Alice Walker facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Alice Walker
|
|
|---|---|
Walker in 2007
|
|
| Born | Alice Malsenior Walker February 9, 1944 Eatonton, Georgia, U.S. |
| Occupation |
|
| Education | Spelman College Sarah Lawrence College (BA) |
| Period | 1968–present |
| Genre | African-American literature |
| Notable works | The Color Purple |
| Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1983) National Book Award (1983) |
| Spouse | |
| Partner | Robert L. Allen Tracy Chapman |
| Children | Rebecca Walker |
Alice Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American writer, known for her novels, short stories, and poems. She is also a strong activist for social justice. In 1982, she made history as the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She received this major award for her famous novel, The Color Purple.
Throughout her career, Alice Walker has written many books. These include seventeen novels and short story collections, twelve non-fiction books, and several collections of essays and poetry. She grew up in rural Georgia and faced challenges like an eye injury and segregation. Despite this, she became a top student and went on to graduate from Sarah Lawrence College.
Alice Walker's writing journey began with her first poetry book, Once. She later wrote many novels, with The Color Purple being her most well-known. As an activist, she was involved in the Civil Rights Movement. She also created the term "womanism" to support women of color. She has also worked for animal rights and peace.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Alice Malsenior Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia. This was a small farming town. Her parents, Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Tallulah Grant, were sharecroppers. This means they farmed land owned by someone else and paid rent with a share of their crops. Her mother also worked as a seamstress to earn extra money. Alice was the youngest of eight children. She started school at East Putnam Consolidated when she was just four years old.
When Alice was eight, she had an accident. One of her brothers accidentally shot her in the right eye with a BB gun. Her family did not have a car, so she could not get medical help right away. This caused her to become permanently blind in that eye. After this injury, Alice started to spend more time reading and writing. When she was 14, the scar tissue was removed, but a small mark remained. She wrote about this experience in her essay, "Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self."
Because schools in Eatonton were segregated, Alice attended Butler Baker High School. This was the only high school for Black students. She became the valedictorian of her class, meaning she had the highest grades. In 1961, she received a full scholarship from the state of Georgia to attend Spelman College. She found two professors, Howard Zinn and Staughton Lynd, to be very helpful mentors. Two years later, they were transferred. Alice then accepted another scholarship from Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1965.
Alice Walker's Writing Career
Alice Walker wrote the poems for her first book, Once, while she was a student. She wrote some while in East Africa and others during her last year at Sarah Lawrence College. She would leave her poems under the office door of her professor, Muriel Rukeyser. Rukeyser then showed the poems to her literary agent. Once was published four years later in 1968.
After college, Walker worked briefly for the New York City Department of Welfare. She then returned to the South. She took a job with the Legal Defense Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Jackson, Mississippi. She also worked as a consultant for a program called Head Start, teaching about Black history. Later, she became a writer-in-residence (a writer who works at a university) at Jackson State University (1968–69) and Tougaloo College (1970–71). In 1970, she published her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland. This book tells the story of Grange Copeland, a sharecropper.
In 1973, Alice Walker and scholar Charlotte D. Hunt found an unmarked grave. They believed it belonged to writer Zora Neale Hurston in Ft. Pierce, Florida. Walker arranged for a marker to be placed there. It read: ZORA NEALE HURSTON / A GENIUS OF THE SOUTH / NOVELIST FOLKLORIST / ANTHROPOLOGIST / 1901–1960. (Hurston was actually born in 1891, not 1901).
Walker's 1975 article, "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston," helped bring new attention to Hurston's work. This article was published in Ms. magazine, where Walker later became an editor.
In 1976, Walker's second novel, Meridian, was published. This book is about activists in the South during the civil rights movement. The events in the book are similar to some of Walker's own experiences.
Her most famous book, The Color Purple, was published in 1982. This novel tells the story of a young Black woman facing challenges in a racist society and a patriarchal (male-dominated) culture. The book became a huge success. It was later made into a popular movie in 1985, directed by Steven Spielberg. The movie starred Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg. It was also turned into a Broadway musical in 2005.
Walker has written several other novels, including The Temple of My Familiar (1989) and Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992). She has also published many collections of short stories, poetry, and other writings. Her work often focuses on the struggles of Black people, especially women, in a society that can be racist, sexist, and violent.
In 2000, Walker released a collection of short stories called The Way Forward Is With a Broken Heart. This book was based on her own life. It explored love and relationships between different races. In this book, Walker wrote about her interracial marriage to Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal. He was a civil rights lawyer working in Mississippi. They married on March 17, 1967, in New York City, because interracial marriage was illegal in the South at that time. They had a daughter, Rebecca, in 1969 and divorced in 1976. Their daughter, Rebecca Walker, is also a writer and activist.
In 2007, Alice Walker gave her papers to Emory University's library. This collection included 122 boxes of her writings, such as drafts of The Color Purple, unpublished poems, and letters. It also contained a scrapbook of poems she made when she was 15, called "Poems of a Childhood Poetess."
In 2013, Alice Walker published two new books. One was The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm's Way. The other was a poetry book called The World Will Follow Joy: Turning Madness into Flowers (New Poems).
Activism and Social Justice
.jpg)
Alice Walker has been a lifelong activist, working for many important causes.
Civil Rights Work
Alice Walker met Martin Luther King Jr. when she was a student at Spelman College in the early 1960s. She says King inspired her to return to the American South and become an activist in the Civil Rights Movement. She participated in the 1963 March on Washington, a huge protest for civil rights. Later, she volunteered to help Black citizens register to vote in Georgia and Mississippi.
In 2003, on International Women's Day, Alice Walker was arrested with 26 other people. This happened during an anti-war protest outside the White House. She wrote about this experience in her essay, "We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For."
