Reading and Interpreting the Works of Alice Walker PDF Download

Author: Lisa A. Crayton
Publisher: Enslow Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 0766083594
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
Growing up poor in a small town in Georgia, Alice Walker became aware of the effects of prejudice and segregation at a young age. She would later call on these early experiences when writing her most famous novel, The Color Purple. But the themes of Walker’s prose and poetry extend far beyond race, including women’s issues, religion, relationships, and culture. This text explores the many themes of her work, as well as her use of characterization, literary devices, and plot. Through biographical information, quotes from the author, excerpts from texts, and critical analysis, readers will obtain a strong appreciation for the life and works of this controversial and esteemed author.

Author: Thadious M. Davis
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1643362399
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Understanding Alice Walker serves both as an introduction to the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner's large body of work and as a critical analysis of her multifaceted canon. Thadious M. Davis begins with Walker's biography and her formative experiences in the South and then presents ways of accessing and reading Walker's complex, interconnected, and sociopolitically invested career in writing fiction, poetry, critical essays, and meditations. Although best known for her novel The Color Purple and her landmark essays In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose, Walker began her career with Once: Poems, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, and In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women. She has remained committed not merely to writing in multiple genres but also to conveying narratives of the hope and transformation possible within the human condition and as visualized through the lens of race and gender. Davis traces Walker's literary voice as it emerges from the civil rights and feminist movements to encourage an individual and collective search for justice and joy and then evolves into forceful advocacy for world peace, spiritual liberation, and environmental conservancy. Her writing, a rich amalgamation of the cutting-edge and popular, the new-age and difficult, continues to be paradigm shifting and among the most important produced in the last half of the twentieth century and among the most consistently prophetic in the first part of the twenty-first century.

Author: Alice Walker
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813520766
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Presents the text of Alice Walker's story "Everyday Use"; contains background essays that provide insight into the story; and features a selection of critical response. Includes a chronology and an interview with the author.

Author: Alice Walker
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1595585893
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
A New York Times bestseller in hardcover, Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker’s We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For was called “stunningly insightful” and “a book that will inspire hope” by Publishers Weekly. Drawing equally on Walker’s spiritual grounding and her progressive political convictions, each chapter concludes with a recommended meditation to teach us patience, compassion, and forgiveness. We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For takes on some of the greatest challenges of our times and in it Walker encourages readers to take faith in the fact that, despite the daunting predicaments we find ourselves in, we are uniquely prepared to create positive change. The hardcover edition of We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For included a national tour that saw standing-room–only crowds and standing ovations. Walker’s clear vision and calm meditative voice—truly “a light in darkness”—has struck a deep chord among a large and devoted readership.

Author: Evelyn C. White
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393058918
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
Drawing on papers, letters, journals, and extensive interviews with Walker, her family, friends, and colleagues, and with leading American cultural figures including Gloria Steinem, Quincy Jones, and Oprah Winfrey, White assesses one of the most influential writers of modern time.

Author: Alice Walker
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0307430448
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 86

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Book Description
In this illuminating book, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist and acclaimed poet Alice Walker reveals her remarkable philosophy of life. Curiously, this labor of love started with the author’s signature: Faced with the daunting task of providing autographs for multiple copies of one of her poetry collections, Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth, Walker turned an act of repetition into an act of inspiration. For each autograph became something more than a name: a thoughtful reflection, an impromptu sketch, a heartfelt poem. The result is this spontaneous burst of the unexpected. A Poem Traveled Down My Arm is a lovely collection of insights and drawings—by turns charming and humorous, provocative and profound—that represent the wisdom of one of today’s most beloved writers. The essence of Walker’s independent spirit emanates from words and images that are simple but deep in meaning. An empowering approach to life...the inspiration to live completely in the moment...the chance to nurture one’s creativity and peace of mind—all these beautiful elements are evoked by this unusual and original book.

