| Biography & Autobiography |
| American - African American & Black Studies |
| Personal Memoirs |
| Social Science |
| Ethnic Studies |
Summary
Summary
The National Book Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning author's fascinating and far-reaching conversations with acclaimed writers and thought leaders.
Spanning more than three decades, this collection of fascinating discussions between Alice Walker and renowned writers, leaders, and teachers, explores the changes that Walker has experienced in the world, as well as the change she herself has brought to it.
Compelling literary and cultural figures such as Gloria Steinem, Pema Chödrön, and Howard Zinn represent a different stage in Walker's artistic and spiritual development. Yet, they also offer an unprecedented look at her career and political growth. Noted literary scholar Rudolph Byrd sets Walker's work into context with an introductory essay, as well as with a comprehensive annotated bibliography of her writings.
"Read as separate pieces, these conversations offer vivid glimpses of Walker's energetic personality. Taken together, they offer a sense of her marvelous engagement with her world." -- Kirkus Reviews
Reviews (2)
Booklist Review
Drawn from the Emory University archive of Alice Walker, this collection offers conversations and interviews with Walker from 1973 to 2009, showing the breadth of change and development in Walker as a writer and an individual. Walker's The Color Purple won a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize but garnered controversy when it was made into a film. She recalls growing up in the segregated South and her interracial marriage to a Jewish civil rights lawyer. She responds to inquiries about racial identity, gender and humanist sensitivities, and her tributes to history and the people of the South. Interviews touch on her solitary personality, occasional bouts with numbing depression, and the times she has needed to summon personal courage to face injustices. She details her writing process and the fact that poetry writing is possible for her only when she is profoundly sad. She responds to world events and events in her personal life, including divorce and the deaths of family members. Walker fans will appreciate this fascinating look at the writer and personality.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Walker's social activism emerges as a major current in her life and writings as she discusses her roots, worldview, and artistic development in these penetrating and revealing interviews. As the youngest child among eight, Walker grew up in rural Georgia, picking cotton with her family. From these modest beginnings, she has emerged as one of America's best-known writers, partly owing to the success of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple, adapted for film by Steven Spielberg in 1985, and recently a Broadway musical. These discussions with such commentators as Howard Zinn, Amy Goodman, and Margo Jefferson highlight Walker's activism, which includes civil rights in this country, fighting female genital mutilation in Africa, resisting tyranny worldwide, and being a force for world peace. In one notable conversation, Walker and Buddhist writer Pema Chodron discuss working with negative energy and alleviating suffering in the world. VERDICT An important addition to the Walker canon, this book will interest not only her fans but serious readers generally.-Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
