanny's shopping cart as it reminds him of women. As he reflects on men’s sexual expectations of women, he places the same upon Fanny and fulfills his sexual desires elsewhere when she does not comply.

“What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears. I am speaking here of man’s mind. The men both worshiped and feared the women.”

Zedé recounts the story of men and women that exists in her culture to Arveyda. The story describes how women were initially revered and worshipped, and simultaneously feared by men, for their ability to give birth. However, because the worship is accompanied by fear, when man finds a way to dominate that which he fears, he jumps to do so. This happens with the women in Zedé’s story, but all across history with different races and peoples—what is worshipped is also feared, and ultimately conquered and oppressed.

“The slavers did not care. Color made their own seed disappear to them; the color of gold was all they saw. But not if gold was the color of a child. We were left with this bitter seed, and—unfair to the children—burdened with our hatred of the fruit.”

Lissie recounts one of her lifetimes as an enslaved person, discussing the actions and motivations of enslavers. The Historical Trauma of Colonization is evident in this passage. The colonized people were treated like objects, their bodies exploited in every way possible. The children passed on to the enslaved women as a result of rape are physical manifestations of the intergenerational trauma the colonizer creates: The enslaver discards the child with ease, while both mother and child suffer the effects of this violence and the resultant hatred.

“Suwelo […] expected to see a lot of pictures of the same woman dressed to make herself appear different; and it was true, in each picture the chair […] was the same, and the outfit varied greatly. What he saw, though, were thirteen pictures of thirteen entirely different women.”

Lissie shows Suwelo the pictures taken of her by one of her lovers, the photographer, and he is amazed to see that she appears entirely different in each one. Lissie’s story is replete with elements of magical realism, contextualized within the idea of Spirituality in the Diaspora. Her different appearances correspond with the different selves she has been throughout her life, and she captures some of these selves in her paintings, which is an important recurring motif in the book.

“How or even why I would do what I next did is beyond me, but I think it was a stupid reflex of human pride. For I understood quite well by now that all of this activity on the familiar’s part was about freedom, and that by my actions I was destroying our relationship.”

Lissie recounts her memory of a life as a goddess and how she destroyed her relationship with her familiar. Lissie tried to contain the creature, and her efforts grew increasingly more aggressive each time the creature escaped; eventually, she broke its trust, and it fled. This symbolizes humankind’s changing relationship with nature over time, and how attempts to control it have resulted in its rebellion, as well as a disconnect between humans and their natural environment.

“He sang of the red parrot feathers in their ears—for they had brought the parrot with them; it was their familiar, symbolic of their essence.”

Arveyda sings about Zedé’s past to Carlotta, including about the gifts Jesús’s tribespeople passed onto them. The African parrot feather earrings are an important symbol for Carlotta; her rehabilitating them and wearing them again indicates that she is reconnecting with her culture. This is symbolized by how she begins to dream again afterward. The concept of the familiar is an important recurring motif in the book and underlines humankind’s once harmonious relationship with nature.

“You might say the white man, in his dual role of spiritual guide and religious prostitute, spoiled even the most literary form of God experience for us. By making the Bible say whatever was necessary to keep his plantations going, and using it as a tool to degrade women and enslave blacks.”

Samuel, Olivia’s adoptive father who is a missionary in Africa, loses faith in Christianity. He recognizes how it is used as a tool by the white colonizer to subjugate the colonized peoples. Here, he explains to Olivia exactly how the white man accomplishes this: In addition to eroding the local culture and traditions of the colonized land, the colonizer interprets the Bible in ways that cement in power. This is what necessitates a reimagining of religion and Spirituality in the Diaspora.

“There had been a little murder, there in their bright, homey kitchen, where, up until that time, they’d both felt light, free, almost as if they were playing their roles. The cart disappeared, and Suwelo felt terrible about the whole episode.”

Suwelo refuses to use Fanny’s shopping cart, claiming it reminds him of women, and this forms the first fissure in their relationship. Though at the time Suwelo is unable to perceive it as more than just a regular argument, in retrospect he sees how his actions stem from an unconscious sexism. This is the foundation of Suwelo’s journey—learning to understand and appreciate The Feminine Experience.

