Alice Walker

Last updated

Alice Walker
Alice Walker.jpg
Walker in 2007
BornAlice Malsenior Walker
(1944-02-09) February 9, 1944 (age 80)
Eatonton, Georgia, U.S.
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • short story writer
  • poet
  • political activist
Education Spelman College
Sarah Lawrence College (BA)
Period1968–present
Genre African-American literature
Notable works The Color Purple
Notable awards Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1983)
National Book Award (1983)
Spouse
(m. 1967;div. 1976)
Partner Robert L. Allen
Tracy Chapman
Children Rebecca Walker
Website
Official website

Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker (born February 9, 1944) [2] is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she became the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which she was awarded for her novel The Color Purple . [3] [4] Over the span of her career, Walker has published seventeen novels and short story collections, twelve non-fiction works, and collections of essays and poetry.

Contents

Walker, born in rural Georgia, overcame challenges such as childhood injury and segregation to become a valedictorian and eventually graduate from Sarah Lawrence College. She began her writing career with her first book of poetry, Once, and later wrote novels, including her best-known work, The Color Purple. As an activist, Walker participated in the Civil Rights Movement, advocated for women of color through the term "womanism," and has been involved in animal advocacy and pacifism. Additionally, she has taken a strong stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against Israel.

Walker has faced multiple accusations of antisemitism due to her praise for British conspiracy theorist David Icke and his works, which contain antisemitic conspiracy theories, along with criticisms of her own writings.

Early life

Alice Malsenior Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia, a rural farming town, to Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Tallulah Grant. [5] [6] Both of Walker's parents were sharecroppers, though her mother also worked as a seamstress to earn extra money. Walker, the youngest of eight children, was first enrolled in school when she was just four years old at East Putnam Consolidated. [5] [7]

As an eight-year-old, Walker sustained an injury to her right eye after one of her brothers fired a BB gun. [7] Since her family did not have access to a car, Walker could not receive immediate medical attention, causing her to become permanently blind in that eye. It was after the injury to her eye that Walker began to take up reading and writing. [5] The scar tissue was removed when Walker was 14, but a mark still remains. It is described in her essay "Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self". [8] [7]

As the schools in Eatonton were segregated, Walker attended the only high school available to black students: Butler Baker High School. [7] There, she went on to become valedictorian, and enrolled in Spelman College in 1961 after being granted a full scholarship by the state of Georgia for having the highest academic achievements of her class. [5] She found two of her professors, Howard Zinn and Staughton Lynd, to be great mentors during her time at Spelman, but both were transferred two years later. [7] Walker was offered another scholarship, this time from Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York, and after the firing of her Spelman professor, Howard Zinn, Walker accepted the offer. [8] Walker became pregnant at the start of her senior year and had an abortion; this experience, as well as the bout of suicidal thoughts that followed, inspired much of the poetry found in Once, Walker's first collection of poetry. [8] Walker graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1965. [8]

Writing career

Alice Walker signing autographs in Florida in 1990 Alice Walker signing autographs at the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities- Eatonville, Florida.jpg
Alice Walker signing autographs in Florida in 1990

Walker wrote the poems that would culminate in her first book of poetry, entitled Once, while she was a student in East Africa and during her senior year at Sarah Lawrence College. [9] Walker would slip her poetry under the office door of her professor and mentor, Muriel Rukeyser, when she was a student at Sarah Lawrence. Rukeyser then showed the poems to her literary agent. Once was published four years later by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. [10] [8]

Following graduation, Walker briefly worked for the New York City Department of Welfare, before returning to the South. She took a job working for the Legal Defense Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Jackson, Mississippi. [7] Walker also worked as a consultant in black history to the Friends of the Children of Mississippi Head Start program. She later returned to writing as writer-in-residence at Jackson State University (1968–69) and Tougaloo College (1970–71). In addition to her work at Tougaloo College, Walker published her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, in 1970. The novel explores the life of Grange Copeland, an abusive, irresponsible sharecropper, husband and father.

