Alice Walker

Standard Name: Walker, Alice
Birth Name: Alice Malsenior Walker
Married Name: Alice Leventhal
Self-constructed Name: Tallulah-Kate
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.

Connections

Connections Author name Sort descending Excerpt
Intertextuality and Influence Naomi Alderman
NA says this book was facilitated by the success of fictions about other, distinct communities: Zadie Smith 's White Teeth, Monica Ali 's Brick Lane, and especially influenced by Jeanette Winterson 's Oranges...
Cultural formation Maya Angelou
Born black in the Southern USA and raised mainly in a small and backward, rigidly segregated Arkansas town in which white people systematically victimised blacks (the segregation was so complete that most Black children...
Health Maya Angelou
At about this time MA suffered a particularly painful instance of race prejudice when she had toothache and a white dentist refused to see her. Her grandmother compelled him to pay for her treatment (by...
Intertextuality and Influence Pat Barker
PB says that one stage she threw away the manuscript of this novel in despair, but her husband rescued it from the bin.
Jaggi, Maya. “Pat Barker. Dispatches from the front”. The Guardian, pp. G2: 16 - 19.
18
She said she felt the absence of models for writing fiction...
Education Malorie Blackman
MB was shaped by her reading outside school. She never entered a bookshop until she was fourteen, but relied on libraries. Early favourites were C. S. Lewis 's Narnia books, Johanna Spyri 's Heidi books...
Literary responses Buchi Emecheta
Reviewers were very positive in journals such as the Guardian and the Sunday Times, and BE was invited to make a television appearance. The Times Literary Supplement invited her to write an article on...
Textual Production Zoë Fairbairns
The preface says that the volume does not pretend to offer answers or solutions. Nor does it attempt to promote a particular political position.
Ebersole, Lucinda, and Richard Peabody. “Preface”. Coming to Terms: A Literary Response to Abortion, edited by Lucinda Ebersole and Richard Peabody, The New Press, p. xiii - xiv.
xiii-xiv
It includes a diverse array of writers including Alice Walker
Textual Features Monica Furlong
The different spiritual traditions represented here include ancient Greeks, medieval Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Australian Aboriginals and Native Americans. The authors of prayers include Teresa of Avila , Emily Dickinson , Denise Levertov , Oodgeroo Noonuccal , and Alice Walker .
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
Publishing Bessie Head
In September 1974 BH was delighted to receive a letter from Alice Walker , in her capacity as an editor of Ms magazine, to solicit a story. Head sent off a selection, from which Walker...
Literary responses Bessie Head
Alice Walker has frequently mentioned BH as a vital influence on her writing.
Eilersen, Gillian Stead. Bessie Head. Wits University Press.
298
Many publications, both selections from and commentary on her writings, attest to her continuing influence. Helen Oyeyemi wrote an introduction to...
Reception Zora Neale Hurston
Writer Alice Walker placed a tombstone over the approximate location of ZNH 's grave in Florida. Taken from a poem by Jean Toomer , the epitaph reads A Genius of the South.
Walker, Alice. In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
94, 107
Commire, Anne, and Deborah Klezmer, editors. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Yorkin Publications.
7: 598
Textual Production Zora Neale Hurston
Alice Walker selected and edited I Love Myself When I Am Laughing . . . And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Textual Production Zora Neale Hurston
The book was edited by Deborah G. Plant and included a foreword by Alice Walker . In Britain it was titled Barracoon: The Story of the Last Slave. Kossula, then aged nineteen, lived through...
Literary responses Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching Godgenerally well received by white critics, including a reviewer for the New York Times who declared it a well nigh perfect story. On the other hand the leading black literary...
Literary responses Zora Neale Hurston
The research and writing of African-American author Alice Walker has been vital to the posthumous recuperation of ZNH 's life's work.

Timeline

1934: US feminist and writer Agnes Smedley, a supporter...

National or international item

1934

US feminist and writer Agnes Smedley , a supporter of Communist forces in China, published China's Red Army Marches, an account of the organization and growth of the Red Army 's campaign against the Kuomintang.

12 February 1980: US poet Muriel Rukeyser died in Greenwich...

Writing climate item

12 February 1980

US poet Muriel Rukeyser died in Greenwich Village, New York, two years after publishing her Collected Poems and four years after her last new collection, The Gates, 1976.

Texts

Walker, Alice. “’Outlaw, Renegade, Rebel, Pagan’: Interview with Amy Goodman from <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘j’>Democracy Now!</span> (2006)”. The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker, edited by Rudolph P. Byrd, The New Press, 2010, pp. 268-79.
Walker, Alice. “11th Annual Steve Biko Lecture”. Facebook.
Walker, Alice. “A Conversation with David Swick from <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘j’>Shambhala Sun</span> (2006)”. The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker, edited by Rudolph P. Byrd, The New Press, 2010, pp. 301-10.
Walker, Alice. Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth. Random House, 2003.
Walker, Alice, and Margo Jefferson. “Alice Walker and Margo Jefferson: A Conversation from LIVE from the NYPL (2005)”. The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker, edited by Rudolph P. Byrd, The New Press, 2010, pp. 237-67.
Walker, Alice. Alice Walker. The Official Website. http://alicewalkersgarden.com/.
Walker, Alice. “Alice Walker: Why I’m sailing to Gaza”. Sabbah Report.
Walker, Alice. Anything We Love Can Be Saved. Random House, 1997.
Walker, Alice. By the Light of My Father’s Smile. Random House, 1998.
Walker, Alice. Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning: Poems. Dial Press, 1979.
Walker, Alice. Hard Times Require Furious Dancing. New World Library, 2010.
Walker, Alice. Her Blue Body Everything We Know. Women’s Press, 1991.
Walker, Alice. Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful: Poems. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.
Hurston, Zora Neale. I Love Myself When I Am Laughing . . . And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader. Editor Walker, Alice, The Feminist Press, 1979.
Walker, Alice. In Love and Trouble. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973.
Walker, Alice. In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983.
Walker, Alice. Langston Hughes, American Poet. Crowell, 1974.
Walker, Alice. Living by the Word: Selected Writings, 1973-1987. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1988.
Walker, Alice. Meridian. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1976.
Walker, Alice. Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart. Random House, 2004.
Walker, Alice. Once: Poems. Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968.
Walker, Alice. Overcoming Speechlessness: a Poet Encounters the Horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo, and Palestine/Israel. Seven Stories Press, 2010.
Walker, Alice. Possessing the Secret of Joy. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1992.
Walker, Alice. Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973.
Walker, Alice. Sent By Earth. Seven Stories, 2001.