Walker has often commented that when she was studying English in college in the early 1960s, nearly all of the writing discussed in her classes was written by white men. Later, when classes in black literature were formed, nearly all of the writers studied were black men. No works by African- American women were being taught, and few were even in print. As a reader and a writer, Walker hungered for models that would be more appropriate to her own life. In an essay titled "Saving the Life That Is Your Own: The Importance of Models in the Artist's Life," she recounts a story about another African-American writer: "It has often been said that someone asked Toni Morrison why she writes the kind of books she writes, and that she replied: Because.....
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