Alice Walker Essay - 1482 Words

Best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple, Alice Walker portrays black women struggling for sexual as well as racial equality and emerging as strong, creative individuals. Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia, the eighth child of Willie Lee and Minnie Grant Walker. When Walker was eight, her right eye was injured by one of her brothers, resulting in permanent damage to her eye and facial disfigurement that isolated her as a child. This is where her feminine point of view first emerged in a household where girls were forced to do the domestic chores unaided by the brothers. Throughout her writing career, Alice Walker has been involved in the black movement and displays strong feelings towards†¦show more content†¦amp;#9;Walker is very much of a feminist, which is demonstrated by the previous quote. According to David Bradley of The New York Times, amp;quot;She coined the term amp;quot;womanistamp;quot; which she used to describe the Black women’s issues that are at the heart of so much of her workamp;quot;(1984). One of the major themes that she had incorporated within several of her writings was the difference between black and white authors, along with the Women’s Movement. She contemplated the fact that black women had been suppressed for so long that they would never know what kind of great artists they may have lost during all the times while there was slavery. This is what the short story amp;quot;In Search of Our Mother’s Gardensamp;quot; discusses. The title has a special meaning because Walker is referring to her own mother. In this work, she discusses all the talents of older black women writers such as Phyllis Wheatley and Zora Neal Hurston. What she is referring to in the title is her own mother’s talent in art and gardening. She talks about how well known her mother was for her gardening skills that even strangers would stop and admire her handiwork. She points out the fact that it was so beautiful that her childhood, which was filled with poverty and sadness, was made a little more bearable because of it. When she thinks back on it, all she remembers is the beautiful neighborhood, and hasShow MoreRelatedMeridian, by Alice Walker874 Words   |  4 PagesThe women of the late sixties, although some are older than others, in Alice Walker’s fiction that exhibit the qualities of the developing, emergent model are g reatly influenced through the era of the Civil Rights Movement. Motherhood is a major theme in modern women’s literature, which examines as a sacred, powerful, and spiritual component of the woman’s life. Alice Walker does not choose Southern black women to be her major protagonists only because she is one, but because she had discoveredRead MoreThe Color Purple by Alice Walker675 Words   |  3 Pagesthe world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.† Straight from the mouth of Alice Walker this quote was spoken in order to point out that fact that none of God’s creatures were put on this Earth to be someone else’s property. Alice Walker is an African-American novelist and poet who took part in the 1960’s civil rights movement in Mississippi. Walkers creative vision was sparked by the financial sufferingRead MoreThe Color Purple By Alice Walker1444 Words   |  6 PagesNicholas English Mrs. Kennedy English III 18 October 2014 RadaRada Alice Walker Alice Walker as a writer, artist, short story author, dissident and women s activist has constructed a well-known notoriety around the world. Her exceptionally acclaimed novel The Color Purple turned out in 1982, won her a Pulitzer Prize in 1983 and the American Book Award, the first African American lady to win these two grants. (Alice) Everyday Use is one of her famous and grand short stories in which she addressesRead MoreThe Color Purple by Alice Walker926 Words   |  4 PagesThe award-winning novel, â€Å"The Color Purple† by Alice Walker, is a story about a woman going through cruel things such as: incest, rape, and physical abuse. This greatly written novel comes from a very active feminist author who used many of her own experiences, as well as things that were happening during that era, in her writing. â€Å"The Color Purple† takes place in the early 1900s, and symbolizes the economic, emotional, and social deprivation that African American women faced in Sou thern statesRead MoreThe Color Purple By Alice Walker1540 Words   |  7 Pages Alice Walker is an award winning   author, most famously recognized for her novel   The Color Purple ;aside from being a novelist Walker is also a poet,essayist and activist .Her writing explores various social aspects as it concerns women and also celebrates political as well as social revolution. Walker has gained the reputation of being a prominent spokesperson and a symbolic figure for black feminism. Proper analyzation   of Walker s work comes from the   knowledge on her early life, educationalRead MoreThe Color Purple By Alice Walker1355 Words   |  6 PagesSiera Osborne Mr.Karr Composition 1 4 December, 2015 Just A Single Purple Wildflower In A Field Of Weeds Alice walker once said, â€Å"No person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended. Or who belittles in any fashion the gifts you labor so to bring into the world.† The color purple has timelessly been used to convey pictures of power and ambition, it is also associated with the feeling of independence. TheRead MoreThe Color Purple by Alice Walker1100 Words   |  5 PagesThe Color Purple by Alice Walker is a story written in 1982 that is about the life struggles of a young African American woman named Celie. The novel takes the reader through several main topics including the poor treatment of African American women, domestic abuse, family relationships, and also religion. The story takes place mostly in rural Georgia in the early 1900’s and demonstrates the difficult life of sharecropper families. Specifically how life was endured from the perspective of an AfricanRead More Alice Walker and the Color Purple887 Words   |  4 PagesAlice Walker is an African-American woman’s activist/feminist and author who was born in the early 1940s, in Eatonton, Georgia. Walker lived in the the rural south at a time when there were heavy poverty and racial violence amongst most African Americans. The circumstances that Walker faced ended up contributing to the person that she is today and it is reflected in many of her novels. Even throughout the trials and tribulations that Walker endured, she was still able to succeed in life. As a youngRead MoreThe Color Purple By Alice Walker3360 Words   |  14 Pagesâ€Å"Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender† (Yahwon). Alice Walker views herself as a womanist. Although a womanist and feminist are similar, the two terms are not exactly the same. According to Professor Tamara Baeouboeuf-Lafonant: [Womanism] focuses on the experiences and knowledge bases of black women [which] recognizes and interrogates the social realities of slavery, segregation, sexism, and economic exploitation this group has experienced during its history in the United States. FurthermoreRead MoreThe Color Purple By Alice Walker1707 Words   |  7 PagesAlice Walker, the author of The Color Purple, grew up in the harsh conditions of the South in the 1940’s. Alice walker was raised in the middle of the Women’s Rights Movement and had to find hope to get through all of the challenges she had to face. In The Color Purple, Alice Walker uses the main character, Celie, as an example of hope. Hope helps Celie overcome oppression, abuse, and other challenges. Celie is used as an example of the life of a woman during the time of the Civil Rights Movement