The Temple of My Familiar

Olivia

Olivia tells Lance, the man she will eventually marry, about her history. Her biological mother, Celie, had an unhappy life. Her children, Olivia and Adam, were the result of rape by Celie’s stepfather. He gave them to missionaries Samuel and Corrine, who adopted the children and took them to Africa. Olivia and Adam were raised by their adoptive parents and their aunt, Nettie, who married Samuel after Corrine’s death.

Olivia left America when she was six. The Africa she arrived in was already ravaged through slave trade, the plundering of its natural resources, and the demolition of its native culture by Western colonial powers. Olivia spent all her time with her best friend, Tashi, who grew up to marry Adam. During Adam and Tashi’s courtship, Olivia felt lonely and ignored, and was drawn to an African man whose Christian name was “Dahvid.” Dahvid was silent and restless, and railed against the atrocities the Europeans had done to his tribe and country. Dahvid eventually pressured Olivia into sleeping with him.

Samuel lost faith in Christianity, coming to see it as “a religion of conquest and domination inflicted on other peoples” (156). He, Nettie, and the children eventually returned to America, and Olivia met her mother for the first time when she was in her thirties.