Alice Walker

AW is an African-American writer and activist, who began publishing in the late 1960s and is best known for her novel The Color Purple. As well as other novels, she publishes or has published poems, short stories, essays, and journalism, and has produced a biography for children. All are linked by her passionate activism on a range of related social and political topics. Over the course of her career she has drawn fire both from white commentators for alleged bias in favour of her black characters, and from black commentators for allegedly bringing blacks into disrepute by unflattering depictions of them.
Photograph of Alice Walker, standing behind a podium and speaking into a microphone. She is wearing a blue jacket, dangling leaf-shaped earrings, and wire-rimmed glasses.

Milestones

9 February 1944

AW was born in a tiny sharecropper's shack
White, Evelyn. Alice Walker. A Life. Norton.
11
in the hamlet of Wards Chapel near Eatonton, Georgia. She was the youngest of eight children, with two elder sisters and five elder brothers.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
White, Evelyn. Alice Walker. A Life. Norton.
xvi-xvii, 11

9 February 1959

On her fifteenth birthday AW dedicated a scrapbook of mementoes, including her own poems and stories, to those who have inspired me most: her mother , father , sister Ruth , an uncle and several teachers.
Byrd, Rudolph P., editor. The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker. The New Press.
5

By April 1982

AW scored an immense success with her best-selling epistolary novel The Color Purple. It takes the form of letters from its protagonist, Celie, first to God and later to her sister Nettie.
Book Review Index. Gale Research.
BRI

18 December 1985

Steven Spielberg 's immensely controversial and immensely successful movie of AW 's The Color Purple was released.
White, Evelyn. Alice Walker. A Life. Norton.
416

Biography

9 February 1994

On her fiftieth birthday AW held a ceremony to mark the changing of her middle name from Malsenior to Tallulah-Kate, which combined the names of her maternal great-grandmother, the African-Cherokee ancestor Tallulah Calloway
Walker, Alice. Alice Walker. The Official Website. http://alicewalkersgarden.com/.
(as well as of her mother), and of her paternal grandmother, Kate Walker .
White, Evelyn. Alice Walker. A Life. Norton.
462-3

Birth and Background

Please click on login button to check your access and/or enter your credentials. Alternatively if you don’t have access, please click on “Subscribe”.

Log inSubscribe