Alice Walker
Alice Walker
Alice Malsenior Walkeris an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and activist. She wrote the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purplefor which she won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She also wrote Meridian and The Third Life of Grange Copeland, among other works...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth9 February 1944
CityEatonton, GA
CountryUnited States of America
girl cousin brother
All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men. But I never thought I'd have to fight in my own house. She let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead before I let him beat me.
girl giving dear-god
Dear God...I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me.
girl mother husband
The Olinka girls do not believe girls should be educated. When I asked a mother why she thought this, she said: A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something. What can she become? I asked. Why, she said, the mother of his children. But I am not the mother of anybody's children, I said, and I am something.
girls met professor
I met Howard Zinn in 1961, my first year at Spelman College in Atlanta. He was the tall, rangy, good-looking professor that many of the girls at Spelman swooned over.
anywhere people
I think that all people who feel that there is injustice in the world anywhere should learn as much of it as they can bear. That is our duty.
art dancers everybody nobody painters realized sarah wore writers
At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.
confused learn ourselves
We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.
became farms helping later lawyer married met people roles taken thrown welfare
In the summer of 1966, I went to Mississippi to be in the heart of the civil-rights movement, helping people who had been thrown off the farms or taken off the welfare roles for registering to vote. While working there, I met the civil-rights lawyer I later married - we became an interracial couple.
american-author power
Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.
civil grievance movement rights south travel triumphs
One of the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement is that when you travel through the South today, you do not feel overwhelmed by a residue of grievance and hate.
earth fail god nature original readers realize
Many readers fail to realize this, but 'The Color Purple' is a theological text. It is about the reclamation of one's original God: the earth and nature.
fear hope people stand tells truth
As long as the people don't fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn't stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful... but so frightening.
aid attempted early exercise freedom joined known land movement thrown
When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early 20s, it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they'd always known - the plantations - because they attempted to exercise their 'democratic' right to vote.
anger hold love
You know how big love is? Love is big. love can hold anger; love can even hold hatred.