Alice Walker
Biography
Born in Eatonton Georgia, on February 9th, 1944, Alice Malsenior Walker was the eighth of eight children to Minnie Tallulah Grant Walker and Winnie Lee Walker. After a childhood accident involving a BB gun -and her brother- left her blinded in her right eye, Walker never fully recovered her sight and from then on, became very secluded and reserved, finding solace in writing poetry, short stories. Going on to become valedictorian of her high school, she attended Spelman and Sarah Lawrence College on scholarships, graduating in 1965 -when she left, her mother gave her three “going away presents”: a suitcase for traveling the world, a typewriter for creativity, and a sewing machine for self-sufficiency.
Volunteering
in the voter registration drives of the 1960s in Georgia, Walker went to work
after college in the Welfare Department in New York City. Marrying in 1967 she
divorced in 1976; her first book of poems came out in 1968 and her first novel
coming to print just after her daughter's birth in 1970. In early poems, novels
and short stories walker dealt with themes familiar to readers of her later
works: rape, violence, isolation, troubled relationships, multi-generational
perspectives, sexism and racism.
When her groundbreaking
novel, The
Color Purple came out in
1982, an even wider audience became exposed to Walker’s work. Her Pulitzer
Prize and the movie made from her book, directed by Steven Spielberg brought
both fame and controversy. She was widely criticized for negative portrayals of
Black men in The Color Purple, though many critics admitted that the
movie presented more simplistic negative pictures than the book's more
intricate characterizations.
Walker also
published a biography of poet, Langston Hughes, and worked to recover and
publicize the nearly lost works of writer Zora Neale Hurston.
In 1989 and 1992, in two books, The Temple of My Familiar and Possessing
The Secret of Joy, Walker made issue of female circumcision in
Africa, exposing her to further controversy-many criticized Walker as a
cultural imperialist because of her unabashed “audacity” in condemning African
cultures.
Walker’s
works are upheld as pillars of many African American cannons because of their
in-depth representation of Black life and Black women specifically. She
continues not only to write, but also to be active in environmental, feminist/
womanist causes, and issues of economic justice.
Written By Alice Walker:
Fiction
- By The Light of My Father's Smile (1998)
- Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992)
- The Temple of My Familiar (1989)
- The Color Purple (1982)
- You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down (1981)
- Meridian (1976)
- In Love and Trouble (1973)
- The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970)
Non-Fiction
- Langston Hughes, American Poet (2002)
Poetry
- Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit after the Attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (2001)
- Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful (1985)
- Revolutionary Petunias (1973)
- Once (1968)
Essays
- Living by the Word: Selected Writings 1973-1987(1988)
- In Search of Our Mother's Gardens (1983)
Written About Alice Walker:
- Allan, Tuzyline. Womanist and Feminist Aesthetics: A Comparative Review. Athens: Ohio UP, 1995.
- Butler-Evans, Elliott. Race, Gender, and Desire: Narrative Strategies in the Fiction of Toni Cade Bombara, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1989.
- Russell, Sandi. Render Me My Song: African-American Women Writers from Slavery to the Present. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992.
- Alice Walker is credited with
introducing the word "womanist" into African American feminism,
she is also a vegetarian and a gardener
- Walker also saw to it that a headstone
was placed on Zora Neale Hurston's previously unmarked grave in Florida -
a task for which she had to pass herself off as Hurston's illegitimate
niece.
Pieces
And excerpts:
From Possessing the Secret of Joy
At the moment of crisis I realize that, because my hands are bound, I can
not adjust my glasses, and therefore must tilt my head awkwardly in order to
locate and focus on a blue hill. . . . I notice there is a blue hill rising
above and just behind the women and their naked-bottomed little girls, who now
stand in rows fifty feet in front of me. In front of them kneels my little band
of intent faces. Mbati is unfurling a banner, quickly, before the soldiers can
stop her. . . All of them--Adam, Olivia, Benny, Pierre, Raye, Mbati-- hold it
firmly and stretch it wide. RESISTANCE IS THE SECRET OF JOY! it says in
huge block letters. There is a roar as if the world cracked open and I flew
inside. I am no more. And satisfied.
Poem
Expect Nothing
Expect nothing. Live frugally
On
surprise,
become
a stranger
To
need of pity
Or,
if compasssion be freely
Given
out
Take
only enough
Stop
short of urge to plead
Then
purge away the need.
Wish
for nothing larger
Than
your own small heart
OR
greater than a star;
Tame
wild disappointment
With
caress unmoved and cold
Make
of it a parka
For
your soul.
Discover
the reason why
So
tiny human midget
Exists
at all
So
sacred unwise
But
expect nothing. Live frugally
On
Surprise.
Bibliography And Works Cited
1.
Pratt, Darnell, D. Meckler’s Studies
and Biographies on Black Americans; 1
Westport, CT : Meckler, 1988.
2.
Bloom , Harold. Alice Walker / edited and with an introduction by
Harold Bloom.
Philadelphia, Pa. : Chelsea House Publishers, 2000.
Picture From:
Living By Grace
http://members.tripod.com/chrisdanielle/alicebib.html