Alice Walker and the Color Purple

She says, “men and their religions have tended to make love for anything and anybody other than themselves and their Gods an objectionable thing, a shame”. Smith then begins to transition into activism. Smith explains how Walker ties in her Native American ancestry in one way or another. However, Walker does not only tie in her own background, she stands up for those who are voiceless. In many of her writings Alice Walker dedicates her writing to emotional suffering, the silencing of women, growth and one’s well being, cruelty, decision making, and so much more.

Alice Malsenior Walker was born February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia. Her father Willie Lee Walker worked as a sharecropper and a dairy farmer. Her mother Minnie Walker worked as a maid to help support her family of eight children. Alice also married activist, Melvyn Leventhal in 1967. Alice and Melvyn had moved to Mississippi and became, “the first legally married inter-racial couple in Mississippi.” ( Beaulieu) They later had one daughter named Rebecca Walker in which they later divorced in 1976. Alice Walker, is a novelist, essayist, poet, and feminist.

Alice Walker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, African-American novelist, poet, and feminist who most famous for authoring The Color Purple. Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia. She worked as a social worker, teacher, and lecturer, and took part in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi.

The book named is a Biography of Alice Walker and her life including her books and the life she lived as a young black female in America. This book also looks at the thoughts and beliefs that Alice Walker had and how they could draw in and inspire such a large number of people that it did. The book also covers the less significant parts of Alice’s life such as her earlier life and her inspiration towards being who she was eventually. The book is written on both informational and influential stance.

Alice Walker was the youngest of eight of a sharecropper. Not only did she grow up poor but she ended up being shy and timid, due to an incident that took place. She accidently got shot with a BB gun in her eye by her brother. Around that time she found solace in reading and writing poetry. Due to the unfortunate event she faced as a child, Walker was awarded a scholarship for college. She first began at Spelman College in Atlanta after graduating from her high school as the Valedictorian or her class. Walker the transferred to Sarah Lawrence in New York. The year that she graduated her first short story was published. From there, her success only flourished.

One of the most inspiring authors in American history is Alice Walker. Walker is the youngest child in a sharecropper family that found her overly ambitious and highly competitive (Walker 609). This gave her a strong fighting attitude, which allowed her to make positive changes in an extremely racist society. Unfortunately, when she was young, Walker was accidentally shot in her right eye with a BB gun while playing “Cowboys and Indians.” This accident caused Walker to lose her self-esteem and her captivating personality. As a result, she secluded herself from the outside world and began to write. During this time-the 1950’s and 1960’s- Alice Walker’s works channeled the hardship and inferiority that she realized as a black person (Whitted).

Alice Walker, famed author and civil rights activist, was born to sharecropper parents in Eatonville, Georgia in February of 1944. Alice was the youngest daughter of sharecroppers; her mother also worked as a maid to help support her eight children. At a young age, an incident with her older brothers seriously damaged her eye when her brother Curtis accidentally shot Walker in the eye with a BB gun while playing “cowboys and Indians.” To avoid getting into trouble with their parents, Walker’s frightened brothers made up a story and convinced naive Alice to go along with it. The result was Walker lost the sight in her right eye. A disfiguring white scar developed. Walker became very self-conscious of this mark. This incident molded her early years and caused her to largely withdraw from the world around her. She felt ugly and disfigured, so she found solace in reading and writing poetry. This incident and her modest family roots contributed to her writing style exposed in later works.

The United States of America was under the control of the Britain Empire until 1776, when America was just only the 13 colonies. On July 4th, 1776, the Continental Congress declared the United States of America as its own new nation. The Fourth of July is celebrated as a federal holiday every year celebrating the independence achieved from defeating Britain in the American Revolutionary War. America has a collection of achievements and disasters since 1776. The epistolary novel, The Color Purple by Alice Walker takes place in Rural Georgia in 1910 to 1940 and talks about the life of an African American woman through the years. The novel, Boys in the Boat written by Daniel James Brown is a nonfiction novel about how the United States won gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The American novels, The Color Purple and Boys in the Boat collected the ideas of the American hardships, the happiness from being American, and the many opportunities possible in America.

