The World Has Changed by Alice Walker Page B

married.” [laughs] Give me a break! But we think that way because we are in a heterosexist culture that says your life is incomplete without a man. It is the same with men. They are told that without a woman you can’t have pleasure, you can’t have joy. . . . And then there is the church, bless its heart, which has been so damaging....
     
    P.G.: You define religion as “an elaborate excuse for what man has done to woman and the earth.”
     
    A.W.: That’s what organized religion is. Can you imagine a church telling you what to do with your body? Telling you not to masturbate, for example? It’s your body! Or the church telling you what race or class or color to have sex with? It’s none of the church’s business.
    I’m not saying that there are not some wonderful things about the church. But it is a reflection of a male-dominant tradition that has been reinforced by the slave culture. The church has to be taken apart and put back together in a way that is revolutionary.
     
    P.G.: We’ve been made less than whole in so many ways, haven’t we?
     
    A.W.: Yes, there are so many people walking around who have forgotten to be whole persons. Just like they’ve forgotten what it is to laugh. We have canned laughter. I hate it, because I know what real laughter sounds like. Do you know that many of our children have never heard real laughter? Many people have forgotten how to love. We’ve forgotten to have faith in our own beauty. “Don’t you know you’re beautiful?” I ask people. “Can’t you remember?”
     
    P.G.: Is that in effect what Tashi is doing in this novel, trying to remember her beauty before society or tradition cripples her?
     
    A.W.: Yes, and that makes Tashi a universal woman. I want people to see that there is not a big gap between Tashi and [a celebrity] who enlarged her breasts. She has been crippled. Why would you marry someone who wanted a woman with big breasts? Why not just send him a couple of
breasts? That’s what I would have done—I hope. I would have just asked somebody to make up two large breasts and put them in a box and send them to whatever-this-guy’s-name-is, you know?
    But collusion with this need of his is a sign of her crippling.
     
    P.G.: In the novel, Tashi is surrounded by a loving community that includes an African American man, a European man and woman, and a young man who is both biracial and bisexual.
     
    A.W.: I was never a separatist, but now more than ever before my own life is so multiracial, multiethnic, multisexual, multieverything. That’s my life. And I’m glad of it, thank the Goddess. I think the reason that it’s so wonderful is because sometimes your own oppression—let’s say the relationship with your family—is so painful that if you couldn’t do very much with it, you’d die.
    But what you gain in that situation gives you another insight that you can apply to something else—and live. That’s why we find ourselves connecting so deeply in these different communities, with all these different people. I just love that aspect of life. I love the people in my life.
     
    P.G.: The idea of displacing pain makes me ask the question about black women’s relationship to it.
     
    A.W.: You can get addicted to pain. That’s another thing that’s so awful about the image of the crucifixion, you know? But you can also get addicted to joy! That’s what I would do. [laughs] I mean, I am sure there is pain waiting in my life. The whole world situation is painful. But I am here to tell you that your joy can equal your pain—it can strip your pain.
    And if you can have faith in a God that somebody else gave you and that you have never seen, you can also have faith in your own joy—something you’ve at least had a glimmer of.
     
    P.G.: Have you always known this?
     
    A.W.: I would have never gotten out of Georgia if I didn’t know, ’cause those people were about to kill me. You just have to let joy be your guide. You know, when I was