Crime in Alice Walker''s Works

The book explores the portrayal of crime in Alice Walker''s works. It argues that in considering black crime in America especially vis-à-vis crime in general, there are considerations deriving their force from American history, in particular the slave history in America. The definition of morality and crime in the United States of America is a product of the Puritan values of its founding fathers and is therefore, skewed against black people whose enslavement they had to justify with plethora of negative stereotypes for centuries. So insidious are these stereotypes that even the best African American intellectual culture is entangled in the paradoxes and ambiguities of this legacy.Against this background, Alice Walker captures a wide range of crimes in the black community that can easily be construed as stereotypical. Readers interpret with the assumption that because Alice Walker writes these damning stereotypes, she does not believe in them. However, some readers believe them.The book argues that Walker tends to participate in churning out bourgeoisie middle class morality in the projection of African American lifestyle.