SOURCE: Walker, Margaret, and Lucy M. Freibert. “Southern Song: An Interview with Margaret Walker.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies 9, no. 3 (1987): 50-6.

In the following interview, conducted in 1986 and published in 1987, Walker discusses her personal life and her working methods and compares herself with other Southern women writers.

[Freibert]: You have been a writer, teacher, activist, homemaker, and cultural analyst. What is the unifying role in your life?

[Walker]: Well, I think that the feminine principle of being a daughter, a sister, a mother, and now a grandmother has been the motivating and inspiring agency. I think I said that first in a piece I wrote called “On Being Female, Black, and Free”—that being a woman is first, that when the doctor says “It's a she,” that's the first thing.

Would you talk about some of the people who have influenced you the most?

Well, my parents...