SOURCE: "The Contrary Women of Alice Walker," in The Black Scholar, Vol. 12, No. 2, March/April 1982, pp.21-30, 70-1.

In the following essay, Christian discusses how the women of Walker's In Love and Trouble fight to embrace their individual spirits and to overcome convention.

In Love and Trouble, Alice Walker's collection of short stories, is introduced by two seemingly unrelated excerpts, one from The Concubine by the contemporary West African writer, Elechi Amadi, the other from Letters to a Young Poet by the early 20th century German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. In the first excerpt, Amadi describes the emotional state of the young girl, Ahurole, who is about to be engaged. She is contrary, boisterous at one time, sobbing violently at another. Her parents conclude that she is "unduly influenced by agwu, her personal spirit," a particularly troublesome one. Though the excerpt Walker chose primarily describes Ahurole's agwu, it...