Few novelists are as actively concerned with addressing social issues as Alice Walker. With Possessing the Secret of Joy, she exposes the practice of female circumcision or "genital mutilation" — a practice that ranges from ritually nicking the clitoris to excising the entire vulva and sewing up all but a small opening of the genitals. In the book's epilogue, Walker says that this practice has scarred as many as 100 million women and girls in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

To continue resisting this tradition, Walker has set aside a portion of the book's royalties to "educate women and girls, men and boys, about the hazardous effects of genital mutilation, not simply on the health and happiness of individuals, but on the whole society in which it is practiced, and the world."

The central character, Tashi, in order to connect with her people's threatened cultural traditions...