In the fall of 1972, Walker taught a course in Black Women's Writers at the University of Massachusetts Boston. [11]

In 1973, before becoming editor of Ms. Magazine, Walker and literary scholar Charlotte D. Hunt discovered an unmarked grave they believed to be that of Zora Neale Hurston in Ft. Pierce, Florida. Walker had it marked with a gray marker stating ZORA NEALE HURSTON / A GENIUS OF THE SOUTH / NOVELIST FOLKLORIST / ANTHROPOLOGIST / 1901–1960. [12] [13] The line "a genius of the south" is from Jean Toomer's poem Georgia Dusk, which appears in his book Cane . [13] Hurston was actually born in 1891, not 1901. [14] [15]

Walker's 1975 article "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston", published in Ms. Magazine and later retitled "Looking for Zora", helped revive interest in the work of this Afro-American writer and anthropologist. [16] [17]

In 1976, Walker's second novel, Meridian, was published. Meridian is a novel about activist workers in the South, during the civil rights movement, with events that closely parallel some of Walker's own experiences. In 1982, she published what has become her best-known work, The Color Purple . The novel follows a young, troubled black woman who is not just fighting her way through a racist white culture, she is also fighting her way through a patriarchal black culture. The book became a bestseller, and it was subsequently adapted into a critically acclaimed 1985 movie which was directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg, as well as a 2005 Broadway musical totaling 910 performances.

Walker has written several other novels, including The Temple of My Familiar (1989) and Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) (which featured several characters and descendants of characters from The Color Purple). She has published a number of collections of short stories, poetry, and other writings. Her work is focused on the struggles of black people, particularly women, and their lives in a racist, sexist, and violent society. [18] [19] [20] [21] [22]

In 2000, Walker released a collection of short fiction, based on her own life, called The Way Forward Is With a Broken Heart, exploring love and race relations. In this book, Walker details her interracial relationship with Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, a civil rights attorney who was also working in Mississippi. [23] The couple married on March 17, 1967, in New York City, since interracial marriage was then illegal in the South, and divorced in 1976. [8] They had a daughter, Rebecca, together in 1969. [7] Rebecca Walker, Alice Walker's only child, is an American novelist, editor, artist, and activist. The Third Wave Foundation, an activist fund, was co-founded by Rebecca and Shannon Liss-Riordan. [24] [25] [26] Her godmother is Alice Walker's mentor and co-founder of Ms. Magazine, Gloria Steinem. [24]

In 2007, Walker donated her papers, consisting of 122 boxes of manuscripts and archive material, to Emory University's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library. [27] In addition to drafts of novels such as The Color Purple, unpublished poems and manuscripts, and correspondence with editors, the collection includes extensive correspondence with family members, friends and colleagues, early treatment of the film script for The Color Purple , syllabi from courses she taught, and fan mail. The collection also contains a scrapbook of poetry compiled when Walker was 15, entitled "Poems of a Childhood Poetess".

In 2013, Alice Walker published two new books, one of them entitled The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm's Way. The other was a book of poems entitled The World Will Follow Joy Turning Madness into Flowers (New Poems).

Activism

Alice Walker (left) and Gloria Steinem on the Fall 2009 cover of Ms. magazine Ms. magazine Cover - Fall 2009(1).jpg
Alice Walker (left) and Gloria Steinem on the Fall 2009 cover of Ms. magazine

Civil rights

Walker met Martin Luther King Jr. when she was a student at Spelman College in the early 1960s. She credits King for her decision to return to the American South as an activist in the Civil Rights Movement. She took part in the 1963 March on Washington with hundreds of thousands of people. Later, she volunteered to register black voters in Georgia and Mississippi. [28] [29]

On March 8, 2003, International Women's Day, on the eve of the Iraq War, Walker was arrested with 26 others, including fellow authors Maxine Hong Kingston and Terry Tempest Williams, at a protest outside the White House, for crossing a police line during an anti-war rally. Walker wrote about the experience in her essay "We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For". [30]

Womanism

Walker's specific brand of feminism included advocacy on behalf of women of color. In 1983, Walker coined the term womanist in her collection In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens , to mean "a black feminist or feminist of color". The term was made to unite women of color and the feminist movement at "the intersection of race, class, and gender oppression". [31] Walker states that "'Womanism' gives us a word of our own". [32] because it is a discourse of Black women and the issues they confront in society. Womanism as a movement came into fruition in 1985 at the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature to address Black women's concerns from their own intellectual, physical, and spiritual perspectives." [31]

Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Walker is a judge member of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, and she also supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel. [33]

In January 2009, Walker was one of over fifty signatories of a letter protesting against the Toronto International Film Festival's "City to City" spotlight on Israeli filmmakers, and condemning Israel as an "apartheid regime". [34] Two months later, Walker and sixty other female activists from the anti-war group Code Pink traveled to Gaza in response to the Gaza War. Their purpose was to deliver aid, meet with NGOs and residents, and persuade Israel and Egypt to open their borders with Gaza. She planned to visit Gaza again in December 2009 to participate in the Gaza Freedom March. [35] On June 23, 2011, she announced plans to participate in an aid flotilla to Gaza that attempted to break Israel's naval blockade. [36] [37]