By dissecting the events in a novel, we are able to differentiate realism versus a fairytale and further explicate the text. A realistic novel consists of occurrences that are life-like events that are more relatable to the readers, while a fairytale novel involves coincidental and convenient events with happy endings. In the novel, The Color Purple, Alice Walker presents the life of a 14 year old African American girl Celie, through letters to God and her sister Nettie, who she fears she will never see again. The impractical events that occur in The Color Purple demonstrate fiction. Although there are some realistic elements such as the Jim Crow Laws, the events between Celie and her daughter are too convenient and the reality of Celie economically surpassing poverty does not justify the overall genre, causing it to be a fairytale.

Alice Walker speaks of her mother and grandmothers’ dark pasts of slavery and discrimination throughout their lives. Although women through the years have had it tough, colored women have and continue to have a deeper struggle within society. Alice Walker’s essay is inspiring and heartwarming because it tells of how the women in their lives have found beauty within a dark part of history. Her mother although had little, found a sense of identity with the joy of her own vibrant garden. She speaks a lot about how many people of color continued to keep their identity and spirituality in a time where they could have been discouraged. I think that Walker’s essay is really eye opening because so many women have struggled before us to pave the way for women of all

The 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 greatly 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 discovered in the tradition and history they collectively experience an understanding of oppression that has been drawn from them a willingness to reject the principle and to hold what is difficult. Walker’s most developed character, Meridian, is a person

         Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944 in Georgia. She is a famous black -American writer who is concerned about the identity of black Americans, and especially the black female experience. Until 1960, black American literature was driven by black male writers such as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Jean Toomer, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes. Because of discrimination, black women writers were not able to express themselves. They were restrained by society. There was a major resistance to conservative culture. Women writers who raised a hare in a society were Toni Morrison, Carolyn, Paule Marshall, Nikki Giovani, Alice Walker. Among them, a writer who was the most focused on the issue of discrimination and women’s right in black society was Alice Walker. Donna Seaman, a senior editor for Booklist, interviewed Alice Walker that “Segregation in Georgia, our apartheid, was a real blow to me. It was a real shock to see that people would actually spend their time making horrible laws and killing people and tearing down our school when, instead, they could be admiring what was all around them”. Even she was not allowed to enter a public library in her town because of racial discrimination. She had described her experiences of racism, human rights abuses, and discrimination since she was very young. Laurie McMillan said, “Walker is very aware of the history of oppression of African Americans, and she recognizes the importance of building a heritage to help African Americans thrive.” (113) Alice Walker went through many experiences influenced her views about herself as well views of everything that surrounded

Alice Malsenior Walker, an African American born into poverty, came into this world on February 9, 1944 in Eatonon, Georgia. She was the youngest child of eight children born to Willie Lee and Minnie Tallulah Walkers. Both of her parents were sharecroppers as well as expert story tellers. Things were not easy for the Walkers and Alice often witnessed her mother’s frustration of having the burden to take care of eight children with little means. Even though children of share croppers were usually made to work the fields, Alice’s mother made sure that her kids received an education. Alice was brilliant at writing poetry.

Alice Walker, born February ninth of 1944, was a child of tenant farmers in Eatonton, Georgia. As she lost sight in one eye from being shot with a BB gun, she read and wrote surrounding herself with her mother and aunts. As she witnessed the independence of these women, along with the oppression of the sharecropping system and violent racist acts, her artistic view was shaped. In 1961, she got involved with the Civil Right Movement at Spelman College, and became active after moving to Mississippi. Together with her husband, Civil Rights Lawyer Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, married in March of 1967, she worked registering blacks to vote in Mississippi. They divorced after her daughter, Rebecca, was born.

I enjoyed reading the novel The Colour Purple by Alice Walker, as well as watching the movie adaptation of it. The Colour Purple film directed by Steven Spielberg is well made and captures the true feeling and moments of which were felt when the thoughts were expressed through written words in the novel. There are various similarities and differences between the novel and the film which create mood alterations and a dynamic view. Some of the differences between the film and the novel are the alteration of the narrative structure, some of the attitudes and actions of the characters, the relationships between the characters, and how the novel creates more in depth feelings and developments of the characters and their relationships. The structure of the film is different than the novel because the novel is composed of letters Celie writes to God; however the movie doesn’t show this. The novel shows Celie’s journey as she expresses herself through her letters which she deeply expresses her thoughts, feelings and emotions. In the film Celie is not shown expressing herself this way instead a different connection with God is created. The film excludes Celie’s strong and deep relationship with God which prevents her from partaking in a lot of self-reflection. There are a few details that are also altered between the novel and the film. Some of which include how in the novel Nettie runs away but in the film she is sent away from her sister, the novel talks about Nettie’s time in