ALICE MALSENIOR WALKER
(b.1944)
Alice Malsenior Walker is an African American novelist, short-story writer, poet, essayist , activist and feminist .she was born on februay 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia , the eight child of sharecroppers .Her family has Cherokee, Scottish and Irish lineage.After a childhood accident blinded her in one eye , she went on to become valedictorian of her local school , and attended Spelman College and Sarah Lawrence College on scholarships, graduating in 1965.
Alice Walker married in 1965(and divorced in 1976).Her first book of poems came out in 1968 and her first novel just after her daughter''''s birth in 1970.Her early poems , novels and short stories dealt with themes familiar to readers of her later works :rape, violence, isolation, troubled relationships, multigenerational perspectives , sexism and racism.
She won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Awaed in 1983 for her third novel ,"The Color Purple",which was made into a internationally popular film by Steven Spielberg.
According to Evelyn C. White''''s biography Alice Walker A Life (W.W. Norton & Company, September 2004), Spielberg considered that "the greatest movie every made." That epic paean to a slave-era South had caused blacks so much pain that it was amazing that he could say such a thing. Still, he brought her novel to screen, giving blacks an epic about the descendants of the slaves who supported the opulent South that Scarlett mourns.
Among those descendants were Walker''''s family members, including her mother. Walker says she risked a lot by allowing Spielberg to make the film, "But I would have risked even more to wipe away the assault on my mother''''s dignity moviegoing had represented in the past."
Narrated through the voice of Celie, "The Color Purple" is an epistolary novel-a work structured through a series of letters.Celie writes about the misery of childhood incest, physical abuse , and loneliness in her "letters to God".After being repeatedly raped by her stepfather , Celie is forced to marry a widowed farmer with three children.Yet her deepest hopes are realized with the help of a loving community of women , including her husband''''s mistress , Shug Avery, and Celie''''s sister , Nettie.Celia gradually learns to see herself as a desirable woman , a healthy and valuable part of universe
Set in rural Georgia during segregation, "The Color Purple"brings components of nineteenth-century slave autobiography and sentimental fiction together with a confessional narrative of sexual awakening. Walker''''s harshest critics have condemned her portrayal of black men in the novel as "male-bashing," but others praise her forthright depiction of taboo subjects and her clear rendering of folk idiom and dialect.
In her work, Walker does not limit her characters to traditional views of life just because they are in traditional, rural settings. In Shug and her philosophy about God and the universe, Walker gave us a model or a preview of the broader spirituality that many people have embraced in addition to and instead of a church-centric religious path. In her novel and the film, she introduces the idea of a spiritual rather than a religious approach to life, gently and without discounting or disparaging the history, beauty and power of the black church. The theme of redemption, particularly in Shug''''s attempt to return to her gos