In May 2013, Walker posted an open letter to singer Alicia Keys, asking her to cancel a planned concert in Tel Aviv. "I believe we are mutually respectful of each other's path and work," Walker wrote. "It would grieve me to know you are putting yourself in danger (soul danger) by performing in an apartheid country that is being boycotted by many global conscious artists." Keys rejected the plea. [38] Walker has refused to allow The Color Purple to be translated and published in Hebrew, [39] [40] saying that she finds that "Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories" and noting that she had refused to allow Steven Spielberg's film adaptation of her novel to be shown in South Africa until the system of apartheid was dismantled. [41]

Support for Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange

In June 2013, Walker and others appeared in a video expressing their support for Chelsea Manning, an American soldier who was imprisoned for releasing classified information. [42] In recent years she has spoken out repeatedly in support of Julian Assange. [43] [44] [45]

Animal advocacy

Walker has expressed that animal advocacy is one of her central concerns. Her fiction has increasingly embraced animal ethics over the past four decades, as she works to include animals as both active participants in her novels and as symbols for what she has called "consciousness." Her earliest fiction represents nonhuman animals inasmuch as they are part of human life – namely as farmed animals, food sources, and absent referents for animalized epithets directed at humans, and her fiction increasingly incorporates the animal experience. [46] She has advocated for greater consciousness in human beings and their relationships with animals, stating: "Encouraging others to love nature, to respect other human beings and animals, to adore this earth, is part of my work in this world." [47]

Pacifism

Walker has been a longtime sponsor of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. In early 2015, she wrote: "So I think of any movement for peace and justice as something that is about stabilizing our inner spirit so that we can go on and bring into the world a vision that is much more humane than the one we have dominant today." [48]

Transgender rights

In 2023 Walker publicly defended J.K. Rowling from criticisms of her views regarding trans people and shared that her own views matched Rowling's. She wrote on her website: "I consider J.K. Rowling perfectly within her rights as a human being of obvious caring for humanity to express her views about whatever is of concern to her. As she has done." [49] Walker was criticized on social media for taking this position with many referring to her as a TERF. [50]

Accusations of antisemitism and praise for David Icke

Since 2012, Walker has expressed appreciation for the works of the British conspiracy theorist David Icke. [51] [52] [53] On BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs , she said that Icke's book Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More, which contains antisemitic conspiracy theories, would be the book she would take to a desert island. [52] [1] The book promotes the theory that the Earth is ruled by shapeshifting reptilian humanoids and "Rothschild Zionists". Jonathan Kay of the National Post described this book (and Icke's other books) as "hateful, hallucinogenic nonsense". Kay wrote that Walker's public praise for Icke's book was "stunningly offensive" and that by taking it seriously, she was disqualifying herself "from the mainstream marketplace of ideas". [40] In 2013, the Anti-Defamation League called anti-Zionist essays in Walker's book The Cushion in the Road "replete with fervently anti-Jewish ideas" and it also stated that Walker was "unabashedly infected with anti-Semitism". [54] [55]

On her blog in 2017, Walker published a poem which she titled "It Is Our (Frightful) Duty to Study The Talmud", recommending that the reader should start with YouTube to learn about the allegedly shocking aspects of the Talmud, describing it as "poison". The poem contained antisemitic tropes and arguments. [56] [57] [58] In it, she also "describes her reaction when a Jewish friend", later stated to be her ex-husband, accused her "of appearing to be antisemitic". [59]

In 2018, an interviewer from The New York Times Book Review asked Walker "What books are on your nightstand?" She listed Icke's And the Truth Shall Set You Free, a book promoting an antisemitic conspiracy theory which draws on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and questions the Holocaust. Walker said: "In Icke's books there is the whole of existence, on this planet and several others, to think about. A curious person's dream come true." [60] [61] The publication of the interview in the "By the Book" weekly column generated significant criticism of Walker and the New York Times Book Review. [62] The Review was criticized for publishing the interview as well as for failing to contextualize And the Truth Shall Set You Free as an antisemitic work. [63] Walker defended her admiration for Icke and his book, saying: "I do not believe he is anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish". [64] Walker argued that any "attempt to smear David Icke, and by association, me, is really an effort to dampen the effect of our speaking out in support of the people of Palestine". [65] Following the controversy Roxane Gay argued that "Alice Walker has been anti-Semitic for years". The NYT released a statement that the contents of the interview "do not imply an endorsement by Times editors". [66]

