Alice Walker
The Color Purple
Background
- Born in 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia to parents who were sharecroppers.
- Educated at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, and Sarah Lawrence College in New York.
- Active in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
- Married to Mel Levanthal, a young Jewish civil right lawyer in the late sixties;
divorced; began a thirteen-year relationship with Robert Allen, editor of "Black
Scholar" soon after her divorce in the late seventies.
Career
- The Color Purple awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
- Published her first short story "To Hell With Dying" at twenty-one while still
a student at Sarah Lawrence.
- Taught at Jackson State University and later Wellesley College.
- Became an editor for Ms magazine during the mid-1970s.
- Moved to Mendocino, California, where she still lives and writes. Founded Wild Trees
Press, to publish the works of black and women writers.
- Often focuses on the sexual and racial relationships within the black community (some
black critics have felt she deals too harshly with black males) and on the connections
between community and family.
Major Writings
The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), fiction
In Love and Trouble (1973), short stories
Revolutionary Petunias (1973), poems
Meridian (1976), fiction
You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down (1981), short stories
The Color Purple (1982), fiction
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), essays
Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful (1985), poems
Living By the Word: Selected Writings, 1973-1987 (1988), essays
Temple of My Familiar (1989), fiction
Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), fiction
Critical Sources and Reviews
- Biographical and critical information in Contemporary Authors, New Revision
Series, Vol. 49, and Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 58 .
- New York Times Book Review,
July 25, 1982 ("Some Letters Went to God" by Mel Watkins) [book archive search:
"Color Purple"]
Alice Walker Online
Alice Walker site, Voices From the Gaps: Women
Writers of Color
Resources
for Alice Walker, Catherine Lavender, College of Staten Island
Biography, study questions, links to many other Walker sites.
Alice Walker Biography
Alice Walker Study Guide
This brief biography and study questions
were prepared by one of the WCH book discussion scholars. (Please let us know if
you are the author.)
