About+the+Author

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Alice Walker was the eighth and last child of Georgia sharecroppers. After a childhood accident blinded her in one eye, she went on to become valedictorian of her local school, and attend Spelman College and Sarah Lawrence College on scholarships, graduating in 1965. Alice Walker volunteered in the voter registration drives of the 1960s in Georgia, and went to work after college in the Welfare Department in New York City. She married in 1967 (and divorced in 1976). Her first book of poems came out in 1968 and her first novel just after her daughter's birth in 1970. Alice Walker's early poems, novels and short stories dealt with themes familiar to readers of her later works: rape, violence, isolation, troubled relationships, multi-generational perspectives, sexism and racism. When //The Color Purple// movie came out in 1982, Walker became known to an even wider audience. Her Pulitzer Prize and the movie by Steven Spielberg brought both fame and controversy. She was widely criticized for negative portrayals of men in //The Color Purple,// though many critics admitted that the movie presented more simplistic negative pictures than the book's more nuanced portrayals. Her works are known for their portrayals of the African American woman's life. She depicts vividly the sexism, racism and poverty that often make life a struggle. But she also portrays as part of that life, the strengths of family, community, self-worth, and spirituality. Many of her novels depict women in other periods of history than our own. Just as with non-fiction women's history writing, such portrayals give a sense of the differences and similarities of women's condition today and in that other time. Alice Walker continues not only to write, but to be active in environmental, feminist causes, and issues of economic justice.

Books:

__//The Color Purple//__ Walker reexamines the controversies and condemnations generated by The Color Purple,  now a classic of American literature, celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2007. The award-winning novel served as the inspiration for Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film and has been adapted for the stage by Scott Sanders. Premiering at Atlanta’s Alliance Theater in September 2004, The Color Purple opened at New York City’s Broadway Theatre in December 2005. LaChanze starred as Celie and won a Tony Award for best leading actress in a musical in 2006.

//__To Hell With Dying__//

Walker’s first published work of fiction, “To Hell With Dying” (1967), was published when she was just twenty-three years old. It appeared in The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers, edited by Langston Hughes. The story, which chronicles the ups and downs of Mr. Sweet and the two children who work to keep him alive, was republished in 1988 as a children’s book, with illustrations by Catherine Deeter. Other works of children’s literature by Walker include Langston Hughes: American Poet (1974), Finding the Green Stone (1991), and Why War is Never A Good Idea (2007).

__//The Third Life of Grange Copeland//__ Walker published her debut novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, in 1970. The book chronicles the life of the Copelands, a family of sharecroppers in rural 1920’s Georgia. It is followed by Meridian (1976), Walker’s meditation on the modern civil rights movement, as well as her tribute to Jean Toomer’s Cane (1923) and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). In 1982 Walker published The Color Purple, an epistolary novel exploring the trials and triumphs of Celie, a largely unschooled, but earnest and increasingly independent young woman who unburdens herself in uncomplaining letters to God. For this achievement, Walker was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (the first African American woman writer to receive this award) and the American Book Award.

In addition to her novels, Walker has published several volumes of poetry. Her first book, Once, published in 1968, contains poems written both in Africa and during her senior year at Sarah Lawrence.

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