In 2019, Ayanna Pressley disavowed antisemitism after an uproar ensued following her tweeting of an Alice Walker quote. She tweeted "I fully condemn and denounce anti-Semitism, prejudice and bigotry in all their forms – and the hateful actions they embolden" and said she had been unaware of Walker's statements on the issue. [67] [68] [69]

In 2020, after learning about Walker's support of anti-Semitism, the host of the New York Times podcast Sugar Calling described herself as "mortified" for having hosted Walker on her show and she also said: "If I'd known, I wouldn't have asked Alice Walker to be on the show." [70]

In April 2022, Gayle King of CBS News was criticized for interviewing Walker without challenging her anti-Semitic writings. After the interview, King released a statement, saying: "These are not only legitimate questions, they are mandatory questions. I certainly would have asked her about the criticisms, if I had been aware of them before the interview with Ms. Walker." [71]

In 2022, Walker was disinvited from the Bay Area Book Festival due to what the organizers referred to as her "endorsement of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist David Icke". [72] An invitation for Walker to speak at San Diego Community College District was upheld despite opposition from community groups with the organizers citing their belief in free speech. Walker dismissed the criticism as "a ploy to shut down my webpage blog: alicewalkersgarden.com." [73]

Personal life

In 1965, Walker met Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. They were married on March 17, 1967, in New York City. Later that year, the couple relocated to Jackson, Mississippi, becoming the first legally married interracial couple in Mississippi since miscegenation laws were introduced in the state. [74] [75] The couple had a daughter, Rebecca, in 1969. Walker and her husband divorced in 1976. [76]

In the late 1970s, Walker moved to northern California. In 1984, she and fellow writer Robert L. Allen co-founded Wild Tree Press, a feminist publishing company in Anderson Valley, California. [77] Walker legally added "Tallulah Kate" to her name in 1994 to honor her mother, Minnie Tallulah Grant, and paternal grandmother, Tallulah. [7] Minnie Tallulah Grant's grandmother, Tallulah, was Cherokee. [5]

Walker has claimed she was in a romantic relationship with singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman in the mid-1990s: "It was delicious and lovely and wonderful and I totally enjoyed it and I was completely in love with her but it was not anybody's business but ours." [78] Chapman has not publicly commented on the existence of a relationship and maintains a strict separation between her private and public life. [79] [80]

Walker's spirituality has influenced some of her best-known novels, including The Color Purple. [81] She has written of her interest in Transcendental Meditation. [82] Walker's exploration of religion in much of her writing draws on a literary tradition that includes writers like Zora Neale Hurston. [83]

Walker has never denied that there are some autobiographical dimensions to her stories. When "Advancing Luna—and Ida B. Wells" was first published in Ms. magazine, Walker included a disclaimer that "Luna and Freddie Pye are composite characters, and their names are made up. This is a fictionalized account suggested by a number of real events". [84] John O' Brien's 1973 interview with Walker offers further details. [85]

Representation in other media

Beauty in Truth (2013) is a documentary film about Walker directed by Pratibha Parmar. Phalia (Portrait of Alice Walker) (1989) is a photograph by Maud Sulter from her Zabat series originally produced for the Rochdale Art Gallery in England. [86]

Awards and honors

Selected works

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zora Neale Hurston</span> American author, anthropologist, filmmaker (1891–1960)

Zora Neale Hurston was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century American South and published research on hoodoo. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She also wrote over 50 short stories, plays, and essays.

<i>The Color Purple</i> 1982 novel by Alice Walker

The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker that won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction.

<i>Their Eyes Were Watching God</i> 1937 novel by Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel by American writer Zora Neale Hurston. It is considered a classic of the Harlem Renaissance, and Hurston's best known work. The novel explores protagonist Janie Crawford's "ripening from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gloria Naylor</span> American novelist (1950–2016)

Gloria Naylor was an American novelist, known for novels including The Women of Brewster Place (1982), Linden Hills (1985) and Mama Day (1988).

African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of enslaved people narratives, African American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was a great period of flowering in literature and the arts, influenced both by writers who came North in the Great Migration and those who were immigrants from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. African American writers have been recognized by the highest awards, including the Nobel Prize given to Toni Morrison in 1993. Among the themes and issues explored in this literature are the role of African Americans within the larger American society, African American culture, racism, slavery, and social equality. African-American writing has tended to incorporate oral forms, such as spirituals, sermons, gospel music, blues, or rap.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feminist Press</span> American publishing house

The Feminist Press is an American independent nonprofit literary publisher of feminist literature that promotes freedom of expression and social justice. It publishes writing by people who share an activist spirit and a belief in choice and equality. Founded in 1970 to challenge sexual stereotypes in books, schools and libraries, the press began by rescuing “lost” works by writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Rebecca Harding Davis, and established its publishing program with books by American writers of diverse racial and class backgrounds. Since then it has also been bringing works from around the world to North American readers. The Feminist Press is the longest surviving women's publishing house in the world. The press operates out of the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY).

