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Alice Walker
Walker in 2007
Born	Alice 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)
Period	1968–present
Genre	African-American literature
Notable works	The Color Purple
Notable awards	Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1983) National Book Award (1983)
Spouse	Melvyn R. Leventhal ​ ​(m. 1967; div. 1976)​
Partner	Robert L. Allen Tracy Chapman
Children	Rebecca Walker
Alice Walker's voice from the BBC programme Desert Island Discs, May 19, 2013.
Website
Official website

Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker (born February 9, 1944) 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. 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.

Walker, born in rural Georgia, overcame challenges such as childhood injury and segregation to become a valedictorian and eventually graduated 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. 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.

As an eight-year-old, Walker sustained an injury to her right eye after one of her brothers fired a BB gun. 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. 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".

As the schools in Eatonton were segregated, Walker attended the only high school available to Black students: Butler Baker High School. 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. 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. 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. 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. Walker graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1965.

Writing career

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. 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.

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. 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 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. The line "a genius of the south" is from Jean Toomer's poem Georgia Dusk, which appears in his book Cane. Hurston was actually born in 1891, not 1901.

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.

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.

In 1993, Alice Walker coauthored a novel, Warrior Marks, alongside feminist activist, Pratibha Parmar. The novel was based on the topic of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and the Sexual Blinding of Women. The novel takes place in Africa, where the two of them collectively interview several survivors of FGM. The novel seeks to unearth the sociocultural rationale behind the practice by providing a platform to activists who stand in opposition to this issue.

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. The couple married on March 17, 1967, in New York City, since interracial marriage was then illegal in the South, and divorced in 1976. They had a daughter, Rebecca, together in 1969. 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. Her godmother is Alice Walker's mentor and co-founder of Ms. magazine, Gloria Steinem.

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. 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

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.

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".

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". Walker states that "'Womanism' gives us a word of our own". 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." Today, her womanist ideology still persists within several movements including the Black Lives Matter Movement that was formed by Black women in response to overwhelming police brutality against Black males. The philosophy of womanism also served as the fundamental basis for the #MeToo Movement in which women publicly expressed their experiences of sexual abuse and harassment.

Feminist Advocacy

Walker's idea of feminist advocacy emerged in her work, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, specifically in the essay, If the Present Looked Like the Past, what would the future Look Like?. In her piece, she reflects on the modern injustices and historical oppression of the feminist movement. She also touches upon the need for compassion, empathy and awareness on behalf of Black women to overcome the past atrocities such as slavery and colonialism. In the end, the essay provides both a critique on the Black feminist movement and a call to action for readers to liberate themselves from discrimination.

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.

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". 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. On June 23, 2011, she announced plans to participate in an aid flotilla to Gaza that attempted to break Israel's naval blockade.

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. Walker has refused to allow The Color Purple to be translated and published in Hebrew, 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.

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. In recent years, Walker has spoken out repeatedly in support of Julian Assange. Founder of Wikileaks, Assange was considered a large threat to U.S. national security during the Obama administration, as he revealed classified intelligence information surrounding war crimes and human rights violations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. Subsequently, Assange was arrested after attempting to seek refuge in the Ecuador embassy in London. He was later extradited to the U.S. and prosecuted on criminal charges. In light of these developments, Alice Walker published an Opinion Editorial taking aim at the US justice system and calling for the vindication of the charges brought against Assange. Moreover, Walker also took part in a panel discussion in Berkeley, California for the purpose of freeing Assange.

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. 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."

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." She has written several works that convey her pacifist views, those including The Same River Twice and We are the Ones We have been Waiting for: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness. She discusses the importance for establishing an equitable and peaceful society.

Transgender rights

In 2023, Walker publicly defended J. K. Rowling from criticisms of her views regarding trans people. Walker 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." She herself expressed the view that women were being "erased" in language, dictionaries and society, and that "confusion" with respect to gender had led to hasty sex reassignment surgeries, at least when minors were concerned. Walker was criticized on social media for taking this position with many referring to her as a TERF. In a subsequent essay, Walker addressed trans people, stating: "I fully understand that your life belongs to you; therefore whatever changes you make, I offer my prayers for a beautiful transformation and complete recovery", and acknowledged that one of the "most loving and balanced people" she knew was a trans man.

