Mapping the Black Culture in Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar

Abstract

Culture is an influential human device which covers the full range of socially transmitted behaviour patterns, art forms, beliefs, institutions and all other products of human work and thought. According to Edward B. Tylor, an English Anthropologist the term “culture” was used in Primitive Culture as “a complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”(Web). Hoebel describes culture as “an integrated system of learned behaviour patterns which are characteristic of the members of the society and which are not a result of biological inheritance”(Web). Literature and culture are intermingled and mutually influential. Very often, literature becomes a site where cultural patterns are displayed or even transmitted them from one generation to the other. In the multicultural American society various social groups contribute their unique cultural aspects to the general American culture. Of the numerous cultural groups, African American is more influential which is also known as black culture. This culture is both distinct and enormously influential to American culture as a whole. African-American culture is rooted in Africa. Although slavery greatly restricted the ability of Americans of African descent to practise their cultural traditions, many practices, values, and beliefs survived and over the time have modified or blended with the white culture and other cultures such as that of Native Americans. The result is a unique and dynamic black culture that continues to have a profound impact on mainstream American culture, as well as global culture.