A Biography of Alice Walker
Alice Walker (b. 1944), one of the United States' preeminent writers, is an award-winning author of novels, stories, essays, and poetry. Walker was the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, which she won in 1983 for her novel The Color Purple, also a National Book Award winner. Walker has also contributed to American culture as an activist, teacher, and public intellectual. In both her writing and her public life, Walker has worked to address problems of injustice, inequality, and poverty.
Walker was born at home in Putnam County, Georgia, on February 9, 1944, the eighth child of Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Tallulah Grant Walker. Willie Lee and Minnie Lou labored as tenant farmers, and Minnie Lou supplemented the family income as a house cleaner. Though poor, Walker's parents raised her to appreciate art, nature, and beauty. They also taught her to value her education, encouraging her to focus on her studies. When she was a young girl, Alice's brother accidentally shot her in the eye with a BB, leaving a large scar and causing her to withdraw into the world of art and books. Walker's dedication to learning led her to graduate from her high school as valedictorian. She was also homecoming queen.
Walker began attending Spelman College in Atlanta in 1961. There she formed bonds with professors such as Staughton Lynd and Howard Zinn, teachers that would inspire her to pursue her talent for writing and her commitment to social justice. In 1964 she transferred to Sarah Lawrence College, where she completed a collection of poems in her senior year. This collection would later become her first published book, Once (1965). After college, Walker became deeply engaged with the civil rights movement, often joining marches and voter registration drives in the South. In 1965 she met Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, a civil rights lawyer, whom she would marry in 1967 in New York. The two were happy, before the strain of being an interracial couple in Mississippi caused them to separate in 1976. They had one child, Rebecca Grant Walker Leventhal.
In the late sixties through the seventies, Walker produced several books, including her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), and her first story collection, In Love & Trouble (1973). During this time she also pursued a number of other ambitions, such as working as an editor for Ms. magazine, assisting anti-poverty campaigns, and helping to bring canonical novelist Zora Neale Hurston back into the public eye.
With the 1982 release of her third novel, The Color Purple, Walker earned a reputation as one of America's premier authors. The book would go on to sell fifteen million copies and be adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film by director Steven Spielberg. After the publication of The Color Purple, Walker had a tremendously prolific decade. She produced a number of acclaimed novels, including You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down (1982), The Temple of My Familiar (1989), and Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), as well as the poetry collections Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful (1985) and Her Blue Body Everything We Know (1991). During this time Walker also began to distinguish herself as an essayist and nonfiction writer with collections on race, feminism, and culture, including In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens (1983) and Living by the Word (1988). Another collection of poetry, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing, was released in 2010, followed by her memoir, The Chicken Chronicles, in the spring of 2011.
Currently, Walker lives in Northern California, and spends much of her time traveling, teaching, and working for human rights and civil liberties in the United States and abroad. She continues to write and publish along with her many other activities.
Alice's parents, Minnie Tallulah Grant and Willie Lee Walker, in the 1930s. Willie Lee was brave and hardworking, and Minnie Lou was strong, thoughtful, and kind--and just as hardworking as her husband. Alice remembers her mother as a strong-willed woman who never allowed herself or her children to be cowed by anyone. Alice cherished both of her parents "for all they were able to do to bring up eight children, under incredibly harsh conditions, to instill in us a sense of the importance of education, for instance, the love of beauty, the respect for hard work, and the freedom to be whoever you are."
Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston during her days in New York City. Hurston, who fell into obscurity after her death, had a profound influence on Walker. Indeed, Walker's 1975 essay, "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston," played a crucial role in resurrecting Hurston's reputation as a major figure in American literature. Walker paid further tribute to her "literary aunt" when she purchased a headstone for Hurston's grave, which had gone unmarked for over a decade. The inscription on the tombstone reads, "A Genius of the South."
Alice (front) in Kenya in 1965. She traveled there to help build the school pictured in the background as part of the Experiment in International Living Program. It was here that Walker first witnessed the practice of female genital mutilation, a practice that she has since worked to eradicate.
Walker with her former husband, Melvyn Leventhal, a Brooklyn native. The couple met in Mississippi and bonded over their mutual involvement in the struggle for civil rights--he as a budding litigator for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, she as one of the organization's workers responsible for taking depositions from disenfranchised black voters. Despite disapproval from their respective families, Alice and Melvyn wed in New York City in 1967. They then returned to Mississippi, where they were often subjected to threats from the Ku Klux Klan. Eventually the pressures of living in the violent, segregated state, coupled with their divergent career paths, caused the pair to drift apart. They divorced amicably in 1976.
Alice and Melvyn with their daughter, Rebecca, who would also grow up to become a writer, in 1970. Alice had just published her debut novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, which garnered significant praise and prompted these perceptive words from critic Kay Bourne: "Most poignant is the relating of the lives of black women, who were ready and strong and trusted, only to so often be abused by the conditions of their oppressed lives and the misdirected anger of their men." Alice characterized it as "an incredibly difficult novel to write," since it forced her to confront the violence African Americans inflicted on each other in the face of white oppression.
Alice and her partner of thirteen years, Robert L. Allen, a noted scholar of American history, pose for a portrait. The picture was taken at a celebration the couple hosted after the publication of I Love Myself When I Am Laughing, an anthology of Zora Neale Hurston's writings that Alice edited.