Accusations of antisemitism and praise for David Icke

Since 2012, Walker has expressed appreciation for the works of the British conspiracy theorist David Icke. 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. 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". 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".

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. 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".

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." The publication of the interview in the "By the Book" weekly column generated significant criticism of Walker and the New York Times Book Review. 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. Walker defended her admiration for Icke and his book, saying: "I do not believe he is anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish". 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". 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".

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.

In 2020, after learning about Walker's perceived 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."

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."

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". 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."

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. The couple had a daughter, Rebecca, in 1969. Walker and her husband divorced in 1976.

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. Walker legally added "Tallulah Kate" to her name in 1994 to honor her mother, Minnie Tallulah Grant, and paternal grandmother, Tallulah. Minnie Tallulah Grant's grandmother, Tallulah, was Cherokee.

Walker has claimed that 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." Despite Walker's claims, Chapman has not publicly commented on the existence of a relationship between herself and Walker and maintains a strict separation between her private and public life.

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

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". John O' Brien's 1973 interview with Walker offers further details.

Teaching and Feminist Rights Movement

Aside from her civil rights activism, Walker would often educate others about the Black feminist movement through her teachings at several different higher education institutions. In the fall of 1972, Walker taught a course in Black Women's Writers at the University of Massachusetts Boston. as well as Wellesley College in 1973. Moreover, that same year, she also published her primary collection of short stories In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women, as well as Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems which served as a second volume of her poetry. In addition, she also taught an American Women studies class at Brandeis University in Waltham. Aside from the schools in Massachusetts at which she taught at, she gave several lectures on the topics of African-American Women Studies at Yale University as well as University of California, Berkeley. Overall, Walker gave several lectures at a variety of different institutions throughout America which allowed her to spread the ideas of the Black feminist movement.

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.

