Alice Walker has become one of the best-known and most highly respected
writers in the U.S. She was extremely active in the 1960's Civil Rights
Movement in the South. Walker has focused on a array which includes sexual
and racial realities within black communities as well as unavoidable connections
between family and society. Alice's negative portrayals of men have been
criticized on political and aesthetic grounds, but many have responded by
arguing that the drama of women achieving selfhood is an important end in
itself. Her fiction weaves back and forth through time and individual perspectives.
Her characters seek redemption, forgiveness and peace. She has won numerous
prizes along with the hearts and minds of countless readers.
Chronology
1944
- Alice Walker was born on February 9 in Eatonon, Georgia, to tenant
farmers Minnie Lou Grant and Willie Lou Walker. She is the last of eight
children. As a child, she witnessed severe economic oppression and violent
racism. She is deeply proud of her cultural inheritances which include African
American as well as Cherokee Indian.
1952
- Her right eye was injured by one of her brothers while playing "cowboys
and Indians" with a BB gun pellet, resulting in permanent damage to
her eye and facial disfigurement (large, white scar tissue left in her eye)
that isolated her as a child.
1953 - 1960
- Spent her time reading, writing and carefully observing the people
around her.
- Developed a close relationship with her mother and her aunts, gaining
from them a vision of independent womanhood.
1961
- Graduated from high school as valedictorian.
- Entered Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia.
* As a going away present, Alice's mother gave her a sewing machine for
self-sufficiency, a suitcase for independence and a typewriter for creativity.
- Joined the civil rights movement.
1962
- Invited to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s home in recognition of her
invitation to attend a Youth World Peace Festival in Helsinki, Finland.
- Traveled around Europe for the summer and discovered her love for
travel and encountering the many peoples and cultures of the world.
1963
- Traveled to Washington D.C. to take part in the March on Washington
for Jobs and Freedom. Here, she heard Dr. King's "I Have a Dream"
address.
- Transferred to Sarah Lawrence College, New York. Here, she mentored
under the poet Muriel Ruykeyser and the writer Jane Cooper who nurtured
her interest and talent and writing.
- She began writing the poems that would eventually appear in Once
(1968).
1964
- Traveled to Uganda, Africa, as an exchange student. Through these
travels, she broadened her mind and happiness.
- When back at school, she learned she was pregnant and actually considered
committing suicide due to her fear of telling her parents. She wrote several
volumes of poetry, trying to come to terms with her feelings and fears.
She was able to have a safe abortion, yet she fell into depression following
this event.
1965
- Received B.A. degree from Sarah Lawrence College.
- Returned to Georgia and again participated in the civil rights movement
by doing door-to-door voter's registration among the rural poor.
- Moved to New York City in the fall where she worked at the city's
welfare department.
- Won a writing fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference.
1966
- Returned to Mississippi and again registered voters.
- Met Melvyn Levanthal and returned to New York City.
1967
- Published her first piece, a short story, titled "To Hell with
Dying," written during
her recovery from the depression and anxiety which she had suffered.
- Write an essay, "The Civil Rights Movement: What Good Was It?"
which became her first published article and won her first place in the
American Scholar magazine annual essay contest.
- Applied for and won a writing fellowship at the prestigious Macdowell
Colony in New Hampshire.
- Married Melvyn Levanthal, a white, Jewish civil rights lawyer and
again returned to Mississippi, where they received many threats of violence
due to their inter-racial marriage.
- Worked as a black history teacher for the local Head Start program.
- Had a miscarriage possibly due to her mourning of the slain Dr. King.
1968
- Accepted a teaching position at Jackson State University.
- Published Once: Poems.
- Had a daughter, Rebecca.
1970
- Published The Third Life of Grange Copeland, about the murder of
a woman by her husband over which she received literary praise but also
criticism.
.
1971
- Became a writer-in-residence at Tougaloo College, Mississippi
- Received a fellowship from Radcliffe Institute.
1972
- Accepted a teaching position at Wellesley College where she began
one of the first women's studies courses in the nation, a women's literature
course.
* Through her teaching of this course, she became very interested in the
life and work of Zora Neale Hurston.
1973
- Published In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women, in which a
range of African American women always have unhappy relationships with men.
- Published Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems.
- Nominated for The National Book Award.
- Received the Lillian Smith Award from the Southern Regional Council.
1974
- Published Langston Hughes, American Poet, a children's book.
- Received the Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts
and Letters for In Love and Trouble.
- Became contributing editor to Ms. Magazine.
1976
- Published Meridian, her second novel, in which she explored a woman's
successful efforts to find her place in the civil rights movement.
- Divorced from Melvyn Levanthal.
1977
- Appointed Associate professor at Yale University.
1978
- Received the Guggenheim fellowship to concentrate full-time on her
writing.
1979
- Left Ms. and returned to San Francisco where she still maintains
residence today.
- Fell in love with Robert Allen, editor of "Black Scholar,"
and together, they moved to a country home in Mendocino.
1980
- Taught African American Studies at U.C. Berkeley.
1981
- Published her second book of short stories, You Can't Keep a Good
Woman Down.
1982
- Published The Color Purple, a novel of insest, lesbian love, and
sibling devotion. Through this novel, she also introduced blues music as
a unifying thread in the
lives of many of the characters. This novel escalated Alice
to world-wide fame.
- The Color Purple was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle
Award.
1983
- Became the first black woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for fiction
for The Color Purple.
- Published In Search of Our Mother's Gardens: Womanist Prose, which
contains many essays on her "womanist" ideology. It also speaks,
somewhat, of her indebtedness to her mother for indirectly showing her what
the life of an artist entailed.
1985
- Acted as a consultant for the movie The Color Purple, produced by
Quincy Jones and directed by Steven Spielberg.
- Published Horses make a Landscape Look More Beautiful, her third
volume of poetry.
1988
- Published Living by the Word, her second book of essays.
1989
- Published The Temple of My Familiar, about the reincarnation of an
ancient African goddess.
1991
- Published Her Blue Body and Everything We Know, her fourth volume
of poetry.
- Published a children's story Finding the Green Stone.
1992
- Published Possessing the Secret of Joy, which displays the psychic
trauma of a young woman who undergoes the African tradition of circumcision.
* Her interest in this took her on a journey to Africa with film-maker
Pratibha Parmar to make a documentary called "Warrior Marks: Female
Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women. She also wrote a companion
book Warrior Marks which documented her experiences.
1996
- Published The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult, in which she
describes through essays and journal entries, the loss of her mother, the
break-up of her 13 year relationship with Robert Allen, her own battle with
lyme disease and depression, and her awakening sense of bi-sexuality. The
book also contains her own version to the screenplay to The Color Purple
and her notes and remembrances from making of her novel into a film.
1997
- Published Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism, another
book of essays inspired by her political activism.
1998
- Published By the Light of My Father's Smile, a novel that examines
the connections between sexuality and spirituality.
Secondary Sources
Christian, Barbara. Black Women Novelists. Westport CN: Greenwood Press,
1980
Inge, Tonette Bond. Southern Women Writers. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1990
Internet Resources