“Foolishly we thought the animals and our children, at least, would not be taken from us. But the Inquisitors, set in place to control us, declared ‘consorting’ with animals a crime, punishable by being burned at the stake!”

Through the memories of her past lives, Lissie traces how the modern conception of the familiar as a demonic creature associated with witchcraft emerged. She asserts that women’s natural connection to animals was branded evil by men, and women themselves were branded witches to prevent goddess worship. This calls back to Zedé’s assertion of how things that are not understood are worshipped, but also feared.

“In these photographs she saw Africans whose eyes, skin, clothes shone. With richness and intelligence and health. Finally, it was the shine of health that captivated Mary Jane, for she realized that so degraded had Africa become in the mind of the world that a healthy African, like the ones she saw in the photographs, was practically unimaginable.”

Mary Jane goes through her great-aunt Eleanora Burnham’s papers and comes across photographs from Africa. Her amazement at the health and intelligence evident in the photographs underlines how intensely Africa and its culture has been misrepresented in the Western world. She is not the only character who encounters this; Nzingha, who attends university abroad, is enraged when she encounters similar misinformation in Western academia.

“I mean, where was this woman’s world? That she should end up like this, on view to us.”

Eleandra Peacock is horrified to discover that M’Sukta lives in the museum as part of its exhibit. M’Sukta’s story characterizes The Historical Trauma of Colonization in its different forms. Not only is her entire people and culture wiped out, but she herself is taken away from her homeland and treated like an object or a spectacle by the people who perpetrated this trauma. In stark contrast, Eleandra, as a white woman of substantial financial means and privilege, is free to travel to M’Sukta’s home land and live there for years to satisfy a curiosity, rather than as a means of survival.

“It was a government she had helped—through immense risk and personal sacrifice—put into power, but that, once in power, conveniently forgot she existed. This was true of all the women: they were forgotten.”

Nzingha tells Fanny about her mother, a guerrilla soldier who helped her country win their independence from the white regime but was relegated to the sidelines immediately. Nzingha’s mother’s experience represents the intersection of race and gender, where she loses out because of both: She spends a good part of her life fighting the white oppressor, only to then contend with a Black one.

“[I]f you are from Africa you recognize Medusa’s wings as the wings of Egypt, and you recognize the head of Medusa as the head of Africa; and what you realize you are seeing is the Western world’s memorialization of that period in prehistory when the white male world of Greece decapitated and destroyed the black female Goddess/Mother tradition and culture of Africa.”

While studying at university in Paris, Nzingha is angered by the representations of Africa in the white man’s history. The story of Medusa is emblematic of this for Nzingha, and she describes how she sees connections between the Greek monster and the goddess in Africa, and even Athene of Greek mythology. Her connections are dismissed by her professor, who is unable to conceive of Africa as cultured and civilized; the only picture of Africa that exists in Western conception is shown as backward, wild, and mysterious.

“I realize […] that there is not a single government in the world I like or trust. They are all, as far as I’m concerned, unnatural bodies, male-supremacist private clubs.”

Fanny asserts to Nzingha how she does not trust any governments in the world. She draws parallels between bureaucracy and male-supremacy because of the kind of power and oppression each of them exert. Fanny’s experiences, and that of the other women she encounters, have been that men will oppress and dominate women in the personal and political sphere, regardless of race, and regardless of whether the men have been victims of similar oppression.

“I took it up so that I would be forced to touch people, even those I might not like, in gentleness, and be forced to acknowledge both their bodily reality as people and also their pain. Otherwise, […] I am afraid I might start murdering them.”

Fanny candidly confesses to Carlotta the reason she left academia and took up massage instead. Fanny’s violent, compulsive fantasies are a result of the violence she and her race and people have experienced at the hands of white people. However, her choice to not act on it, and to find ways to empathize rather than lash out, points to her inherent nature. She is sensitive, intuitive, and empathetic, and these traits disallow her from acting on violence in any way without deep regret.

