Alice Walker

Alice Walker was born February 9,1944, to sharecropper parents in the rural community of Eatonton, Georgia. She was the youngest of eight and remembers that her mother “didn’t really want eight children, and she didn’t really bite her tongue about saying that.” Although she considers herself to have had a sad childhood, she did develop a love of reading and a talent for writing. Her methods of visualizing her novels in her head and not putting words down on paper until pretty much the final draft can be traced back to her childhood, when she didn’t write anything down for fear of her brothers finding her work and destroying it. Her feminist outlook can also be traced to this period, as she was reared in a household where boys were allowed to run free while girls were tied to household duties.

Walker attended Spelman College on scholarship, and two years later transferred to Sarah Lawrence College where she received a Bachelor of Arts in 1965. During this period she was drawn into the Civil Rights Movement and became a social activist and serious poet. She has always fiercely promoted issues she believes in, and these have grown to include speaking out against the U.S. embargo of Cuba and female genital mutilation so prevalent in Africa. Controversial in deed as well as in thought, she was married to a white civil rights lawyer from 1967-1976, and had the only biracial marriage in the state of Mississippi at one time. She has often supplemented her career with stints as a voter registration worker in Georgia, a Head Start program worker in Mississippi, a welfare department worker in New York City, a lecturer, and a co-producer of film documentary.

Walker is best known for her third novel, The Color Purple, which won a Pulitzer Prize and was later made into a film by Steven Spielberg. She has also written seven other novels as well as poetry, short stories, children’s books and nonfiction. Always provocative, her works have included such topics as abusive relationships, female sexuality and the fear of death. The abuse of black women by black men is a common theme, and many critics have accused Walker of malebashing, although she claims to harbor no resentment toward black men. In all of her writings, Walker does not allow herself to be influenced by critics or fans. Says Walker, “I don’t hide things. I feel the way I feel, and if you don’t like it, tough.”

Fiction

Now is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004) LARGE PRINT FIC WAL

The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (2000) FIC WAL

By the Light of My Father’s Smile (1998) FIC WAL

Alice Walker Banned (1996) Stories FIC WAL

Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) FIC WAL

The Temple of My Familiar (1989) FIC WAL

The Color Purple (1982) FIC WAL

You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down: Stories (1981) FIC WAL

In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1974) FIC WAL

Nonfiction