Walker, Alice (1944-…), is an African American author. Her works include novels, short stories, poetry, and essays. Walker writes about Black and white people who seek freedom, spirituality, harmony with the environment, and racial reconciliation. Her novel The Color Purple (1982) won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The novel is written as a series of letters. It tells about a Southern Black woman who overcomes the pain of sexual and domestic abuse by forming strong bonds with other women.
Walker’s early novels include The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), Meridian (1976), and The Temple of My Familiar (1989). Her later novels include Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), By the Light of My Father’s Smile (1998), and Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004). Her poetry is collected in Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems, 1965-1990 (1991); Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth: New Poems (2003); Hard Times Require Furious Dancing (2010); and Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart: New Poems (2018). Her short stories are collected in The Complete Stories (1994) and The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (2002). Gathering Blossoms under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker, 1965-2000 was published in 2022. Walker has also written children’s literature.
Walker became a major figure in feminism—which she called womanism—through several books. They include In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), Living by the Word (1988), Warrior Marks (1993), Anything We Love Can be Saved (1997), and Sent by Earth (2001). These collections of essays, speeches, and letters focus on the experiences of Black women in the United States. They also address social injustices throughout the world.
Alice Malsenior Walker was born on Feb. 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia. She was the youngest of eight children of Black sharecroppers. Her writings are flavored by the language, natural landscape, and traditions of Black Southerners.