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

See also

• List of animal rights advocates

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. ^ "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. ^ "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. ^ 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. ^ The Officers of the Alice Walker Literary Society. "About Alice Walker". Alice Walker Literary Society. Retrieved June 15, 2015.
8. ^ 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. "A Headstone for an Aunt: How Alice Walker Found Zora Neale Hurston – The Urchin Movement". www.urchinmovement.com.
12. ^ Plant, Deborah G. (2007). Zora Neale Hurston: A Biography of the Spirit. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 57–. ISBN 978-0-275-98751-0.
13. Boyd, Valerie (2003). Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Scribner. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-684-84230-1.
14. 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.
15. Miller, Monica (December 17, 2012). "Archaeology of a Classic". News & Events. Barnard College. Archived from the original on July 15, 2014. Retrieved June 14, 2014.
16. Sarkar, Sohel (January 7, 2021). "9 Fascinating Facts About Zora Neale Hurston". Mental Floss.
17. "Alice Walker Booking Agent for Corporate Functions, Events, Keynote Speaking, or Celebrity Appearances". celebritytalent.net. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
18. "Alice Walker". blackhistory.com. Archived from the original on September 10, 2015. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
19. "Alice Walker". biblio.com. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
20. Lundquist, Molly. "The Color Purple – Alice Walker – Author Biography – LitLovers". litlovers.com. Retrieved October 23, 2015.
21. "Analyzing Characterization and Point of View in Alice Walker's Short Fiction", marylandpublicschools.org. Archived May 14, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
22. Campbell, Duncan (February 25, 2001). "Interview: Alice Walker". The Observer. Retrieved March 26, 2018.
23. ^ Rosenbloom, Stephanie (March 18, 2007). "Alice Walker – Rebecca Walker – Feminist – Feminist Movement – Children". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved March 26, 2018.
24. test (January 5, 2011). "Third Wave Foundation". Center for Nonprofit Excellence in Central New Mexico. Retrieved March 26, 2018.
25. "Third Wave History". Third Wave Fund. Archived from the original on July 21, 2019. Retrieved August 2, 2019.
26. Justice, Elaine (December 18, 2007). "Alice Walker Places Her Archive at Emory" (Press release). Emory University.
27. Walker Interview transcript and audio file on "Inner Light in A time of darkness", Democracy Now!, November 17, 2006. Retrieved February 10, 2010.
28. "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.
29. "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.
30. ^ 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)
31. 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.
32. Henry, Carmel. "A Brief History of Civil Rights in the United States". library.law.howard.edu. Retrieved November 1, 2024.
33. Walker, Alice (1966). If the Present Looks Like the Past.
34. Tiberias (May 11, 2013). "Palestinians in Israel: Boycotting the boycotters". The Economist. London.
35. Brown, Barry (September 5, 2009). "Toronto film festival ignites anti-Israel boycott". The Washington Times. Retrieved August 1, 2012.
36. Gaza Freedom March Archived September 3, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved February 2010.
37. 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.
38. Urquhart, Conal (June 26, 2011). "Israel accused of trying to intimidate Gaza flotilla journalists". The Guardian. London.
39. David Itzkoff (May 31, 2013). "Despite Protests, Alicia Keys Says She Will Perform in Tel Aviv". The New York Times.
40. "Alice Walker says no to Hebrew 'Purple'". Times of Israel. June 19, 2012.
41. ^ Kay, Jonathan (June 7, 2013). "Where Israel hatred meets space lizards". National Post. Archived from the original on November 30, 2013.
42. Itzkoff, Dave (June 19, 2012). "In Protest, Walker Won't Allow Hebrew Translation of 'The Color Purple'". ArtsBeat. Retrieved May 15, 2022.
43. Gavin, Patrick (June 19, 2013). "Celeb video: 'I am Bradley Manning'". Politico.
44. 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.
45. "Assange Defence Committee: Launch Event". YouTube. September 5, 2020. Archived from the original on October 31, 2021.
46. "Artist Alice Walker". Artists for Assange.
47. CourageA (October 10, 2022). "Alice Walker pens Kansas City Star op-ed: Biden must end Trump's war on the press. Drop the Julian Assange case". Assange Defense. Retrieved November 1, 2024.
48. June, Pamela B. (2020). Solidarity with the Other Beings on the Planet: Alice Walker, Ecofeminism, and Animals in Literature (1st ed.). Northwestern University Press.
49. Outka, Paul (2008). Race and Nature from Transcendentalism to the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 115.
50. Harrison, Mary Hanson (January 20, 2015). "From the President's Corner". WILPF. Archived from the original on December 17, 2021. Retrieved January 26, 2019.
51. "EXCERPT FROM WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR BY ALICE WALKER". www.feminist.com. Retrieved October 28, 2024.
52. Walker, Alice. They're trying to burn the WRONG Witch – The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling | Redacted.
53. McClure, Kelly (March 11, 2023). "Alice Walker defends J.K. Rowling's TERF views in new essay". Salon. Retrieved May 25, 2023.
54. 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.
55. Walker, Alice. Beloved young trans people.
56. Walker, Alice (December 2012). "Commentary: David Icke and Malcolm X". Alice Walker's Garden.
57. ^ 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.
58. Walker, Alice (July 2013). "David Icke: The People's Voice". Alice Walker's Garden.
59. Informer, Washington (June 25, 2013). "Alice Walker Writings Draw Fresh Attack from Anti-Defamation League". The Washington Informer. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
60. "ADL: Alice Walker Conveys 'Fervently anti-Jewish Ideas' in New Book". Haaretz. June 18, 2013. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
61. Walker, Alice (November 2, 2017). "It Is Our (Frightful) Duty". Alice Walker: The Official Website. Retrieved December 17, 2018.
62. Grady, Constance (December 20, 2018). "The Alice Walker anti-Semitism controversy, explained". Vox. Retrieved July 3, 2022.
63. 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.
64. Harris, Elizabeth A. (April 24, 2022). "Alice Walker Has 'No Regrets'". The New York Times.
65. Alter, Alexandra (December 21, 2018). "Alice Walker, Answering Backlash, Praises Anti-Semitic Author as 'Brave'". The New York Times. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
66. Doherty, Rosa (December 17, 2018). "Acclaimed author Alice Walker recommends book by notorious conspiracy theorist David Icke". The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
67. 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.
68. 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.
69. "Alice Walker Defends Endorsement of anti-Semitic Book". Haaretz. JTA. December 22, 2018. Retrieved December 24, 2018.
70. Spiro, Amy (December 20, 2018). "Alice Walker: Antisemitism claims 'smears' against me". The Jerusalem Post | Jpost.com. The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
71. 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.
72. DeCosta-Klipa, Nik (January 14, 2019). "Ayanna Pressley condemns anti-Semitism after quoting Alice Walker". boston.com. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
73. 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.
74. Bollag, Uri (January 15, 2019). "Congresswoman apologizes for quoting Alice Walker; condemns antisemitism". jpost.com. The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
75. Rosenberg, Yair (May 8, 2020). "The New York Times Accidentally, Uncritically Promotes Alice Walker–Again". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved May 5, 2022.
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77. 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.
78. 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.
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81. Krum, Sharon (May 26, 2007). "Can I survive having a baby? Will I lose myself ...?". The Guardian. London.
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86. Lackey, Charlie (Spring 2002). "Soul Talk: The New Spirituality of African American Women". MultiCultural Review. 11: 86 – via Women's Studies International.
87. Reed, Wendy; Horne, Jennifer (2012). Circling Faith: Southern women on spirituality. University of Alabama Press. p. 185. ISBN 9780817317676.
88. Freeman, Alma (Spring 1985). "Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker: A Spiritual Kinship". Sage. 103: 37–40 – via Literature Resource Center.
89. 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.
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92. Farell, Susan (2007). "Fight Vs. Flight: A Re-Evaluation of Dee in Alice Walker's "Everyday Use"". Studies in Short Fiction. 35 (2). Gale: 179–186.
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Further reading

