Alice Walker

Alice Walker, born in 1944, American author and poet, most of whose writing portrays the lives of poor, oppressed African American women in the early 1900s. Born Alice Malsenior Walker in Eatonton, Georgia, she was educated at Spelman and Sarah Lawrence colleges. She wrote most of her first volume of poetry during a single week in 1964; it was published in 1968 as Once. Walker’s experiences during her senior year at Sarah Lawrence, including undergoing an abortion and making a trip to Africa, provided many of the book’s themes, such as love, suicide, civil rights, and Africa. She won the American Book Award (see National Book Awards) and the Pulitzer Prize for her best-known work, the novel The Color Purple (1982), which was praised for its strong characterizations and the clear, musical quality of its colloquial language. The novel was made into a motion picture in 1985, and Walker’s book The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult (1996) contains her notes and reflections on making the film.

Walker’s The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) is about the emotional growth of an African American man. Meridian (1976) follows the life of an African American woman during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) explores the tradition of female circumcision still practiced in some places in Africa. By the Light of My Father’s Smile (1998) portrays a Christian missionary family, focusing on the relationship between the father and the three daughters. The book also explores the relationship between Christianity and the spiritual traditions of the African community in which the family lives. Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004) focuses on the spiritual journey, past and present, of a woman in her 50s. The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (2000) is a collection of short stories.

Walker’s volumes of poetry include Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems (1973) and Goodnight, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning (1979). Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems 1965-1990 appeared in 1991. Walker’s nonfiction works include the essay collections In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), Living by the Word (1988), Anything We Love Can Be Saved (1997), and We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Light in a Time of Darkness (2006).