|
There are many different types of authors in the world of
literature, authors of horror, romance, suspense, and the type that
Alice Walker writes, through personal experiences. Although most
critics categorize her writings as feminist, Walker describes herself
as a "womanist", she defines this as "a woman who loves other
woman...Appreciates and prefers woman culture, woman's emotional
flexibility... and woman's strength... Loves the spirit... Loves
herself, Regardless". Walker's thoughts and feelings show through in
her writing of poetry and novels. Alice Walker writes through her
feelings and the morals that she has grown with, she writes about the
black woman's struggle for spiritual wholeness and sexual, political,
and racial equality.
Much of Walker's fiction is informed by her Southern background.
She was born in Eatonton, Georgia, a rural town where most blacks
worked as tenant farmers. At the age eight she was blinded in the right
eye when an older brother accidentally shot her with a BB gun, after
which she fell into somewhat of a depression. She secluded herself from
the other children, and as she explained, "I no longer felt like the
little girl I was. I felt old, and because I felt I was unpleasant to
look at, filled with shame. I retreated into solitude, and read stories
and began to write poems." In 1961 Walker won a scholarship to Spelman
College in Atlanta, where she became involved in the civil rights
movement and participated in sit-ins at local business establishments.
She transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York,
graduating from there in 1965. She met her future husband Melvyn
Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights attorney, in Mississippi where she was
an activist and teacher. In 1967 Walker and Leventhal married, becoming
the first legally married interracial couple to reside in Jackson, the
state capital, they had one child together one year after they got
married, named Rebecca . They divorced in 1976. Since then Walker has
focused more on her writing and has taught at various colleges and
universities.
Walker is one of the most prolific black women writers in America.
Her work consistently reflects her concern with racial, sexual, and
political issues-particularly with black woman's struggle for survival.
She explained, "The black woman is one of America's greatest
heroes….Not enough credit has been given to the black woman who has
been oppressed beyond recognition." Walker's insistence on giving black
women their due resulted in one of the most widely read novels in
America today, Alice's third novel, "The Color Purple". The was the
first book I had read by Alice Walker, the novel traces thirty years in
the life of Celie, a poor Southern black woman who is victimized
physically and emotionally by her step-father and husband. While in her
teens, Celie is repeatedly raped by her step-father, who sells the
children. Then she is placed in a loveless marriage to Albert, who also
beats and torments her continuously. She eventually finds peace with
the help of Albert's mistress, Shug Avery, a blues signer who gives her
the courage to leave her marriage. At the end of the novel, Celie is
reunited with her children and with her long lost sister Nettie. Walker
earned many praises for the novel along with many criticisms as well.
Those who praise the book such as Peter S. Prescott would agree with
him when he said, "an American novel of permanent importance, that rare
sort of book which amounts to a diversion in the fields of dread". Some
felt differently about certain points the book made, one being the its
negative portraits of black men, people like Darryl Pinckney state,
"Walker's work shows a world divided between the chosen (black women)
and the unsaved, the poor miserable critter' (black men), between the
'furnace of afflication' and a 'far off, miystic land of…miraculous.
Walker's central characters are almost always black women; the themes
of sexism and racism are predominant in her work, but her impact is
felt across both racial and sexual boundaries.
The first novel written by Alice Walker "The Third Life of Grange
Copeland" (1970), again carries many of her prevalent themes,
particularly the domination of powerless women by equally powerless
men. In this novel, which spans the years between the Depression and
the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, walker
showed three generations of a black sharecropping family and explored
the effects of poverty and racism on their lives. Because of his sense
of failure, Grange Copeland leads his wife to suicide and abandons his
children to seek a better life in the North. His traits are passed on
to his son, Brownsfield, who in time murders his wife. In the end of
the novel, Grange returns to his family a broken yet compassionate man
and attempts to make up for all the hurt he has caused in the past with
the help of his granddaughter, Ruth. While some people accused Walker
of reviving stereotypes about the dysfunctional black family, others
praised her use of intensive, descriptive language in creating
believable characters.
Walker is also considered an accomplished poet. Walkers first
collection, Once: Poems (1968), includes works written during the early
1960's while she attended Sarah Lawrence College. Some of these pieces
relate the confusion, isolation , and suicidal thoughts Walker
experienced. For she had learned her Senior year that she was pregnant
and had to deal with the stressful time that followed. Revolutionary
Petunias and Other Poems was Walkers second volume of poems, in this
she addressed such topics as love, individualism, and revolution. When
Alice Walker lived in Mississippi and was active in the civil rights
movement and teaching she experienced these such things. With Walker's
most recent poems she expresses her ideas of races, gender,
environment, love, hate and suffering, the same topics she writes about
in her novels. In addition to her novels, and poetry, Walker has also
published two volumes of short stories, In Love and Trouble: Stories of
Black Women (1973) and You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down: Stories
(1981), both of which evidence her womanist philosophy.
Overall Alice Walker has been a very influential author throughout
the black community, and her audiences are very much interracial.
Although many of the criticisms are controversial on her view of black
men and their abuse toward black women, that depiction can not be
narrowed down to only that, there is much more that is present in Alice
Walkers writing. Her feelings, morals and the opinions Walker has
towards women, sexuality, and racial equality shine through her works
of all literature.
|
|
|
(0 vote)