<i>In Search of Our Mothers Gardens</i>

Published in 1983, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose is a collection composed of 36 separate pieces written by Alice Walker. The essays, articles, reviews, statements, and speeches were written between 1966 and 1982. Many are based on her understanding of "womanist" theory. Walker defines "womanist" at the beginning of the collection as "A black feminist or feminist of color. From the black folk expression of mother to female children and also a woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women's culture. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Valerie Boyd</span> American writer and academic (1963–2022)

Valerie Boyd was an American writer and academic. She was best known for her biography of Zora Neale Hurston entitled Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. She was an associate professor and the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, where she taught narrative nonfiction writing, as well as arts and literary journalism.

<i>Dust Tracks on a Road</i>

Dust Tracks on a Road is the 1942 autobiography of black American writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karla F.C. Holloway</span> American academic, writer and activist

Karla Francesca Holloway is an American academic. She is James B. Duke Professor of English & Professor of Law at Duke University, and holds appointments in the Duke University School of Law as well as the university's Department of English, Department of African & African American Studies, and Program in Women's Studies.

<i>Mules and Men</i> 1935 book by Zora Neale Hurston

Mules and Men is a 1935 autoethnographical collection of African-American folklore collected and written by anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. The book explores stories she collected in two trips: one in Eatonville and Polk County, Florida, and one in New Orleans. Hurston's decision to focus her research on Florida came from a desire to record the cross-section of black traditions in the state. In her introduction to Mules and Men, she wrote, "Florida is a place that draws people—white people from all over the world, and Negroes from every Southern state surely and some from the North and West". Hurston documented 70 folktales during the Florida trip, while the New Orleans trip yielded a number of stories about Marie Laveau, voodoo and Hoodoo traditions. Many of the folktales are told in vernacular; recording the dialect and diction of the Black communities Hurston studied.

Jonah's Gourd Vine is Zora Neale Hurston's 1934 debut novel. The novel is a semi-autobiographical novel following John Buddy Pearson and his wife, Lucy. The characters share the same first names as Hurston's parents and make a similar migration from Notasulga, Alabama to Hurston's childhood home, Eatonville, Florida.

Moses, Man of the Mountain is a 1939 novel by African-American novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. The novel rewrites the story of the Book of Exodus of Moses and the Israelites from an Afro-American perspective. The novel applies a number of different motifs and themes commonly addressed in African-American culture, subverting the Moses story.

<i>Seraph on the Suwanee</i> 1948 novel by Zora Neale Hurston

Seraph on the Suwanee is a 1948 novel by African-American novelist Zora Neale Hurston. It follows the life of a White woman and the fraught relationship she has with her husband and family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernice McFadden</span> American novelist

Bernice L. McFadden is an American novelist. She has also written humorous erotica under the pseudonym Geneva Holliday. Author of fifteen novels, she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Tulane University in New Orleans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trudier Harris</span> American literary historian (born 1948)

Trudier Harris is an American literary scholar, author, writing consultor, and educator. She is a Professor Emerita at the University of Alabama and held the position of J. Carlyle Sitterson Distinguished Professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

<i>Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"</i> Book by Zora Neale Hurston

Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" is a non-fiction work by Zora Neale Hurston. It is based on her interviews in 1927 with Oluale Kossola who was presumed to be the last survivor of the Middle Passage. Two female survivors were subsequently recognized but Cudjoe continued to be identified as the last living person with clear memories of life in Africa before passage and enslavement.

Ann Graves Tanksley is an American artist. Her mediums are representational oils, watercolor and printmaking. One of her most noteworthy bodies of work is a collection based on the writings of African-American novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. The Hurston exhibition is a two hundred plus piece collection of monotypes and paintings. It toured the United States on and off from 1991 through 2010.

The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation is an American literary nonprofit organization that supports the development and careers of Black writers. The Foundation provides classes, workshops, an annual conference, and offers the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the North Star Award, among others. Writer Marita Golden and cultural historian Clyde McElvene founded the organization in 1990.

Melissa Cummings-Quarry is a British author and co-founder of the Black Girls' Book Club, a literary and social events platform aimed at Black women in the UK.

References

Notes

  1. From 1980 to 1983, there were dual hardcover and paperback awards of the National Book Award for Fiction. Walker won the award for hardcover fiction.

