Thursday 28 August 2014

ALICE WALKER



ANANDANA TRIVEDI
1313271

ALICE WALKER
Alice walker is an African-American novelist, women’s rights activist, civil right activist and poet but most famous for authoring The Color Purple. In 1983 she won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her 1982 novel, The Color Purple. She was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia. She worked as a social worker, teacher and lecturer. She also took part in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi .She is one of the most admired writers working today. The youngest daughter of sharecroppers, she grew up poor. Her mother worked a maid to help support the family’s eight children .When Walker was eight she was shot in the right eye with a BB pellet while playing while playing with two of her brothers, it was a very serious injury. In her damaged eye, whitish scar tissue was formed and she became self-conscious of the visible mark .Walker withdrew herself from the world around her after this terrifying incident. “For a long time, I thought I was very ugly and disfigured, ’’she told John O’Brien in an interview that was published in Alice Walker: Critical Perspectives, Past and Present. She found solace in reading and writing poetry. With the help of scholarship, Alice Walker was able to go to Spelman College in Atlanta. Later she switched to Sarah Lawrence College in New York City. She published her first short story the year she graduated.
MAJOR WORKS
Her experiences informed her first collection of poetry ‘Once’ which was published in 1968.Walker’s very first published work of fiction “To hell with dying” (1967) , it was published when she was only twenty three years old. Other works of children’s literature by Walker include Langston Hugh: American Poet (1974) , Finding the green stone (1991), and Why war is never a good idea(2007) Walker published her debut novel , The Third Life of Grange Copeland , in 1970 . This book is about the life of the sharecroppers in rural 1920’s Georgia. Followed by Meridian (1976), it was about modern civil rights movement. Cane (1923), it was tribute to Jean Toomer.
Walker published ‘The Color Purple’ in 1982. The Color Purple is an epistolary novel which explores the trials and triumphs of Celie. Celie was an unschooled, independent young woman who unburdens herself in her powerful letters to God. The author was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and National Book Award .She was the first African American woman writer to receive the award.
Not only novels but Alice Walker has also published several volumes of poetry .Her poetry collection was: Revolutionary Petunias and Other poems (1973), Goodnight, I’ll see you in the morning (1979). As a poet, Walker’s range of theme was quite wide – freedom and individual expression, suicide, spirituality, love, the power of activism, ecology, civil rights.
She was also known as an accomplished writer of short fiction. Also the author of four collections of short stories: ‘In love and trouble (1973), ‘You can’t keep a good woman down (1981). The major characteristics / aspects of Walker’s short fiction are economy, a commitment to examine rather than turn away from the troubling and violent issues of human experience.
    Alice Walker has also lectured in the United States of America. After more than four decades as a writer , Alice Walker shows no sign of slowing down.

REFERENCE:
http://www.biography.com/people/alice-walker-9521939#synopsis 
http://www.gradesaver.com/author/alice-walker/
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/alice-walker-b-1944

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