“It’s racism and greed that have to go. Not white people. But can they be separated from their racism? […] Can I?”

Fanny discusses her violent fantasies with Suwelo and ponders on the real cause of her anger. While her fantasies involve white people, Fanny recognizes that her real issue is with systems and universal human traits that cause pain, rather than a particular race. Her self-awareness allows her to see that she, too, would be perpetrating the same kind of racist violence enacted upon her people if she were to target and punish all white people.

“Forgiveness is the true foundation of health and happiness, just as it is for any lasting progress. Without forgiveness there is no forgetfulness of evil; without forgetfulness there still remains the threat of violence. And violence does not solve anything; it only prolongs itself.”

Olivia advises Fanny to forgive all violence, as remembering it will only lead to retaliation, perpetrating the cycle of violence. Evidence of this is seen across the book, in after throwing off the yoke of white oppression, Black men oppress Black women, and Black women in turn are cruel to animals. Fanny eventually takes this lesson to heart and begins to see a therapist to deal with her compulsive fantasies in a healthy manner.

“He could put a new god in its place that more closely resembled himself: cold, detached, given to violent rages and fits of jealousy. He needed to create a new god, since the one the rest of his world worshiped was so cruel to him. Burned him.”

Fanny posits a theory on how white, Western religion emerged, so drastically different from African and Indigenous traditions. Her story of the white African is corroborated by Lissie’s memory of a life as a white African man. While Fanny’s version only sees the cruelty and jealousy of the white African, Lissie’s perspective shows the reader the fear, loneliness, and heartbreak that led the white African to break away. By presenting both perspectives, Walker looks at not only a character’s actions, but also their motivations in a way that humanizes them to the reader.

“About how these people, with the government’s blessing, are permitting the country to grow as divided along class lines as it was under the whites along color lines.”

Mary Jane tells Fanny about how Ola passed away at Mary Jane’s house in the middle of a rehearsal for a new play. The play explores class divisions that exist in Ola’s country, as explained in the passage. This is further evidence of both the continued cycle of oppression and how human beings have an inherent tendency to dominate. Even after throwing off the white regime, Ola’s country is not free of these evils, as men silence the women, and the rich oppress the poor.

“Express to her something of your own trauma, which may have its origin in your mother’s abandoned and suffering face, and the fear this caused you about knowing too much of women’s pain, and tell her something of what you have learned.”

In her posthumous tapes to Suwelo, Lissie encourages him to make amends with Carlotta, astutely observing that his inability to see and appreciate The Feminine Experience stems from his experiences with his parents. Suwelo dutifully follows Lissie’s advice and later talks to Carlotta about his parents’ deaths. His account displays how, unable to bear his mother’s suffering as a woman, Suwelo turns a blind eye to all women’s pain.

“In the merger, the men asserted themselves, alone, as the familiars of women. They moved in with their dogs, whom they ordered to chase us. This was a time of trauma for women and other animals alike.”

Lissie recounts a life as a lion, during which time men and their domesticated “fake familiars” assert dominance over women and break the relationship they have to their familiars. The lion’s and other animals’ distance from humans only increases over time, and this is an aspect of traditional life that is never recovered even in the Spirituality in the Diaspora.

“She thinks how Suwelo believes he took advantage of Carlotta and how this is what she herself had thought. They were both wrong. There had not been a victim and an oppressor; there’d really been two victims, both of them carting around lonely, needy bodies that were essentially blind flesh.”

After hearing Carlotta’s account, Fanny recognizes that both Carlotta and Suwelo were using each other to soothe their own pain. The progress in their respective character arcs is seen in how Carlotta and Suwelo are able to open up and relate to each other about their respective traumas—without the framework of sexual intimacy—by the end of the book.

“I don’t consider that anger, expressed against people, as opposed to conditions, is necessarily a good thing.”

Fanny tells Carlotta that she feels more sorrow than anger these days. She has internalized Olivia’s advice to her and sees that anger toward people only perpetuates the original violence. It also highlights how people are a product of the conditions that surround them; these are what need to change, or to be overcome, if lasting change is to happen.