Citations

  1. 1 2 "Alice Walker". Desert Island Discs. May 19, 2013. BBC Radio 4. Retrieved January 18, 2014.
  2. Rose, Mike (February 9, 2023). "Today's famous birthdays list for February 9, 2023 includes celebrities Michael B. Jordan, Tom Hiddleston". Cleveland.com . Retrieved February 9, 2023.
  3. 1 2 "National Book Awards – 1983". National Book Foundation. Retrieved March 15, 2012. (With essays by Anna Clark and Tarayi Jones from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
  4. "The 1983 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Fiction". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved March 25, 2019.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Bates, Gerri (2005). Alice Walker: A Critical Companion . Greenwood Press. ISBN   9780313069093. OCLC   62321382.
  6. Moore, Geneva Cobb, and Andrew Billingsley. Maternal Metaphors of Power in African American Women's Literature: From Phillis Wheatley to Toni Morrison. University of South Carolina Press, 2017, OCLC   974947406.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 The Officers of the Alice Walker Literary Society. "About Alice Walker". Alice Walker Literary Society. Retrieved June 15, 2015.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 World Authors 1995–2000, 2003. Biography Reference Bank database. Retrieved April 10, 2009.
  9. "Once (1968)". Alice Walker The Official Website for the American Novelist & Poet. September 28, 2010. Retrieved March 12, 2017.
  10. "Muriel Rukeyser was 21 when he ..." The Washington Post . September 16, 2001. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved March 26, 2018.
  11. Interview with Barbara Smith, May 7–8, 2003, p. 50. Retrieved July 19, 2017
  12. "A Headstone for an Aunt: How Alice Walker Found Zora Neale Hurston – The Urchin Movement". www.urchinmovement.com.
  13. 1 2 Deborah G. Plant (2007). Zora Neale Hurston: A Biography of the Spirit. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 57–. ISBN   978-0-275-98751-0.
  14. Boyd, Valerie (2003). Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston . New York: Scribner. p.  17. ISBN   978-0-684-84230-1.
  15. Hurston, Lucy Anne (2004). Speak, So You Can Speak Again: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Doubleday. p. 5. ISBN   978-0-385-49375-8.
  16. Miller, Monica (December 17, 2012). "Archaeology of a Classic". News & Events. Barnard College. Retrieved June 14, 2014.
  17. Sarkar, Sohel (January 7, 2021). "9 Fascinating Facts About Zora Neale Hurston". Mental Floss.
  18. "Alice Walker Booking Agent for Corporate Functions, Events, Keynote Speaking, or Celebrity Appearances". celebritytalent.net. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
  19. "Alice Walker". blackhistory.com. Archived from the original on September 10, 2015. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
  20. "Alice Walker". biblio.com. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
  21. Molly Lundquist. "The Color Purple – Alice Walker – Author Biography – LitLovers". litlovers.com. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
  22. "Analyzing Characterization and Point of View in Alice Walker's Short Fiction". Archived May 14, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  23. Campbell, Duncan (February 25, 2001). "Interview: Alice Walker". the Guardian. Retrieved March 26, 2018.
  24. 1 2 Rosenbloom, Stephanie (March 18, 2007). "Alice Walker – Rebecca Walker – Feminist – Feminist Movement – Children". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved March 26, 2018.
  25. test (January 5, 2011). "Third Wave Foundation". Center for Nonprofit Excellence in Central New Mexico. Retrieved March 26, 2018.
  26. "Third Wave History". Third Wave Fund. Archived from the original on July 21, 2019. Retrieved August 2, 2019.
  27. Justice, Elaine (December 18, 2007). "Alice Walker Places Her Archive at Emory" (Press release). Emory University.
  28. Walker Interview transcript and audio file on "Inner Light in A time of darkness", Democracy Now! Retrieved February 10, 2010.
  29. "Pulitzer-Winning Writer Alice Walker & Civil Rights Leader Bob Moses Reflect on an Obama Presidency", Democracy Now! video on the African-American vote, January 20, 2009. Retrieved February 10, 2010.
  30. "Global Women Launch Campaign to End Iraq War" (Press release). CodePink: Women for Peace. January 5, 2006. Archived from the original on April 9, 2010. Retrieved February 12, 2010.
