Waubonsee Community College

Alice Walker, a life, Evelyn C. White

eng

Includes bibliographical references pages (514-519) and index

individual biography

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Alice Walker

bibliography

55286230

Evelyn C. White

"Born to a sharecropping family in Georgia, Alice Walker thrived in the rich culture of what she called the "agrarian peasantry" to become one of our most important and popular writers. Evelyn C. White charts Walker's childhood, marked by an incident at eight that left her blinded in her right eye and with disfiguring scar tissue and that prompted her, out of a sense of "ugliness," to probe human suffering through her poems and stories. In this biography, we learn of Walker's activism in the 1960s freedom movement, and her leadership in the debate on black women's art, politics, and sexuality. The Color Purple garnered Walker the Pulitzer Prize in fiction - the first awarded to a black woman writer. Drawing on papers, letters, journals, and extensive interviews with Walker, her family, friends, colleagues, and leading American cultural figures including Gloria Steinem, Quincy Jones, and Oprah Winfrey, White assesses one of the most influential writers of our time."--Jacket

a life

Prologue : in service -- pt. 1. Kudzu -- 1. Georgia, the whole day through -- 2. Babies and stumps -- 3. Roots -- 4. "Shift for self" -- 5. Booker T. -- 6. "I been cryin' ..." -- 7. Knights in shining armor -- 8. A long walk -- 9. Order my steps -- 10. Nobody in Atlanta -- 11. Forbidden things -- 12. Fit for myself to know -- pt. 2. To have and to hold -- 13. Make yourself useful -- 14. Reclaimed -- 15. New York -- 16. Live or die -- 17. In a biblical way -- 18. Tulips -- 19. Beyond daily bread -- 20. That Alice? -- 21. Nude -- 22. Watered with blood -- 23. "Conformity is not community" -- 24. The children grow in love -- 25. A kindred lover of beauty -- 26. A kiss on both sides -- 27. Love the questions -- 28. Good night, Willie Lee -- 29. We are a people -- 30. Changes -- 31. How rare we were -- 32. We were a part of it -- pt. 3. Life is the award -- 33. Meridian -- 34. Refuge -- 35. Correct relationship -- 36. Country people -- 37. An ugly one at that -- 38. A room to move into -- 39. Radically brilliant -- 40. At a double remove -- 41. God love all them feelings -- 42. The balance had begun to tilt -- 43. Some of our work -- 44. Through it all -- 45. I try to make sense -- 46. The glimpse of life beyond the words -- 47. Something to life spirits -- 48. Guide and protect -- 49. More than many hoped -- 50. She liked everything she saw -- 51. The world is held together -- 52. They saw the airplane coming -- Epilogue : it's all love -- Chronology