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Makale Özeti:
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In her 2004 novel Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart, Alice Walker, herself an
amalgamation of African American, Cherokee and Scottish–Irish ethnicities, narrates
the life of a womanist called Kate Talkingtree who is multi-ethnic like her. This
paper is a modest attempt to study and analyse the womanist consciousness
employed in the novel and it showcases how it betters the lives of the woman
characters in the novel, primarily concentrating on Kate, the protagonist of the
novel. Womanist consciousness is an awareness about the plight of being a black
woman in a racist, sexist and classist world. The term inscribes in itself, the
perception of being a black woman in America with an awareness of the past,
present and future. Womanist perspective is also concerned with enriching the
female gender through consciousness rising, while giving a human touch to the
struggle for the appreciation, emancipation, elevation and self-fulfilment of women
in totality, in all possible, positive ways. The novel explores the lives of marginalized
women in multi-ethnic and multicultural America. Kate Talkingtree like Walker, is
a true womanist who discovers and reclaims herself physically, spiritually, connects
with nature, and her ancestors. She commits herself to the survival and the
wholeness of all people. She becomes a Universalist by the end of the novel.
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