• White, Evelyn C. (2005). Alice Walker: A Life. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-32826-4.
• Walker, Alice; Parmar, Pratibha (1993). Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women. Diane Books Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-7881-5581-9.

External links

• Alice Walker's official website
• Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth – full video of biography film at PBS.org
• Profile at the Poetry Foundation
• Profile at Poets.org
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Alice Walker on Charlie Rose
• Alice Walker collected news and commentary at The Guardian
• Alice Walker collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• New Georgia Encyclopedia Archived July 24, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Alice Walker papers, c. 1930–2014 (MSS 1061)
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Letters to John Ferrone, 1976–1990 (MSS 1104)
• Kalliope, Archives, Wilson Sharon, 1984, Alice Walker, 6(2), 37–42

v t e Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Previously the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel from 1917–1947
1918–1925	His Family by Ernest Poole (1918) The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (1919) The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1921) Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (1922) One of Ours by Willa Cather (1923) The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson (1924) So Big by Edna Ferber (1925)
1926–1950	Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (1926; declined) Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield (1927) The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1928) Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin (1929) Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge (1930) Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes (1931) The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (1932) The Store by Thomas Sigismund Stribling (1933) Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Pafford Miller (1934) Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson (1935) Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis (1936) Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1937) The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand (1938) The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1939) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1940) In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow (1942) Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair (1943) Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin (1944) A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (1945) All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1947) Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener (1948) Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens (1949) The Way West by A. B. Guthrie Jr. (1950)
1951–1975	The Town by Conrad Richter (1951) The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk (1952) The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1953) A Fable by William Faulkner (1955) Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor (1956) A Death in the Family by James Agee (1958) The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (1959) Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (1960) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1961) The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor (1962) The Reivers by William Faulkner (1963) The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau (1965) The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter (1966) The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (1967) The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron (1968) House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (1969) The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford (1970) Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (1972) The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (1973) No award given (1974) The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (1975)
1976–2000	Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow (1976) No award given (1977) Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (1978) The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (1979) The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (1980) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1981) Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike (1982) The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1983) Ironweed by William Kennedy (1984) Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (1985) Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1986) A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (1987) Beloved by Toni Morrison (1988) Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1989) The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos (1990) Rabbit at Rest by John Updike (1991) A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (1992) A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (1993) The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (1994) The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (1995) Independence Day by Richard Ford (1996) Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (1997) American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1998) The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1999) Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
2001–present	The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2001) Empire Falls by Richard Russo (2002) Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2003) The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2004) Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2005) March by Geraldine Brooks (2006) The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2007) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2008) Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (2009) Tinkers by Paul Harding (2010) A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2011) No award given (2012) The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson (2013) The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (2014) All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2015) The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2016) The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2017) Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2018) The Overstory by Richard Powers (2019) The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (2020) The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (2021) The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen (2022) Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver / Trust by Hernan Diaz (2023) Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips (2024)

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