Alice Walker
Alice Malsenior Walker (born
February 9,
1944) is an
American author and
feminist.
Walker was born in
Eatonton,
Georgia,
United States; as well as being
African American, her family had
Cherokee,
Scottish and
Irish lineage.
After high school, Walker attended
Spelman College in
Atlanta, Georgia and graduated in 1965 from
Sarah Lawrence College in
Yonkers (
Bronxville postal zone),
New York.
She was married to activist Mel Leventhal from
1967 to
1976; the couple had one daughter,
Rebecca Walker (also a prominent activist and writer).
Walker's writings include
novels,
stories,
essays and
poems.
Topically, they focus on the struggles of African Americans, particularly women, and they witness against societies that are
racist,
sexist, and violent. Her writings also focus on the role of women of color in culture and history. Walker is a respected figure in the liberal political community for her support of unconventional and unpopular views as a matter of principle. She is openly
bisexual, and sympathetic of people of all sexualities, ethnicities, and races.
Her first book of poetry was written while she was still a senior at Sarah Lawrence. She took a brief sabbatical from writing when she and Leventhal lived in
Mississippi and worked in the
U.S. civil rights movement.
Walker resumed her writing career when she joined
Ms. Magazine. An article she published in 1975 was largely responsible for the renewal of interest in the work of
Zora Neale Hurston. (In 1973, Walker and fellow Hurston scholar Charlotte D. Hunt discovered Hurston's unmarked grave in Ft. Pierce, FL. Both women paid for a modest headstone for the gravesite.)
In addition to her collected short stories and poetry, Walker's first work of fiction, "The Third Life of Grange Copeland", was published in
1970. In
1976, Walker's second novel, "Meridian", was published. The novel dealt with activist workers in the South during the civil rights movement, and closely paralleled some of Walker's own experiences.
In
1982, Walker would publish what has become her best-known work, the novel
The Color Purple. The story of a young black woman fighting her way through not only racist white culture but patriarchial black culture was a resounding commercial success, and the immediacy of the characters and the story struck a nerve in readers, regardless of race, age, or gender. The book became a best seller, and was subsequently made into a
1985 movie as well as a
2005 Broadway musical play.
Walker subsequently wrote several other novels, "The Temple of My Familiar" and "Possessing The Secret of Joy". (These works included, among other protagonists, characters or descendants of characters from "The Color Purple".) and has published a number of collections of short stories, poetry, and other published work.
Walker became a political activist, in part due to the influence of activist
Howard Zinn, who was one of her professors at
Spelman College. She spent several years in the 1960s working specifically as a civil rights activist, and continues to be an advocate for
civil rights for all people.
She is active in
environmental,
feminist, and
animal rights causes, and has campaigned against
female genital mutilation.
She is also an advocate for the country of
Cuba, and has spoken openly about ending the decades-long
embargo against Cuba. Walker has visited
Cuba on several occasions.
The Color Purple won the prestigious
Pulitzer Prize as well as the
American Book Award.
Walker also won the 1986
O. Henry Award for her
short story "Kindred Spirits", published in
Esquire magazine in August of 1985.
She has also received a number of other awards for her body of work, including:
* The Lillian Smith Award from the National Endowment for the Arts
* The Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts & Letters
* The Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, the Merrill Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship
* The Front Page Award for Best Magazine Criticism from the Newswoman's Club of New York
Existing criticism of Walker's work has centered largely on the depiction of
African American men, in particular relating to the novel
The Color Purple. When
The Color Purple was published, there was some criticism of the portrayal of male characters in the book. The main concern of much of the criticism was that the book appeared to depict the male characters as either mean and abusive (Albert/"Mister") or as buffoons (Harpo). This criticism intensified when the film was released, as the narrative of the film cut a significant portion of the eventual resolution and reconciliation between Albert and Celie.
In the updated 1995 introduction to his novel
Oxherding Tale,
Charles Johnson criticized the book by saying, "I leave it to readers to decide which book pushes harder at the boundaries of convention, and inhabits most confidently the space where fiction and philosophy meet." The shock waves of his comments were felt in academia, where Johnson broke an unspoken taboo against criticizing another writer of color.
Walker addressed some of these criticisms in
The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult 1996. "The Same River Twice" was an autobiography of sorts, discussing specific events in Walker's life, as well as the perspective of experiencing reaction to "The Color Purple" twice, once as a book and then as the movie was made.
In her book "Alice Walker: A Life", author Evelyn White talks about an incident where Walker was injured as a child and was blinded in one eye as a result. Walker's brother had shot her in the eye with a BB gun. In the book, White suggests this event had a huge impact on Walker, especially when a white doctor in town subsequently swindled her parents out of $250 they had paid to repair her injury. Walker refers to this incident in her documentary turned book, "Warrior Marks" (a chronicle of female genital mutilation in Africa), and uses it to illustrate the sacrificial marks woman bear that allow them to be "warriors" against female suppression.
Walker has also chronicled her struggle with
Lyme disease in "The Same River Twice".
Novels and short story collections
*
The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970)
*
Everyday Use (1973)
*
In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973)
*
Meridian (1976)
*
The Color Purple (1982)
*
You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down: Stories (1982)
*
To Hell With Dying (1988)
*
The Temple of My Familiar (1989)
*
Finding the Green Stone (1991)
*
Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992)
*
The Complete Stories (1994)
*
By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998)
*
The Way Forward Is With a Broken Heart (2000)
*
Now is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004)
Poetry collections
*
Revolutionary Petunias & Other Poems (1973)
*
Once (1976)
*
Good Night, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning (1979)
*
Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful (1985)
*
Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems (1991)
*
Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth (2003)
*
A Poem Traveled Down My Arm: Poems And Drawings (2003)
*
Collected Poems (2005)
Non-fiction
*
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983)
*
Warrior Marks (1993)
*
The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult (1996)
*
Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism (1997)
*
Letter to President Clinton*
Go Girl!: The Black Woman's Book of Travel And Adventure (1997)
*
Pema Chodron and Alice Walker in Conversation (1999)
*
Sent By Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit After the Bombing of the World Trade Center And Pentagon (2001)
*
Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self*
WomenWorks about Alice Walker
*
Alice Walker: A Life, Evelyn C. White, Norton, 2004
*
Anniina's Alice Walker Page*
The Sabanci University School of Languages Podcasts: The World in Alice Walker's Eye*
Poem: A Mother's Day Plea*
Living By GraceVideo
*
"Alice Walker on the 'Toxic Culture' of Globalization", from
Democracy Now! program, October 27, 2004
*
"'I am a Renegade, an Outlaw, a Pagan' - Author, Poet and Activist Alice Walker in Her Own Words", interview from
Democracy Now! program, February 13, 2006
*
African-American literature
