Alice Walker Summary

Biography EssaySince 1968 when Once, her first work, was published, Alice Walker has sought to bring closer that day for which her maternal ancestors waited-"a day when the unknown thing that was in ... Read more

Best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Color Purple, as well as for its adaptation as a motion picture by Steven Spielberg, Alice Walker has become a totem for black feminism, what she c... Read more

Alice Walker is a talented, versatile writer from the modern South. Since the appearance of her first book in 1968, she has published poetry, fiction, and criticism, all of which have advanced her li... Read more

[This entry was updated by Donna Haisty Winchell (Clemson University) from her entry in DLB 143: American Novelists Since World War II, Third Series, pp. 277-292.]Alice Walker knows firsthand the soci... Read more

In the following essay, Cowart explains how Alice Walker uses her main characters in “Everyday Use” to outline her own vision of the African American community in the past and present, a... Read more

In the following essay, Williams includes Walker in a discussion of women poets. The emergence of strongly talented women poets is one of the reasons why Southern poetry is in a healthier condition th... Read more

In the following review, Gernes praises Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful, but finds some of Walker's political poems to be overwrought. “We had no word for the strange animal ... Read more

In the following review, Phillips discusses similarities among Walker's Once, Ntozake Shange's Nappy Edges, and Audre Lord's Our Dead Behind Us. Alice Walker published Once, the f... Read more

In the following essay, Nowak maintains that Walker's poetry successfully represents a personal journey toward self-knowledge and respect. “And it was then that I knew that the healing /... Read more

In the following essay, Worsham includes Walker in a discussion of mother-daughter relationships as represented in African-American women's poetry. “The image of the mother,” acco... Read more

Critical Essay by Peter Erickson One of the major concerns of Alice Walker's art is the exploration of intra-family relationships…. The family dynamic in Alice Walker's work is a ... Read more

Critical Essay by Mary Helen Washington From whatever vantage point one investigates the work of Alice Walker—poet, novelist, short story writer, critic, essayist, and apologist for black women... Read more

Critical Essay by Carol Rumens [Alice Walker's Meridian and You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down] are difficult in that, to varying degrees, they presuppose a certain special awareness on th... Read more

Critical Essay by Dinitia Smith As admirers of The Third Life of Grange Copeland and Meridian already know, to read an Alice Walker novel is to enter the country of surprise. It is to be admitted to t... Read more

In the following essay, Christian discusses how the women of Walker's In Love and Trouble fight to embrace their individual spirits and to overcome convention. In Love and Trouble, Alice Walker... Read more

In the following review, Brown worth praises Warrior Marks by Walker and Pratibha Parmar for exploring the reasons that female genital mutilation and other forms of mutilation are allowed to continue.... Read more

In the following review, Messud states that while many of Walker's earlier short stories are skillful, her later stories are more like memoirs or essays which uphold a political agenda rather t... Read more

In the following review, Prose criticizes the boasting and complaining tone of Walker's The Same River Twice, a book comprised of essays, interviews, fan letters, and other writings. Whenever s... Read more

In the following essay, Freeman compares the journeys of the main characters of several of Walker's works, including Meridian, to the protagonist of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were ... Read more

In the following essay, Christian discusses the interdependence of individual and societal change in Walker's novels. Because women are expected to keep silent about their close escapes I will... Read more

In the following essay, Washington asserts that Walker does present some positive black male images in her work, and that her criticism of black men and women is in the spirit of helping them to grow ... Read more

In the following essay, Butler discusses Walker's complicated portrayal of the South in The Third Life of Grange Copeland, in which she uses each life to show a different aspect of the South. ... Read more