Reading Order
By the Light of My Father's Smile Reading Order
By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998) by Alice Walker is her fifth novel — a meditation on sexuality, spirituality, and the damage done to daughters by fathers who cannot accept their daughters' sexuality. The novel follows two timelines: the past, in which an anthropologist named Robinson and his wife pretend to be Baptist missionaries to gain access to a mixed-race community called the Mundo in Mexico, and their daughter Magdalena's coming-of-age, sexual awakening, and the brutal beating Robinson gives her when he discovers her with a young Mundo man; and the present, in which Robinson is dead and is observing from the afterlife the consequences of what he did to Magdalena, who became a bitter, shut-down woman unable to love or be loved, and to his younger daughter Susannah, who became a writer and who is in Mexico trying to understand what happened to her family. By the Light of My Father's Smile is one of Walker's most sexually explicit novels and one of her most spiritually engaged — the narrative voice from the afterlife is a device Walker uses to examine the consequences of shame and sexual repression across a generation. The novel is also an engagement with the indigenous cultures of Mexico and with Walker's interest in the relationship between spirituality and sexuality. It is less celebrated than Walker's earlier work but shares her essential concerns about the liberation of Black and Indigenous women from the structures that repress their sexuality and spiritual lives.
Where to start
By the Light of My Father's Smile — any Random House paperback. Can be read as a standalone. The Color Purple (1982) and The Temple of My Familiar (1989) are the companion novels in Walker's examination of female sexuality and spirituality.
Complete By the Light of My Father's Smile Book List
- 1Buy
By the Light of My Father's Smile
Alice Walker·1998·The novel — the anthropologist Robinson's beating of his daughter Magdalena; the consequences observed from the afterlife; the meditation on sexuality, spirituality, and the damage fathers do to daughters who own their sexuality; Walker's most explicit treatment of female sexuality and spiritual liberation. - 2Buy
The Color Purple
Alice Walker·1982·Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the essential companion in her fiction; Celie's sexual awakening with Shug Avery is the predecessor to the sexual liberation Walker examines in By the Light of My Father's Smile. - 3Buy
The Temple of My Familiar
Alice Walker·1989·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 Walker's spiritually engaged fiction. - 4Buy
Possessing the Secret of Joy
Alice Walker·1992·Walker's companion political novel — the companion in her fiction about violence against women's bodies and sexuality; where Possessing the Secret of Joy is about cultural violence against women's bodies, By the Light of My Father's Smile is about parental violence against daughters' sexuality. - 5Buy
Like Water for Chocolate
Laura Esquivel·1989·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 in By the Light of My Father's Smile. - 6Buy
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston·1937·Hurston's masterpiece — the companion in African American women's fiction about a woman's right to her own sexuality and desire; Janie Crawford's sexual awakening and its costs are the predecessor to Magdalena's awakening and its costs. - 7Buy
Meridian
Alice Walker·1976·Walker's second novel — the companion in her fiction about young Black women's political and personal liberation; Meridian Hill is the predecessor to Magdalena and Susannah in Walker's portrait of women trying to free themselves from the structures that constrain them. - 8Buy
The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho·1988·Coelho's fable — the companion in spiritual 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.
By the Light of My Father's Smile — Frequently Asked Questions
What is By the Light of My Father's Smile about?
By the Light of My Father's Smile follows two timelines simultaneously. In the past: Robinson, an anthropologist, and his wife have disguised themselves as Baptist missionaries to gain access to a mixed-race group called the Mundo in Mexico. Their daughter Magdalena, an adolescent, falls in love with a young Mundo man named Manuelito and begins a sexual relationship with him. Robinson discovers them, beats Magdalena brutally, and forbids the relationship. In the present: Robinson is dead and narrating from the afterlife, watching the consequences of what he did to Magdalena (who became bitter, shut-down, unable to love) and to his younger daughter Susannah (who became a writer and who is in Mexico trying to understand what happened to her family). The novel is a meditation on the damage that parental sexual repression does to children, and on the possibility of healing and forgiveness across the boundary of death.
What is the Mundo community?
The Mundo are a fictional mixed-race community in Mexico — part indigenous, part African — whose culture Walker creates as an alternative spiritual vision: a community that honors sexuality as sacred, that has maintained a connection to African spiritual traditions, and that has not been entirely destroyed by colonialism. Robinson and his wife infiltrate the Mundo by pretending to be missionaries, which is itself a colonizing act — bringing the repressive structures of Protestant Christianity into a community that has its own spiritual life. The Mundo community is Walker's imagined version of a surviving indigenous and African spiritual culture in Mexico, and the young Mundo man Manuelito and his relationship with Magdalena is the encounter between that living spiritual culture and the repression that Robinson brings.
Why does Robinson narrate from the afterlife?
The afterlife narration is Walker's device for showing the consequences of Robinson's act across time and examining whether he can understand what he did and find forgiveness. In the afterlife, Robinson can see what happened to Magdalena — how the beating and the severing of her relationship with Manuelito damaged her permanently — and he can also see Susannah's attempt to understand and heal. The afterlife device allows Walker to examine the question of forgiveness without forcing it: Robinson in life never understood or acknowledged what he did; Robinson in death is slowly coming to understand. It is also part of Walker's spiritual framework in the novel, which draws on the idea that the dead continue to observe and care about the living.
What is the novel's central argument?
By the Light of My Father's Smile argues that the repression of sexuality — particularly daughters' sexuality — by fathers acting in the name of religion or culture causes profound and lasting damage. Robinson beats Magdalena not from cruelty but from shame and religious fear, and the novel traces the consequences of that single act across Magdalena's entire life. Walker is also arguing that the connection between spirituality and sexuality — which she locates in the Mundo culture and in various forms of indigenous and African spiritual tradition — is real and important, and that the suppression of that connection by Western Protestant Christianity has damaged both individuals and cultures. The novel is Walker's most explicit treatment of these themes, which run through all her fiction.
What should I read after By the Light of My Father's Smile?
After By the Light of My Father's Smile, The Color Purple (1982) is Walker's Pulitzer-winning masterpiece. The Temple of My Familiar (1989) is the companion in her spiritually engaged fiction. Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) is the companion in her examination of violence against women's bodies and sexuality. For Mexican fiction about women's sexuality and magical thinking, Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate is an important companion.
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