Recommendations
Books Like By the Light of My Father's Smile by Alice Walker
For readers of the afterlife sexuality spirituality novel
If you loved By the Light of My Father's Smile — Robinson's afterlife narration, Magdalena's damaged life, and Walker's meditation on the connection between sexuality and spirituality — these books share the same interest in the damage fathers do to daughters, the same engagement with indigenous spiritual traditions, and the same willingness to explore sexuality as a spiritual matter.
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Buy on AmazonThe Color Purple
by Alice Walker
Walker's Pulitzer-winning masterpiece — the essential companion; Celie's sexual awakening with Shug Avery and her spiritual liberation are the predecessor to the sexual and spiritual themes Walker examines in By the Light of My Father's Smile.
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Buy on AmazonThe Temple of My Familiar
by Alice Walker
Walker's companion novel — the alternative spiritual history and the examination of women's sexuality in a broader historical and cosmic context; the companion in her spiritually engaged fiction and the predecessor in tone and ambition.
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Buy on AmazonTheir Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston's masterpiece — the companion in African American women's fiction about a woman's right to her own sexuality; Janie Crawford's sexual awakening and Magdalena's awakening are companion portraits of the cost of owning female desire.
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Buy on AmazonLike Water for Chocolate
by Laura Esquivel
Esquivel's Mexican novel — the companion in fiction about women, sexuality, and the magical dimensions of daily life in Mexico; Tita's Mexico is the companion to the Mundo community's Mexico, and both novels treat the spiritual and sensuous dimensions of women's lives with equal seriousness.
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Buy on AmazonBeloved
by Toni Morrison
Morrison's Nobel and Pulitzer-winning novel — the companion in African American women's fiction about the damage done by love gone wrong and the possibility of healing; the afterlife narrator in Walker's novel and the ghost in Morrison's are companion devices for examining the past's persistence.
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Buy on AmazonPossessing the Secret of Joy
by Alice Walker
Walker's companion political novel — the companion examination of violence against women's bodies and sexuality; the two novels together represent Walker's most direct engagements with the spiritual and physical dimensions of women's sexuality.
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Buy on AmazonMeridian
by Alice Walker
Walker's civil rights novel — the companion in her fiction about young Black women's liberation; Meridian Hill's political liberation and Susannah's sexual and spiritual liberation are companion portraits of African American women freeing themselves from the structures that constrain them.
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Buy on AmazonThe Alchemist
by Paulo Coelho
Coelho's spiritual fable — the companion in fiction about journeys, revelation, and the meaning of the life one has lived; where Coelho's Santiago travels toward his Personal Legend, Walker's Robinson travels through the afterlife toward understanding what his choices cost.
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