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Alice Walker

Alice Walker, one of the US preeminent writers, is an award-winning author of novels, stories, essays, and poetry. In 1983, Walker became the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction with her novel The Color Purple, which also won the National Book Award. In 1985 Steven Spielberg directed an Oscar-nominated film adaptation of the book.

Her other works include The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), Meridian (1976), The Temple of My Familiar (1989), and Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992).

In her public life, Walker has worked to address problems of injustice, inequality, and poverty as an activist, teacher, and public intellectual.

Alice Walker was born in the small rural community of Eatonton in Georgia. Her parents were sharecroppers, which, in the post-civil war context for black Americans, was a continuation of slavery.

Despite the difficulties of growing up in the Deep South, Walker's mother, a seamstress, envisioned a better future for her daughter and enrolled her in school at the age of four.

She later attended Spelman College in Atlanta, where she actively participated in the civil rights movement. Then Alice transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in New York State, where she received another scholarship and participated in a student exchange program in Uganda.

Walker's experiences of poverty, racism, and sexism in the South, informed her writing, which often explores the experiences of African American women. Her first publication, a collection of poems Once (1968), was based on her own experiences of depression and anxiety. Her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), explored the themes of family, violence, and identity in the African American community.

In 1976, Walker separated from her Jewish husband, Melvyn Leventhal, after the couple faced death threats for being an interracial couple. Walker's activism continued throughout her career, and her work often explores the intersection of race, gender, and class. In addition to The Color Purple, Walker has written numerous novels, essays, and short stories.

Today, Alice Walker is considered one of the most prominent writers of the 20th century, and her works have been translated into more than two dozen languages.

Alice Walker currently lives in Mendocino County, California.

Photo credit: alicewalkersgarden.com
years of life: 9 February 1944 present

Quotes

Kingahas quoted2 years ago
I remember one time you said your life made you feel so ashamed you couldn’t even talk about it to God, you had to write it, bad as you thought your writing was. Well, now I know what you meant. And whether God will read letters or no, I know you will go on writing them; which is guidance enough for me. Anyway, when I don’t write to you I feel as bad as I do when I don’t pray, locked up in myself and choking on my own heart. I am so lonely, Celie.
Kingahas quoted2 years ago
Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.
Kingahas quoted2 years ago
Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?). Not the little wildflowers. Nothing.

Now that my eyes opening, I feels like a fool. Next to any little scrub of a bush in my yard, Mr. ____’s evil sort of shrink. But not altogether. Still, it is like Shug say, You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a’tall.

Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain’t. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up flowers, wind, water, a big rock.

But this hard work, let me tell you. He been there so long, he don’t want to budge. He threaten lightening, floods and earthquakes. Us fight. I hardly pray at all. Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.

Amen
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