THE VOICE OF ALICE WALKER
When Alice Walker used her voice to say her first word did her parents didn't know who she was going to turn out to be. Alice Malsenior Walker was born February 8, 1944 in Eatonton, GA to sharecroppers and dairy farmers Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Tallulah Grant Walker. Walker was the youngest of eight children; the family consisted of five brothers and three sisters. From a very early age she was always confident, loved to talk in front of her class, was very smart and always got good grades. Since she had many brothers she always hung out with her two older brothers and considered herself a tomboy.
At the age of eight she had a very serious accident. This was a result of one of her brothers shooting her in the eye with a bb gun while they were playing cowboys and Indians. After the accident took place her brothers persuaded her to lie to their parents so that they would not get a whipping. In doing so, when her parents saw what happened to Walker they did not think it was that serious. The lie went on for a long time and when Walker’s parents’ finally learned the truth, they took her to the doctor. Though by then it was too late because after the doctor finished, there was a huge scar left on Walker’s eye. Even though Walker could see the scar caused much pain for her. From then on she became introverted and quite shy, possibly a result of the jokes from her fellow classmates about her disfigurement and permanent blindness. She felt that she was ugly and scary to look at so she retreated into solitude, reading poems and stories and later writing.
Until Walker visited her older brother about seven years later she was always in solitude. This was the first time Walker had seen her brother since he had moved away to get a job. Her brother saw how sad she was and paid for eye surgery. When the surgery was finally over, the scar had been reduced to a tiny blue spot on her eye. Suddenly Walker’s whole perspective on life changed; her grades improved tremendously and Walker graduated from high school as valedictorian and was even voted queen at her high school prom.
This soon to be writer received a scholarship to attended Spelman College in Atlanta. Walker left home with only three things in her possession that her mother gave her. She was given a sewing machine which to her meant for her to be self-sufficent and independent. Her second gift was an exquisite suitcase, which in her mind, gave her permission to travel the world. The third gift was a typewriter which communicated to her the need to write down her mother's and her own stories. On her bus trip up to Atlanta her care for the Civil Rights started to show. At Spelman she was an active participant in the fight for Civil Rights in the state of Georgia. Alice stood on the lawn of Trevor-Arnett Library, where she listened to the speeches of young civil rights leaders such as John Lewis and Julian Bond speak out against the practices of segregation. Walker also marched in a variety of demonstrations. She also marched in "The Washington March", and heard Dr. Martin Luther King say the "I have a Dream Speech". The officials at Spelman were not supportive of her activism. Their aim was to produce ladies, not activists. So in 1963, unhappy with college life at Spelman, Walker uneasily accepted a scholarship she had been awarded to attend the liberal arts institution Sarah Lawrence College. In her senior year at Sarah Lawrence College she found out she was pregnant and not knowing what to do, she had a abortion. After the abortion, she slipped into a deep depression. Just like before when she had her eye accident. Walker graduated from Sarah Lawrence in the winter of 1964.
Later she moved to New York City where she worked for the welfare department. She was awarded her first writing grant in 1966. She had wanted to go to Africa to write, but decided against it and went down to Mississippi. There she met a civil rights attorney, Melvyn Leventhal who was supportive of her writing and her love for nature. Walker then married him and happily had a daughter named Rebecca.
In 1967
she wrote her first book The Third Life of Grange Copeland while on fellowship
at MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. The now known writer went on to write
short stories, and essays, poems, and novels. She then went on to write The
Color Purple, which is the novel that made her famous and remained on the New
York Times bestsellers list for 25 weeks and
claimed
the American
Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She has Written Many other books,
novels, short stories, essays, and poetry since then. For the many works she
she published all of the ideas come from her. No one has inspired
her to write but what she writes about was inspired by the civil writes
activists before her.
Alice Walker has a very bold style with her writing and always goes over the top or limit with her writing. The topics she writes about are usually depressing. However many of Walker's works are on love between two people or love for someone else. Alice Walker has had many published works from 1967 to 1997 and is known to now be retired. Alice Walker currently resides in Mendocino, California on her ranch with her dog, Marley.