“Mommy, there’s a world in your eye” (Walker, “When the Other Dancer Is the Self” 45). Seven words penetrated the hardened heart of a woman who knew nothing but cruelty concerning her battered eye. As a woman of color, physical deformity, and unique naturalistic ideals, Alice Walker rose to great heights as a black “Womanist” essayist, novelist and poet in the late 1900s. She lived during a time of a war and great racism and oppression. Her career took flight in the later years of the Black Arts Movement (the 1960s) with creating stories about black oppression, slavery, and societal opinions on the role of women. Walker’s works of the 1940s- Present & Postmodernism literary age reflect her heritage alongside the challenges of race and class. Although not enjoying an easy childhood, she continuously revisits experiences that drastically changed her life as sources of inspiration for her literature. Alive to this day, Alice Walker remembers her mother and how nature guided their lives. Segregation in Georgia, her birth state, “was a real blow [to me]. It was a real shock to see that people would actually spend their time making horrible laws and killing people and tearing down our school when, instead, they could be admiring what was all around them” (Seaman). Mother Nature and how humans treat her embodies the core of Walker’s values. She even returned to earlier communion with nature later in life as a gardener and farmer. Spiritual writing influenced the many controversial yet heartfelt stories that later came from her hand. Alice Walker’s works impacted America’s Civil Rights Movement and Feminist Movement, advocating a life of activism for African American women in the US.
Where there is greatness comes a variety of influences. Alice Malsenior Walker was “born in Eatonton on February 9, 1944, the eighth and youngest child of Minnie Tallulah Grant and Willie Lee Walker, who were sharecroppers” (Whitted). Much of her childhood molded her into the writer she aspired to be. The drive to tackle controversial topics made her a prominent figure in the civil rights movement. Walker’s parents were fortunate enough to value education and enroll her in school from an early age despite “the family living south under the Jim Crow Laws” (Alice Walker Biography). Seven Jim Crow Laws prevented the mixing of blacks and whites in public and places of business. The Jim Crow persona directly attacked black culture. Racial segregation in the United States forced blacks to “sit at the back of public buses, on the balcony in movie theaters, and in a separate section at restaurants, if they were allowed inside at al” (“Kindred Spirits”). The government at the time enforced laws to prevent interactions between the two races. Such “terrible” intermixing poisoned the minds of Americans and molded itself into racism nationwide. Unlike her outside difficulties, at 8 years old, “Walker was accidentally shot in the eye by a brother playing with his BB gun” (“Alice Walker”). Her family was too poor to take her to a doctor, so eventually, the wound worsened and she lost sight in her right eye. For several years, she displayed a disfiguring scar. Nevertheless unfortunate, this event actually inspired her writer’s voice, because of her withdrawal from society and sudden observations of human relationships.
She showcased a bright mind at her segregated schools, graduating from high school as class valedictorian which led her down the road to being “awarded a scholarship to Spelman College in 1961. She decided to continue her education at Sarah Lawrence College in New York in 1963” (“Alice Walker”). The radically divided South made it especially difficult to break on -going societal views. Passion for justice fueled her determination. With a bright, unique philosophical mind driven by a spiritual progressive spirit, Walker stated “we’ve been laboring under a very poor system devised, basically, to keep us separated and easily managed as a workforce” (Seamen). Characters in her novels, essays, and short stories tell of injustice towards women and those of color. Her literary influences included Harlem Renaissance writer Jean Toomer, South African novelist Bessie Head, and many more.
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One of her most famous works, a prose collection called In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, Walker transcends gender and heritage while implying Walker’s viewpoints. According to Thadious M. Davis, “Walker writes best of social and personal drama in the lives of familiar people who struggle for survival…” (“Alice Walker”). Elements of the civil rights movement and basic humanity connect Walker to the readers. References to her life also create a bond between the words and the reader, alongside making the story more realistic. Due to her own challenges she faced when the civil rights movement failed to increase women’s equality awareness, some of the central characters in the collection “mad, raging, loving, resentful, hateful, strong, ugly, weak, pitiful, and magnificent—try to live with the loyalty to black men that characterizes all of their lives” (Roselily). Walker actively participated in the civil rights movement as a social worker, teacher, and lecturer. A fresh mind shed light into the even more oppressed minority group: women of color. The 1960s’ Black Arts Movement stands as one of the most controversial times in American literature. Creators challenged taboo topics such as sexual awakenings, abuse, inequality, literary realism, etc. Walker even fought to end the practice of female genital mutilation and helped get Zora Neale Hurston, of the Harlem Renaissance, rediscovered. As a result of the Harlem Renaissance, African Americans across the US contained self-determination and pride for social reform and political activism, which later provided the foundation to the civil rights movement.
Moved by author Flannery O’Connor, Walker wrote and dedicated a story titled “Convergence”. O’Connor’s stories comforted Walker in the familiarity of a depiction of the South. Walker’s story answers the unfinished section of his “The Lame Shall Enter First”. She covers “the integration of public buses, but pre-full civil and human rights in the South” (Warren). His philosophy traces back to Plato, which when tied to Walker’s story, truth emerges. Wise words not only came from her mother, but also from other influential black authors. As a result, her writing embodies “an abundant cultural landscape of its own” (Whitted). She was a guiding spiritual presence in the eyes of many activists. A beacon of hope shined in the hard times.
Another one of her most famous works, The Color Purple, transcends gender and heritage while implying Walker’s viewpoints. Growing up with a leading mother figure, Walker Walker stressed feminism. The novel tackling gender stereotypes and deep racism gave her the opportunity to become the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Known for making readers all over the world cry, tears, for example, implies “a feminine thing to do. Walker’s epistolary novel functions to invoke a ‘good cry’ that is identical to the impact of the classics of the feminine ‘good-cry’ genre…” (Warhol). Moments such as when the adolescent Celie mourns her two babies taken away or when she separates from Nettie evokes such readerly tears with movements of intense grief. Celie’s words of “Dear God” shows how much isolation plagues her heart against the constant incestuous rapes by her father, supposedly. The progressive spiritual presence in her inspires an innovative way of a sentimental culture through plot, characters, and dialogue. Alice Walker encourages her readers to grow courage, spirit, and strength day by day.
Walker’s role as a leading feminist and civil rights activist in the late 1900s gave her a stepping stool to climb more and more fame. All of her novels aised awareness for stopping discrimination and sexism. People of all races, shapes, and sizes identify with the themes in her literature. The American “norm” of viewing backs and whites in the 1960s came to a complete change with the help of her pen. The Color Purple, one of her most famous novels, was adapted into a film and later opened on Broadway in 2005. Walker “coined the term ‘womanist’” (“Everyday Use”). Americans read and watch Alice Walker’s material to this day in the year 2020.
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