Alice Walker : A Life

by White, Evelyn C.

• ISBN13: 9780393058918
• ISBN10: 0393058913
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-09-30
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc

Summary

The first full-length biography of the author of The Color Purplean American icon praised and pilloried for her art and activism. Born to a sharecropping family in Georgia, Alice Walker thrived in the rich culture of what she called the "agrarian peasantry" to become one of our most important and popular writers. Evelyn C. White charts Walker's childhood, marked by an incident at eight that left her blinded in her right eye and disfigured by scar tissue and that prompted her, out of a sense of "ugliness," to probe human suffering through her poems and stories. We learn of her activism in the 1960s freedom movement and her leadership of the debate on black women's art, politics, and sexuality. The Color Purple garnered Walker the Pulitzer Prize in Fictionthe first awarded to a black woman writer. Drawing on papers, letters, journals, and extensive interviews with Walker, her family, friends, and colleagues, and with leading American cultural figures including Gloria Steinem, Quincy Jones, and Oprah Winfrey, White assesses one of the most influential writers of our time. 16 pages of illustrations.

Author Biography

Evelyn C. White is editor of The Black Women's Health Book, and is a visiting scholar at Mills College in Oakland, California.

Table of Contents

Prologue: In Service	xiii
Part One KUDZU
Georgia, the Whole Day Through	3	(6)
Babies and Stumps	9	(7)
Roots	16	(7)
``Shift for Self''	23	(6)
Booker T.	29	(4)
``I Been Cryin' . . .''	33	(8)
Knights in Shining Armor	41	(8)
A Long Walk	49	(7)
Order My Steps	56	(10)
Nobody in Atlanta	66	(12)
Forbidden Things	78	(7)
Fit for Myself to Know	85	(14)
Part Two TO HAVE AND TO HOLD
Make Yourself Useful	99	(9)
Reclaimed	108	(13)
New York	121	(11)
Live or Die	132	(7)
In a Biblical Way	139	(8)
Tulips	147	(8)
Beyond Daily Bread	155	(5)
That Alice?	160	(10)
Nude	170	(10)
Watered with Blood	180	(5)
``Conformity is not Community''	185	(14)
The Children Grow in Love	199	(7)
A Kindred Lover of Beauty	206	(9)
A Kiss on Both Sides	215	(10)
Love the Questions	225	(14)
Good Night, Willie Lee	239	(6)
We Are a People	245	(15)
Changes	260	(7)
How Rare We Were	267	(9)
We Were a Part of It	276	(9)
Part Three LIFE IS THE AWARD
Meridian	285	(9)
Refuge	294	(7)
Correct Relationship	301	(7)
Country People	308	(5)
An Ugly One at That	313	(13)
A Room to Move Into	326	(8)
Radically Brilliant	334	(6)
At a Double Remove	340	(6)
God Love All Them Feelings	346	(6)
The Balance Had Begun to Tilt	352	(6)
Some of Our Work	358	(4)
Through It All	362	(8)
I Try to Make Sense	370	(13)
The Glimpse of Life beyond the Words	383	(9)
Something to Lift Spirits	392	(8)
Guide and Protect	400	(16)
More Than Many Hoped	416	(7)
She Liked Everything She Saw	423	(5)
The World Is Held Together	428	(10)
They Saw the Airplane Coming	438	(17)
Epilogue: It's All Love	455	(10)
Chronology	465	(3)
Alice Walker Publications List	468	(2)
Wild Trees Press Publications List	470	(1)
Acknowledgments	471	(4)
Source Notes	475	(39)
Selected Bibliography	514	(6)
Permissions	520	(2)
Photo Credits	522	(3)
Index	525