Understanding Womanism
Walker's ideas about feminism included a special focus on women of color. In 1983, she created the term womanist in her book In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. She defined it as "a Black feminist or feminist of color." This term aimed to bring together women of color and the feminist movement. It focused on the challenges faced by Black women due to their race, social class, and gender. Walker said that "Womanism" gave Black women "a word of our own." Today, her womanist ideas continue to influence movements like Black Lives Matter.
Supporting Feminist Rights
Walker's ideas about feminist advocacy are also seen in her work, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. In one essay, she thinks about the unfairness and historical challenges faced by the feminist movement. She also talks about the need for understanding and care for Black women. This is important to help overcome past wrongs like slavery. Her essay encourages readers to fight against discrimination.
Peace and Global Issues
Walker is a judge member of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. She also supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.
In 2009, Walker was one of many people who signed a letter protesting a film festival's focus on Israeli filmmakers. She and other activists traveled to Gaza to deliver aid and meet with people. They wanted to encourage Israel and Egypt to open their borders with Gaza. She later planned to join a group trying to break Israel's naval blockade.
In 2013, Walker wrote an open letter to singer Alicia Keys. She asked Keys to cancel a concert in Tel Aviv. Walker said she believed Keys would be putting herself in "soul danger" by performing in a country that was being boycotted. Keys decided to perform the concert. Walker has also refused to allow The Color Purple to be translated into Hebrew. She said she believes Israel is unfair to the Palestinian people. She also mentioned that she had not allowed the movie version of her novel to be shown in South Africa until apartheid (a system of racial segregation) ended there.
Supporting Whistleblowers
In 2013, Walker appeared in a video supporting Chelsea Manning. Manning was an American soldier who was jailed for sharing secret information. Walker has also spoken out for Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. Assange shared secret information about war crimes and human rights issues. Walker has written about the US justice system and called for the charges against Assange to be dropped. She also took part in a discussion to support freeing Assange.
Caring for Animals
Alice Walker has said that caring for animals is very important to her. Her stories have increasingly included animal ethics over the years. She shows animals as active characters and as symbols for what she calls "consciousness." She wants people to be more aware and caring in their relationships with animals. She said, "Encouraging others to love nature, to respect other human beings and animals, to adore this earth, is part of my work in this world."
Working for Peace
Walker has long supported the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. In 2015, she wrote that movements for peace and justice help us find inner calm. This allows us to bring a more caring vision into the world. She has written several books that share her peaceful views, including The Same River Twice and We are the Ones We have been Waiting for: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness. She talks about how important it is to create a fair and peaceful society.
Personal Life
In 1965, Alice Walker met Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. They married on March 17, 1967, in New York City. Later that year, they moved to Jackson, Mississippi. They were the first legally married interracial couple in Mississippi since laws against mixed-race marriages were put in place. They had a daughter, Rebecca, in 1969. Walker and Leventhal divorced in 1976.
In the late 1970s, Walker moved to northern California. In 1984, she and writer Robert L. Allen started Wild Tree Press. This was a feminist publishing company. In 1994, Walker legally added "Tallulah Kate" to her name. This was to honor her mother, Minnie Tallulah Grant, and her grandmother, Tallulah, who was Cherokee.
Walker's spirituality has influenced some of her most famous novels, like The Color Purple. She has also shown interest in Transcendental Meditation. Her writing often explores religion, following a tradition of writers like Zora Neale Hurston.
Alice Walker has said that parts of her own life appear in her stories. For example, when her story "Advancing Luna—and Ida B. Wells" was first published, she noted that some characters were based on real events.
Teaching and Black Feminist Movement
Besides her civil rights work, Alice Walker taught others about the Black feminist movement. She taught at several universities. In 1972, she taught a course on Black Women's Writers at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She also taught at Wellesley College in 1973. That same year, she published her collection of short stories, In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women. She also released Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems, her second poetry book. She taught an American Women studies class at Brandeis University. Walker also gave lectures on African-American Women Studies at Yale University and University of California, Berkeley. Through her teaching and lectures, Walker helped spread the ideas of the Black feminist movement across America.
Representation in Other Media
Beauty in Truth (2013) is a documentary film about Alice Walker. It was directed by Pratibha Parmar. There is also a photograph of her called Phalia (Portrait of Alice Walker) (1989) by Maud Sulter.
Awards and Honors
- MacDowell Colony Fellowships (1967 and 1974)
- Ingram Merrill Foundation Fellowship (1967)
- Candace Award, Arts and Letters, National Coalition of 100 Black Women (1982)
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1983) for The Color Purple
- National Book Award for Fiction (1983) for The Color Purple
- O. Henry Award for "Kindred Spirits" (1985)
- Langston Hughes Medal, (1988), City College of New York
- Honorary degree from the California Institute of the Arts (1995)
- American Humanist Association named her as "Humanist of the Year" (1997)
- Lillian Smith Award from the National Endowment for the Arts
- Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts & Letters
- Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, the Merrill Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship
- Front Page Award for Best Magazine Criticism from the Newswoman's Club of New York
- Induction into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame (2001)
- Induction into the California Hall of Fame in The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts (2006)
- Domestic Human Rights Award from Global Exchange (2007)
- The LennonOno Grant for Peace (2010)
- The Haydée Santamaría medal (2024)
Selected Works
Novels and Short Story Collections
Poetry Collections
Non-fiction Books
Essays
|
See Also
In Spanish: Alice Walker para niños
- List of animal rights advocates
Images for kids
-
Walker in 2007
-
Walker signing autographs in Florida in 1990
-
Meridian By Alice Walker Book Cover
-
Walker (left) and Gloria Steinem on the Fall 2009 cover of Ms. magazine