  31. 1 2 Deeper shades of purple : womanism in religion and society. Floyd-Thomas, Stacey M., 1969–. New York: New York University Press. 2006. ISBN   978-0814727522. OCLC   64688636.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  32. Wilma Mankiller and others, "Womanism". The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History. December 1, 1998. SIRS Issue Researcher. Indian Hills Library, Oakland, NJ. January 9, 2013, p. 1.
  33. Tiberias (May 11, 2013). "Palestinians in Israel: Boycotting the boycotters". The Economist. London.
  34. Brown, Barry (September 5, 2009). "Toronto film festival ignites anti-Israel boycott". The Washington Times. Retrieved August 1, 2012.
  35. Gaza Freedom March Archived September 3, 2009, at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved February 2010.
  36. Harman, Danna (June 23, 2011). "Author Alice Walker to take part in Gaza flotilla, despite U.S. warning". Haaretz. Tel Aviv. Retrieved August 1, 2012.
  37. Urquhart, Conal (June 26, 2011). "Israel accused of trying to intimidate Gaza flotilla journalists". The Guardian. London.
  38. David Itzkoff (May 31, 2013). "Despite Protests, Alicia Keys Says She Will Perform in Tel Aviv". The New York Times.
  39. "Alice Walker says no to Hebrew 'Purple'". Times of Israel. June 19, 2012.
  40. 1 2 Kay, Jonathan (June 7, 2013). "Where Israel hatred meets space lizards". National Post. Archived from the original on November 30, 2013.
  41. Itzkoff, Dave (June 19, 2012). "In Protest, Walker Won't Allow Hebrew Translation of 'The Color Purple'". ArtsBeat. Retrieved May 15, 2022.
  42. Gavin, Patrick (June 19, 2013). "Celeb video: 'I am Bradley Manning'". Politico.
  43. Chomsky, Noam; Alice Walker (September 9, 2020). "Julian Assange is not on trial for his personality – but here's how the US government made you focus on it" . Independent.co.uk . Archived from the original on September 9, 2020.
  44. "Assange Defence Committee: Launch Event". YouTube . Archived from the original on October 31, 2021.
  45. "Artist Alice Walker". Artists for Assange.
  46. June, Pamela B. (2020). Solidarity with the Other Beings on the Planet: Alice Walker, Ecofeminism, and Animals in Literature (1st ed.). Northwestern University Press.
  47. Outka, Paul (2008). Race and Nature from Transcendentalism to the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 115.
  48. Harrison, Mary Hanson (January 20, 2015). "From the President's Corner". WILPF. Archived from the original on December 17, 2021. Retrieved January 26, 2019.
  49. McClure, Kelly (March 11, 2023). "Alice Walker defends J.K. Rowling's TERF views in new essay". Salon. Retrieved May 25, 2023.
  50. Dawson, Shannon (March 14, 2023). "Alice Walker Labeled A TERF For Siding With J.K. Rowling's Trans Exclusionary Views". madamenoire.com. Madame Noire. Retrieved March 30, 2023.
  51. Walker, Alice (December 2012). "Commentary: David Icke and Malcolm X". Alice Walker's Garden.
  52. 1 2 O'Brien, Liam (May 19, 2013). "Prize-winning author Alice Walker gives support to David Icke on Desert Island Discs" . The Independent on Sunday. London. Archived from the original on May 20, 2013. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
  53. Walker, Alice (July 2013). "David Icke: The People's Voice". Alice Walker's Garden.
  54. Informer, Washington (June 25, 2013). "Alice Walker Writings Draw Fresh Attack from Anti-Defamation League". The Washington Informer. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
  55. "ADL: Alice Walker Conveys 'Fervently anti-Jewish Ideas' in New Book". Haaretz. June 18, 2013. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
  56. Walker, Alice (November 2, 2017). "It Is Our (Frightful) Duty". Alice Walker: The Official Website. Retrieved December 17, 2018.
  57. Grady, Constance (December 20, 2018). "The Alice Walker anti-Semitism controversy, explained". Vox. Retrieved July 3, 2022.
  58. Stanley-Becker, Isaac (December 18, 2018). "The New York Times assailed for Alice Walker interview endorsing 'anti-Semitic' conspiracy theorist". The Washington Post. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved July 3, 2022.
  59. Harris, Elizabeth A. (April 24, 2022). "Alice Walker Has 'No Regrets'". The New York Times.
  60. Alter, Alexandra (December 21, 2018). "Alice Walker, Answering Backlash, Praises Anti-Semitic Author as 'Brave'". The New York Times. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
  61. Doherty, Rosa (December 17, 2018). "Acclaimed author Alice Walker recommends book by notorious conspiracy theorist David Icke". The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
  62. Miller, Laura (December 19, 2018). "Why Alice Walker Got All That Space in the Times to Tout the Anti-Semitic Lizard People Guy". slate.com. Slate. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