Walker being taken into custody at a 1980s demonstration against weapons shipments sent from Concord, California, to Central and South America. Her shirt reads: "Remember Port Chicago." This is a reference to an explosion that killed hundreds of sailors stationed in Concord during World War II--most of them black--while they were loading munitions onto a cargo vessel. Walker has remained a dedicated political activist since the 1960s, when she returned to the South after graduating from Sarah Lawrence to help register black voters. Recently, she was arrested with fellow California-based author Maxine Hong Kingston in Washington, DC, during a protest against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. "My activism--cultural, political, spiritual--is rooted in my love of nature and my delight in human beings," Walker explains.
Walker with celebrated historian Howard Zinn, who taught one of her classes at Spelman College, in the 1960s. Walker developed a lifelong friendship with Zinn and considered him one of her mentors. The two shared a passion for political activism and a desire to shed light on the conditions of the oppressed. "I was Howard's student for only a semester," she says, "but in fact, I have learned from him all my life. His way with resistance--steady, persistent, impersonal, often with humor--is a teaching I cherish."
A photograph of Walker taken in 2007 at a ceremony for her dog, Marley, and her cat, Surprise. "Marley appeared," she says, but "Surprise slept through it!"
Walker at her country home in Northern California, where she has lived since the early 1980s. "What attracted me to this part of the world--Northern California--is really the resemblance to Georgia that it ha
s," she once told an interviewer. "This has been a very good place for me," she went on, "a very good place for dreaming."
Walker writing on the front porch of her California home. She has lived in many different places throughout the world--including Africa, Hawaii, and Mexico--and finding a place to write has always been a matter of utmost importance for her. She once said that "books and houses" are what she "longed for most as a child." Years after her tenant farming childhood, Walker is happy to have a place she can truly call home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The essays, articles, reviews, and statements in this collection were written between 1966 and 1982. For her early reading of some of them and discussing her thoughts about them with me, I thank my friend June Jordan. For gathering them together and insisting I publish them as soon as possible (five years ago), I thank my friend Susan Kirschner. For her help in reading the essays and suggesting an order for them (other than the one in which they now appear), I thank Elizabeth Phillips. For creating the order in which they do appear, I thank my editor, John Ferrone. For his way of making the creation of a writing space for me the first priority wherever we lived, I thank my former husband and friend, Mel Leventhal. And for her help in gluing me to Life, present and future, I thank our daughter, Rebecca Leventhal. For their active pride in me when I was a child (which translated into quarters and dollars and from Miss Bessie an old velvet-covered Victrola), I thank the good "ladies" of the church, to whom I would still turn in looking for justice. And for the three magic gifts I needed to escape the poverty of my hometown, I thank my mother, who gave me a sewing machine, a typewriter, and a suitcase, all on less than twenty dollars a week. My father's gifts, for which I deeply thank him, are daily surprises: my love of naturalness, the tone of my voice, my very face, eyes, and hair. For his expressed pleasure in sharing adventures and making me happy ("hitting the road with just our music and our lunch money"), I thank my much cherished companion, Robert Allen.
In my development as a human being and as a writer I have been, it seems to me, extremely blessed, even while complaining. Wherever I have knocked, a door has opened. Wherever I have wandered, a path has appeared. I have been helped, supported, encouraged, and nurtured by people of all races, creeds, colors, and dreams; and I have, to the best of my ability, returned help, support, encouragement, and nurture. This receiving, returning, or passing on has been one of the most amazing, joyous, and continuous experiences of my life.
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The author wishes to acknowledge the following for permission to reprint the material listed: Marilow Awiakata: her poem "Motheroot," from Abiding Appalachia: Where Mountain and Atom Meet, St. Luke's Press, Memphis, 1978; Doubleday & Company, Inc.: "Now That the Book Is Finished," from Good Night, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning, by Alice Walker, copyright (c) 1979 by Alice Walker, A Dial Press Book; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.: "Women," copyright (c) 1970 by Alice Walker, "Be Nobody's Darling," "Mysteries," "Reassurance" copyright (c) 1973 by Alice Walker, all from Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems, "Once," from Once, copyright (c) 1968 by Alice Walker; Harold Ober Associates, Inc.: poems by Langston Hughes: "God to Hungry Child," copyright (c) 1925 by Langston Hughes, from "Good Morning Revolution," copyright (c) 1932 by Langston Hughes, "Revolution," copyright (c) 1934 by Langston Hughes, "Tired," copyright (c) 1931 by Langston Hughes; Liveright Publishing Co.: "From an Interview" (as "Alice Walker," copyright (c) 1973 by Alice Walker), from Interview with Black Writers, edited by John O'Brien, copyright (c) 1973 by Liveright Publishing Co.; New Directions Publishing Corp.: from In Cuba, by Ernesto Cardenal, copyright (c) 1974 by Ernesto Cardenal and Donald D. Walsh; The New York Times Company: "The Almost Year," (c) 1971 by The New York Times Company; Random House, Inc.: from Angela Davis: An Autobiography by Angela Davis, copyright (c) 1974 by Angela Davis; The University of Illinois Press: "Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and Partisan View," Foreward to Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography, by Robert Hemenway, copyright (c) 1977 by The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.
copyright (c) 1983, 1982, 1981, 1980, 1979, 1977, 1976, 1975, 1974, 1973, 1971, 1970, 1967 by Alice Walker cover design by Milan Bozic 978-1-4532-2406-9
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Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Prose
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