The Temple of My Familiar

Fanny is an African American woman who grows up with her mother and stepfather in America. Her maternal grandmother, Celie, is the protagonist of Walker’s book, The Color Purple. Fanny meets her father, Ola, for the first time as an adult on a visit to Africa; she also discovers that she has a half-sister, Nzingha. Fanny taught women’s studies at the same university as Suwelo and Carlotta before moving into administration and eventually leaving the university altogether to open a massage parlor.

Fanny is an unconventional woman, as she is willing to defy societal norms. When she starts experiencing Suwelo’s unconscious sexism within their marriage, she identifies the institution of marriage itself as the problem and chooses to do away with it while preserving the relationship. Similarly, Fanny is not bothered as much by Suwelo’s affair with Carlotta as she is by his treatment of her as a woman. This, along with similar other problematic patterns on Suwelo’s part, are what cause Fanny and Suwelo to drift apart.

Fanny is also curious about and excited by the idea of exploring her roots through family and culture. She is thrilled not only to meet and build a relationship with her father, but also to spend time with Nzingha and make sense of her African heritage through her sister. Fanny’s time in Africa with her family also helps her understand the deep, violent anger she feels toward white people.

Fanny’s journey sees her reconciling the conflicts she experiences with respect to her race and gender in her personal life and as a world citizen. Progress in one arena enables progress in the other: After she reconciles with a changed Suwelo, Fanny begins attending therapy and incorporating the lessons of forgiveness and harmony from her parents. Redirecting her anger at people into sorrow about the state of the world allows her to remain sensitive and empathetic, while erasing the violence within herself. In a cathartic moment at the end of the book, Fanny finally encounters a kindred soul with whom she has a natural physical connection: Arveyda.

Lissie is an African American woman. She was Suwelo’s great-uncle Rafe’s lover and is now married to his closest friend, Hal. Lissie is a strong, fiercely independent woman who refuses to be tied down by any man or institution. Her strength and fierceness translate into loyalty and protectiveness over the people she cares about. Over the course of her present lifetime, she has multiple lovers; however, she never stops taking care of Hal, whom she has loved since they were babies.

Lissie is wise from the learnings gleaned over many lifetimes. She narrates the stories of these lifetimes to Suwelo and encourages him to make amends with Carlotta, as well as the memory of his parents’ deaths. Because she embodies so many selves and stories, Lissie’s character is significant in multiple ways. Her story justifies the elements of magical realism present in the book, even in how her appearance changes across every photograph taken of her.

Lissie’s lives spent enslaved help examine The Historical Trauma of Colonization, while those spent as a goddess explore how The Feminine Experience was regarded and worshipped in the past. Her ancient lives point to the disconnect between man and nature in the contemporary Spirituality in the Diaspora. However, her time spent with the cousins also points to the universality and timelessness of human nature. Lissie traverses lifetimes as man, woman, and animal of different historical, cultural, and economic backgrounds. Thus, her stories capture and comment on a vast range of human experiences.

Suwelo is an African American professor of history at the same university as Fanny and Carlotta. He is married to Fanny for a time, but when tensions arise in their relationship, he has an affair with Carlotta. Suwelo meets and befriends Hal and Lissie after his great-uncle Rafe’s death.

Suwelo’s journey is one of recognizing and appreciating the feminine, particularly a woman’s struggles and pain. The main conflict in his story comes from his relationship with Fanny. He loves her deeply and cannot understand her desire to end their marriage while remaining romantically involved. Suwelo is also unsettled by her ability to fall in love with spirits. He exhibits a masculine possessiveness, wanting Fanny to remain bound to him legally and emotionally, while he disregards the spirit of their relationship by indulging in pornography and eventually an affair.

Suwelo’s time with Hal and Lissie proves transformative. Hearing about their relationship and Lissie’s many lifetimes allows him to see and appreciate multiple facets of The Feminine Experience, including how it is impacted by The Historical Trauma of Colonization, and how it is displaced from modern day spirituality. Suwelo also sees how love is eternal and enduring, and can exist outside of society’s narrow framework. He recognizes how he contributed to the breakdown of his own relationship by reinforcing this framework with both Fanny and Carlotta.

As Suwelo works through his own pain about his parents’ death, it becomes clear that his inability to bear his mother’s suffering resulted in him turning away from acknowledging all women’s pain. The end of the book sees Suwelo reconcile with Fanny, make amends to Carlotta, and talk about his parents’ deaths for the first time, all of which is influenced by him finally understanding and empathizing with the feminine experience.

Arveyda is an American rockstar with a multiracial and multicultural heritage. He grows up not knowing much about his parents, as his father is absent his whole life and his mother dies early. He only learns more about them as an adult. Arveyda marries Carlotta and has two children with her, but he also falls in love with Zedé, who reminds him of his own mother.

Arveyda, like Fanny, is a free spirit. He is unaffected by societal norm and conventions. He gives in to his feelings for Zedé while he is married to her daughter and later consummates the connection he feels with Fanny as well, after they become friends. However, Arveyda’s defiance of convention is not aggressive or rebellious. Unlike Suwelo, Arveyda’s sexuality does not stem from an unconscious need to perform masculinity or dominate women. Rather, it is an expression of the connection he feels with them.

Arveyda is gentle and sensitive, and this softness translates into his music, which is loved world over. Thus, when he returns from traveling with Zedé, his concern is to connect Carlotta to her mother, and he sings to her of Zedé story. It is his music that draws Fanny to him, even before they meet. While Arveyda does experience some self-discovery by learning about his family history, his character’s role is mostly to aid the journeys of the women in his life, specifically Carlotta and Fanny.