Alice Walker

American novelist

• Born: February 9, 1944
• Place of Birth: Eatonton, Georgia

Walker, winner of a Pulitzer Prize in Literature and the American Book Award, among other honors, helped establish a literary canon of Black American women writers. She brought critical attention to literary foremothers such as Zora Neale Hurston, and she wove their writings into the fabric of her own literary artistry.

Early Life

Alice Walker was born into a family of sharecroppers in Eatonton, Georgia, on February 9, 1944. Her mother, Minnie Tallulah Grant Walker, was a farmhand and a domestic worker. Her father, Willie Lee Walker, had grandparents who had been enslaved. Walker’s enslaved paternal great-great-grandmother, Mary Poole, had walked from Virginia to Georgia carrying two of her children on her hips. Walker’s relationship with her father became strained as she grew into adolescence and showed a proclivity for intellectual pursuits. Although her father was brilliant, his educational opportunities had been limited, and he feared that education would place barriers between him and his children. After Walker left home for college in Atlanta, her relationship with her father ended.

Walker’s mother knew how important education was for her daughter. She enrolled her in the first grade at the age of four and excused her from household chores so that she would have time for her reading and schoolwork. Minnie Walker saved the money she earned as a domestic worker in the town of Eatonton and bought several gifts that had a great impact upon her daughter’s life. These gifts included a sewing machine that enabled Walker to make her own clothes, a suitcase, and a typewriter, of which she later made good use. When Walker was eight years old, a shot fired from her brother’s BB gun permanently blinded her right eye. Convinced that the resulting scar tissue in her eye was disfiguring and ugly, she retreated into solitude. She spent the next seven to eight years reading voraciously and writing poems.

Walker was the valedictorian of her high school class, and when she graduated in 1961 she was offered a scholarship to Spelman College in Atlanta. After traveling to Africa in 1964, Walker returned to the United States and entered Sarah Lawrence College. She soon discovered that she was pregnant, and just as quickly she found herself depressed and on the verge of suicide.

Walker made a decision to end the pregnancy instead of her life and subsequently wrote her first published short story, “To Hell with Dying.” She also produced Once (1965), her first published collection of poems, during her years at Sarah Lawrence. While she was attending college, Walker spent her summers working for the civil rights movement in Georgia. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence in 1965, and after graduation she became even more involved in the civil rights movement. In 1967, she married lawyer Mel Leventhal and moved with him to Mississippi. Leventhal worked as a civil rights attorney in the Jackson school desegregation cases, and Walker worked with Head Start programs and held writer-in-residence positions at Tougaloo College and Jackson State University. She subsequently taught at Wellesley College, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the University of California, Berkeley, and Brandeis University. In 1969, Walker’s only child, Rebecca, was born. Rebecca Walker would become a noted writer and feminist as well. Walker and Leventhal divorced in 1978, and Walker subsequently moved in with Robert Allen, an editor at the Black Scholar, in California. The couple (who were never married) separated in the mid-1980s.

Life’s Work

In 1970, while working on her short story “The Revenge of Hannah Kemhuff,” Walker discovered the works of African American writer Zora Neale Hurston, a discovery that had a profound effect on Walker. She described Hurston as her literary foremother, and in her essay “Zora Neale Hurston” (1979) she states that were she condemned to spend her life on a desert island with an allotment of only ten books, she would choose two of Hurston’s books: Mules and Men (1935) and Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). In August 1973, Walker traveled to Florida to locate Hurston’s grave. She had a marker placed on the spot that was the most likely site of the grave and then dedicated herself to bringing attention to Hurston’s genius. Through Walker’s efforts, Hurston’s work began to receive critical attention and acclaim.

In 1970, Walker published her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland. Although Grange Copeland is the protagonist of the novel, Walker focuses on his treatment of Black women. Walker’s main concerns in her novels are the imposed powerlessness of Black women and men’s sexism. In 1972, after the publication of The Third Life of Grange Copeland, Walker left Mississippi to teach at Wellesley and at Amherst. The following year, she published a book of poetry, Revolutionary Petunias (1973), for which she won the Lillian Smith Award. This small volume of poems is a celebration of people who refuse to fit into other people’s molds. She also published a book of short stories, In Love and Trouble (1973). The pieces in this first collection tell the stories of Black women who live a life facing the evils of racism and sexism. They are women who are not whole, are often unable to speak, and who are used and abused by the men they love.

