Alice Walker: A Life - Softcover

White, Evelyn C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393328260 ISBN 13: 9780393328264

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005

Synopsis

"The rich, complex story White tells . . . is never less than fascinating." ―New York Times Book Review

Alice Walker's life is remarkable not only because she was the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in fiction (the book that won her that award, The Color Purple, has been translated into nearly thirty languages and made into an Academy Award–nominated film), but also because these accomplishments are merely highlights of a luminous and varied career made from inauspicious beginnings in rural Georgia. Drawing on extensive interviews and exhaustive research, Evelyn C. White brings this life to light. 16 pages of illustrations

About this title

About the Author

Evelyn C. White, journalist, author, and editor of The Black Women's Health Book, is a visiting scholar in women's studies at Mills College. She lives in Oakland, California, and in Canada.

From Publishers Weekly

In this vibrant narrative, White strives to go beyond simply mapping the movements and accomplishments of the first black female Pulitzer Prize winner. While White relies heavily on interviews with Alice Walker (b. 1944), her family and friends, the stories are always told in a historical context. Walker's childhood as a daughter of Georgia sharecroppers is framed by what it meant to be a poor black female in the Jim Crow South. White particularly focuses on an accident that transforms the eight-year-old Walker from talkative and precocious to introverted and sad. Walker was shot with a BB gun and left disfigured and blind in one eye, and her father was refused a ride to transport the injured girl into town and swindled out of $250 by a white doctor. These events, according to White, brought the young Walker to a new level of understanding of the inhumanity of Southern racism and later moved her to search and reveal, through her writings, the depths of human suffering. This understanding also drove Walker to become active in various causes, most notably the Civil Rights and black feminist movements. From beginning to end, White (The Black Women's Health Book), in her first biography, meticulously traces and analyzes the stages of Walker's life, emphasizing the impact on and importance of her literature in American culture.
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Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0393328260
• ISBN 13: 9780393328264
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 496