Author: Salamishah Tillet
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1683356853
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Mixing cultural criticism, literary history, biography, and memoir, an exploration of Alice Walker’s critically acclaimed and controversial novel, The Color Purple Alice Walker made history in 1983 when she became the ï¬?rst black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Color Purple. Published in the Reagan era amid a severe backlash to civil rights, the Jazz Age novel tells the story of racial and gender inequality through the life of a 14-year-old girl from Georgia who is haunted by domestic and sexual violence. Prominent academic and activist Salamishah Tillet combines cultural criticism, history, and memoir to explore Walker’s epistolary novel and shows how it has influenced and been informed by the zeitgeist. The Color Purple received both praise and criticism upon publication, and the conversation it sparked around race and gender still continues today. It has been adapted for an Oscar-nominated ï¬?lm and a hit Broadway musical. Through archival research and interviews with Walker, Oprah Winfrey, and Quincy Jones (among others), Tillet studies Walker’s life and how themes of violence emerged in her earlier work. Reading The Color Purple at age 15 was a groundbreaking experience for Tillet. It continues to resonate with her—as a sexual violence survivor, as a teacher of the novel, and as an accomplished academic. Provocative and personal, In Search of The Color Purple is a bold work from an important public intellectual, and captures Alice Walker’s seminal role in rethinking sexuality, intersectional feminism, and racial and gender politics.

Author: Alice Walker
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453223991
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 535

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Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple weaves a “glorious and iridescent” tapestry of interrelated lives in this New York Times bestseller (Library Journal). Includes a new letter written by the author In The Temple of My Familiar, Celie and Shug from The Color Purple subtly shadow the lives of dozens of characters, all dealing in some way with the legacy of the African experience in America. From recent African immigrants, to a woman who grew up in the mixed-race rainforest communities of South America, to Celie’s own granddaughter living in modern-day San Francisco, all must come to understand the brutal stories of their ancestors to come to terms with their own troubled lives. As Walker follows these astonishing characters, she weaves a new mythology from old fables and history, a profoundly spiritual explanation for centuries of shared African American experience. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alice Walker including rare photos from the author’s personal collection. The Temple of My Familiar is the 2nd book in the Color Purple Collection, which also includes The Color Purple and Possessing the Secret of Joy.

Author: Alice Walker
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453223967
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
“A classic novel of both feminism and the Civil Rights movement” in 1960s Atlanta by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple (Ms.). As she approaches the end of her teen years, Meridian Hill has already married, divorced, and given birth to a son. She’s looking for a second chance, and at a small college outside Atlanta, Georgia, in the early 1960s, Meridian discovers the civil rights movement. So fully does the cause guide her life that she’s willing to sacrifice virtually anything to help transform the conditions of a people whose subjugation she shares. Meridian draws from Walker’s own experiences working alongside some of the heroes of the civil rights movement, and the novel stands as a shrewd and affecting document of the dissolution of the Jim Crow South. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alice Walker including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.

Author: Alice Walker
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453223975
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning novel is now a new, boldly reimagined film from producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, starring Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, and Fantasia Barrino. A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is left behind without her best friend and confidante, married off to an older suitor, and sentenced to a life alone with a harsh and brutal husband. In an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear, Celie begins writing letters directly to God. The letters, spanning 20 years, record a journey of self-discovery and empowerment guided by the light of a few strong women. She meets Shug Avery, her husband’s mistress and a jazz singer with a zest for life, and her stepson’s wife, Sofia, who challenges her to fight for independence. And though the many letters from Celie’s sister are hidden by her husband, Nettie’s unwavering support will prove to be the most breathtaking of all. The Color Purple has sold more than five million copies, inspired an Academy Award-nominated film starring Oprah Winfrey and directed by Steven Spielberg, and been adapted into a Tony-winning Broadway musical. Lauded as a literary masterpiece, this is the groundbreaking novel that placed Walker “in the company of Faulkner” (The Nation), and remains a wrenching—yet intensely uplifting—experience for new generations of readers. This ebook features a new introduction written by the author on the 25th anniversary of publication, and an illustrated biography of Alice Walker including rare photos from the author’s personal collection. The Color Purple is the 1st book in the Color Purple Collection, which also includes The Temple of My Familiar and Possessing the Secret of Joy.