In 1976, Walker published her second novel, Meridian, the story of a young woman’s personal development during the years of the civil rights movement. The autobiographical elements of Meridian are many, as Walker explores struggles similar to those she confronted in both her college years at a predominantly White women’s college and in her interracial marriage to a civil rights lawyer. In 1976, Walker and Leventhal divorced, and two years later, Walker decided to move from New York City to San Francisco. A year after her move to the West Coast, Walker produced two more books. She published her second volume of Black women–centered poems, Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning (1979), and an anthology of Hurston’s works, I Love Myself When I Am Laughing (1979).

Several literary critics, and Walker herself, have compared Walker’s stories and novels to “crazy quilts.” The bits and pieces that she weaves together have much in common. Crazy quilts originated in the American South and were made to tell stories of the lives of women of all races in various stages of their development. In 1981, Walker produced You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down, a volume of fourteen stories that address the blossoming creativity of women.

One year later, Walker produced her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Color Purple (1982), a series of ninety letters that Celie, Walker’s outwardly silent protagonist, addresses to God. These letters disclose Celie’s development of self and voice, while providing readers with a vision of how the intersection of sexism and racism affects the African American family. The themes of forgiveness and reconciliation are prominent in Walker’s writing. In her next novel, The Temple of My Familiar (1989), her characters work toward forgiving one another.

Walker reveals much of her personality in her book of essays, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (1983). Among other topics, she describes her discovery of and commitment to Hurston. In her essay “One Child of One’s Own,” she openly and honestly describes her decision to have only one child. In Living by the Word (1988), her second volume of essays, her discussions range from her love for her daughter to her reactions to criticism of the treatment of men in her book The Color Purple. In an interview with talk-show host Oprah Winfrey in 1989, Walker discussed the failure of her critics to recognize the development of nurturance and sensitivity in her male characters. (Winfrey played Sofia in the film). In The Color Purple, for example, Albert asks Celie to remarry him, and in The Temple of My Familiar, Suwelo comes to realize that Carlotta, and all women, are beings with feelings and spirits.

In several of her essays in Living by the Word, Walker moves her focus from the individual to larger issues among the peoples of the world, indeed, to unity within the universe. In her novel Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), Walker moves from Black culture to detail the misogyny contained in the hideous practice of female genital mutilation in some countries in Africa. She continued her examination of mutilation in the 1993 book Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women, which she wrote with Pratibha Parmar.

In 1998, Walker published her sixth novel, By the Light of My Father’s Smile , which explores the connections between sexuality and spirituality in a parable that demonstrates the father’s role in the future sexual happiness of his daughters. Walker then published the novel Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004). Like much of her fiction and nonfiction, this work continues a theme that connects all her novels, the spiritual and emotional healing of women, as well as men.

Walker continued her response to the critical analysis of The Color Purple and engaged in autobiographical self-revelation in The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult (1996). In these essays she records her feelings about director Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film version of her novel, describes both her battle with Lyme disease and the end of her long relationship with her lover, and includes her own version of the screenplay of The Color Purple. In Anything We Love Can Be Saved (1998), a collection of political and personal essays, Walker explores a broad range of topics from a defense of Winnie Mandela and a Ghanaian conference on female genital mutilation, to lessons she learned from her daughter. Walker continued her autobiographical trajectory with the publication of thirteen short stories in The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (2000). These stories range from a reflection on her earlier marriage to Leventhal to the loves and relationships of many kinds experienced by human beings.

In 2001, Walker also published Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit after the Attacks of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The book is a kaleidoscope of political commentary and poetry beginning with a speech to the Midwives Alliance of North America. Her topics include not only the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon but also the history of racism and sexism, the scourge of female genital mutilation, and the devastating effects of war. Her next volume of essays, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Light in a Time of Darkness (2006), was based on her lectures, and their unifying theme urges humans to act with integrity and improve life on this planet.

Walker’s volumes of poetry, Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful (1984) and Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems, 1965–1990, Complete (1991), also reflect her larger concern for the cultures of this world and the planet itself. In another volume of poetry, Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth: New Poems (2003), she celebrates the beauty of life, the essence of grief, and the growth of spirituality. Another volume of poetry is an outgrowth of Absolute Trust. The volume A Poem Traveled Down My Arm: Poems and Drawing (2003) was inspired by individuals who had asked for her autograph over the years of her career. In the process of providing autographs for her poetry, Walker began creating small poems for her readers, turning each signature into a poetic creation. In 2006, she published a critically acclaimed children’s book of poetry titled There Is a Flower at the Tip of My Nose Smelling Me.