  63. Branigin, Anne (December 18, 2018). "Pulitzer Prize Winner Alice Walker, New York Times Catch Heat After She Recommends Anti-Semitic Book". theroot.com. The Root. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
  64. "Alice Walker Defends Endorsement of anti-Semitic Book". Haaretz. JTA. December 22, 2018. Retrieved December 24, 2018.
  65. Spiro, Amy (December 20, 2018). "Alice Walker: Antisemitism claims 'smears' against me". The Jerusalem Post | Jpost.com. The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
  66. Schaub, Michael (December 18, 2018). "Author Alice Walker under fire for endorsing book by 'anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist'". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved October 13, 2022.
  67. DeCosta-Klipa, Nik (January 14, 2019). "Ayanna Pressley condemns anti-Semitism after quoting Alice Walker". boston.com. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
  68. Birnbaum, Emily (January 14, 2019). "Dem rep apologizes for quoting Alice Walker: 'I was unaware of the author's past statements'". thehill.com. The Hill. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
  69. Bollag, Uri (January 15, 2019). "Congresswoman apologizes for quoting Alice Walker; condemns antisemitism". jpost.com. The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
  70. Rosenberg, Yair (May 8, 2020). "The New York Times Accidentally, Uncritically Promotes Alice Walker–Again". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved May 5, 2022.
  71. Decker, Natasha (April 17, 2022). "Gayle King Under Fire For Not Grilling Alice Walker About Anti-Semitism In Recent Interview". www.yahoo.com. Archived from the original on May 5, 2022. Retrieved May 5, 2022.
  72. Carter, Josh (April 19, 2022). "Mississippi Book Festival sticking with Alice Walker despite her link to conspiracy theorist". wlbt.com. WLBT. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
  73. ROBBINS, GARY (May 3, 2022). "Author Alice Walker's controversial remarks will not cost her a speaking engagement in San Diego". San Diego Union Tribune. Retrieved March 31, 2023.
  74. Driscoll, Margarette (May 4, 2008). "The day feminist icon Alice Walker resigned as my mother". The Times. London. Archived from the original on May 11, 2008.
  75. "Inner Light in a Time of Darkness: A Conversation with Author and Poet Alice Walker". Democracy Now! . November 17, 2006. Archived from the original on June 13, 2007. Retrieved June 14, 2007.
  76. Krum, Sharon (May 26, 2007). "Can I survive having a baby? Will I lose myself ...?". The Guardian. London.
  77. Joyce, Donald Franklin. "Black Book Publishers in the United States". The African American Experience. Archived from the original on December 3, 2013.
  78. Wajid, Sara (December 15, 2006). "No retreat". The Guardian. London. Retrieved May 26, 2013.
  79. Pond, Steve (September 22, 1988). "Tracy Chapman: On Her Own Terms". Rolling Stone. Retrieved January 25, 2021.
  80. Aurélie M. (October 15, 2002). "2002 - Tracy Chapman still introspective?". About Tracy Chapman. Retrieved January 25, 2021.
  81. Lackey, Charlie (Spring 2002). "Soul Talk: The New Spirituality of African American Women". MultiCultural Review. 11: 86 via Women's Studies International.
  82. Reed, Wendy; Horne, Jennifer (2012). Circling Faith: Southern women on spirituality. University of Alabama Press. p. 185. ISBN   9780817317676.
  83. Freeman, Alma (Spring 1985). "Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker: A Spiritual Kinship". Sage. 103: 37–40 via Literature Resource Center.
  84. Petry, Alice Hall (1989). "Alice Walker: The Achievement of the Short Fiction". Modern Language Studies. 19 (1): 12–27. doi:10.2307/3195263. ISSN   0047-7729. JSTOR   3195263.
  85. O'Brien, John (1973). Interviews with Black Writers (1st ed.). New York: Liveright. p. 196.
  86. The Art of Feminism by Lucinda Gosling, Hilary Robinson, Amy Tobin, Helena Reckitt, Xabier Arakistain, and Maria Balshaw (December 25, 2018), Chronicle Books LLC.
  87. "CANDACE AWARD RECIPIENTS 1982–1990, Page 3". National Coalition of 100 Black Women. Archived from the original on March 14, 2003.
  88. "Fiction". Past winners and finalists by category. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved March 17, 2012.
  89. Whitted, Qiana (October 15, 2021). "Alice Walker (b. 1944)". New Georgia Encyclopedia.
  90. "Hermanamiento, desde una honda raíz cultural". Granma.cu (in Spanish). February 1, 2024. Retrieved February 2, 2024.

Further reading