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Definition: Walker, Alice from Philip's Encyclopedia

African-American writer. Her volumes of poetry include Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems (1973). Walker won a Pulitzer Prize for her epistolary novel The Color Purple (1982). Other works include In Search of My Mother's Garden (1983).


Walker, Alice

From Encyclopedia of American Studies
Author Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia. She attended college at Spelman and transferred to Sarah Lawrence, where she graduated in 1965. Walker began her writing career at Sarah Lawrence and has since published several books of poems, essays, criticism, and short stories and several critically acclaimed novels. Perhaps her most famous work, the novel The Color Purple (1982) won both the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 and was made into a successful feature film in 1985. The Color Purple provides an illustration of Walker's own womanist theory. Walker articulated womanism from an African American woman's perspective in her 1983 collection of essays In Search of Our Mother's Gardens , in which she argues that womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender. Simply put, womanist theory boldly embraces life's complexities from rage to love. For Walker the womanist loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and…
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Full text Article Walker, Alice Malsenior

From The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography
American novelist. Born in Eatonton, Georgia, the eighth child of a family of sharecroppers, Alice Walker reached Spelman College at 17 and in 1963 went on to Sarah Lawrence College, graduating in 1966. She became a caseworker in the New York City Welfare Department for some months, before joining…
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Full text Article Walker, Alice

From Philip's Encyclopedia
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US writer. She has written poetry and non-fiction, and established her reputation with her novels, notably The Color Purple (1983, filmed 1985). The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one’s people that has not previously been taken into account. 1973 Interview in J…
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Full text Article Alice Walker (1944–)

From African American Almanac
Alice Walker (1944–)
Poet, Novelist Alice Malsenior Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia, on Eebruary 9, 1944, and has lived in Mississippi, New York City, and San Erancisco, California. She attended Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, from 1961 to 1963, and received her B.A. in 1965 from Sarah Lawrence College in…
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Full text Article Alice Walker 1944– 

From The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
American poet I thought love would adapt itself to my needs. But needs grow too fast; they come up like weeds. Through cracks in the conversation. ‘Did This Happen to Your Mother? Did Your Sister Throw Up a Lot?’ (1979) Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise. ‘Expect nothing’ (1973) We have a…
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Full text Article Walker, Alice 2/9/1944-

From Encyclopedia of African-American Writing
Poems, essays, short stories, novels, anthology, memoirs, juvenile literature, nonfiction books; social worker, civil-rights and peace activist, educator, publisher Alice Walker writes directly, and openly about people who live the kinds of lives she has always known, and sometimes lived. Walker was…
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Alice Walker.
Alice Malsenior Walker is an American writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are noted for their insightful treatment of African American culture. Her novels, most notably The Color Purple (1982), focus particularly on women. Walker was the eighth child of African American sharecroppers. …
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Full text Article Color Purple, The

From Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable
A novel (1982), written in the form of letters, by the US writer Alice Walker (b.1944), which won the Pulitzer prize for fiction. A young black woman, Celie , having been raped as a child by her father and borne him two children, who are then taken away from her, is married off to a violent bully. …
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Full text Article GOD

From Collins Dictionary of Quotations
Even God is deprived of this one thing only: the power to undo what has been done. In Aristotle , Nicomachean Ethics . Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends. ALLEN, Woody Getting Even (1971). The worst that can be said is that he’s an under-achiever. …
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