In 2010, Walker published Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the Horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo, and Palestine/Israel, a book detailing her experiences working with Women for Women International in Africa in 2006 and with Code Pink, an antiwar group, in the Middle East in 2009. Walker shares the stories of individuals she met during those visits as a way to break through people's "self-imposed silence" in reaction to human atrocities. At the same time, she returned to poetry to celebrate the healing power of dance and optimism even in deeply stressful times with the publication of Hard Times Require Furious Dancing (2010). In 2011, she published The Chicken Chronicles: Sitting with the Angels Who Have Returned with My Memories. In this memoir, Walker recounts her experience raising chickens, who served as a connection to family, to nature, to inspiration, and to spirituality. In 2013, she published another essay collection, titled The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm's Way. In the book, Walker covers topics from racism, to the states of Cuba and Israel, to the election of President Barack Obama. Five years later, readers were given more insight into Walker's views on living a good life—despite troubles—with her poetry collection, focused on self-healing and written in both English and Spanish, titled Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart (2018).

Controversy began to surround Walker in 2018 following an interview that she gave to the New York Times. In a discussion of books that she was currently reading, she praised one of the books she named, David Icke's And the Truth Will Set You Free (1995). This remark drew rebuke from many who argued that Icke is a conspiracy theorist whose book is essentially anti-Semitic, with some also claiming that some of her own works also contained language that could be construed as anti-Semitic. A subsequent statement on her website provided a defense in which she replied that critics targeted her for her support of the Palestinians' cause and that she had engaged in freedom of thought. While the year 2021 saw the publication of Sweet People Are Everywhere, a children's book centered upon one of the poems from Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart, the following year saw the release of Gathering Blossoms under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker (2022). This latter work features a personally insightful collection of diary entries she had composed between 1965 and 2000, covering subjects as varied as her own marital experience and commentary on popular culture. Walker continued her support of the Palestinian cause following the outbreak of the Hamas-Israel conflict in 2023. In 2024, she chose to ban publication of The Color Purple in Israel, refusing to grant permission to an Israeli publishing firm that wished to reprint the novel and purporting a cultural boycott of the nation.

Significance

Walker traveled to the North and then to the West, but her writer’s soul returned to the South of her childhood, so that she could provide a voice to previously silent and unseen generations of Black women. She recognizes their artistry and praises their resiliency and strength. She writes not only to women of all races, ethnicities, and cultures but also for women of all races, ethnicities, and cultures. She urges them to search for, learn about, and know their inner selves, and to bind up wounds resulting from centuries of silence and abuse. Walker believes in change, for the individual and for society, and for the “survival whole” of the African American woman. Although Walker has been noted as a feminist, she prefers the term “womanist” because it captures the spirit of the Black woman, her primary commitment.

Bibliography

"Alice Walker Bans 'The Color Purple' from Israel." The Jewish Chronicle, 10 July 2024, www.thejc.com/news/world/alice-walker-bans-the-color-purple-from-israel-h01tbzto. Accessed 15 July 2024.

Alter, Alexandra. "Alice Walker, Answering Backlash, Praises Anti-Semitic Author as 'Brave.'" The New York Times, 21 Dec. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/arts/alice-walker-david-icke-times.html. Accessed 18 Jan. 2022.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Alice Walker. Updated ed. Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2007.

Christian, Barbara. Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers. Pergamon, 1985.

Christian, Barbara. Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892–1976. Greenwood, 1980.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and K. A. Appiah, eds. Alice Walker: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Amistad, 1993.

Henderson, Mae G. Speaking in Tongues and Dancing Diaspora: Black Women Writing and Performing. Oxford UP, 2014.

Humann, Heather Duerre. Domestic Abuse in the Novels of African American Women: A Critical Study. McFarland, 2014.

Plant, Deborah G. "Alice Tallulah-Kate Walker (1944–): On All Fronts." Georgia Women: Their Lives and Times. U of Georgia P, 2014. 395–417.

Walker, Alice. "Alice Walker: 'I Feel Dedicated to the Whole of Humanity.'" Interview by Alex Clark. The Guardian, 9 Mar. 2013, www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/09/alice-walker-beauty-in-truth-interview. Accessed 19 Dec. 2013.

Walker, Alice. "Alice Walker on New Children's Book, Upcoming Book and Power of Nature." The Mercury News, 14 Nov. 2021, www.mercurynews.com/2021/11/14/alice-walker-on-new-childrens-book-forthcoming-journals-and-power-of-nature/. Accessed 18 Jan. 2022.

Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. Harcourt, 1983.

Walker, Alice. "'This Is the Time for Poetry': A Conversation with Alice Walker." Interview by Abdul Ali. The Atlantic, 20 Mar. 2012, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/03/this-is-the-time-for-poetry-a-conversation-with-alice-walker/254744/. Accessed 19 Dec. 2013.

Walker, Rebecca. Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self. Riverhead, 2001.

White, Evelyn C. Alice Walker: A Life. Norton, 2004.

Winchell, Donna Haisty. Alice Walker. Twayne, 1992.