The document summarizes American author and activist Alice Walker's life and work focusing on how her writings highlighted issues of race and gender, influenced by her involvement in the civil rights movement as a student where she met Martin Luther King III. Walker won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for her novel "The Color Purple" which explored the experiences of black women during slavery and addressed themes of poverty, abuse and gender.
1. Alice Walker
Race and Gender highlighted in
writings, influenced by her activism
By Gayle Fergusson
Troy University
2. Born February 9, 1944,
American author, poet and
activist Alice Malsenior Walker
wrote both fiction and essays
about race and gender.
As a student of Spellman College
in the 1960s, Walker got a chance to
meet Martin Luther King III and credits
him for her choice to be an activist.
Won Pulitzer Prize and National Book
Award for Fiction for “The Color Purple”,
O. Henry award for “Kindred Spirits”.
3. Slavery
Poverty
Abuse
Gender
“Part of the creation of the color purple is just to be more intimate
with my ancestors in a time when I didn’t exist.” Walker
4. Women’s struggle (images the acclaimed movie by St
Spielberg)
“Part of the creation of the color purple is just to be more
5. “In the early 1960s, the fundamental prize
sought by the civil rights movement was
something that African Americans had never
known: full legal equality.” (JFK in History)
7. Poverty
Racism
Gender
“Written during the heyday of the Black Power movement, when
African Americans were trying to gain racial equality and called
for self determination and racial dignity.“ (Johannes)
9. Hoffman, Melody K. The Color Purple. Jet 119.6 14 Feb 2011: 42.
Johnson Pub. Co. 3 Dec 2012.
"Civil Rights Movement." JOHN F. KENNEDY PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY
AND MUSEUM. n. page. Web. 6 Dec. 2012.
<http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Civil-Rights-
Movement.asp&xgt;>
N. Sink, . "1960's - 1980's Women's Liberation Movement ." (2008):
n. page. Web. 5 Dec. 2012.
<http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/evans/his135/Events/womenslli
beration/womensliberation.htm>
Alice Walker: Everyday Use, Uncommon Art “Films Media Group”
(2003) Web. 5 Dec. 2012
http://ffh.films.com/id/5979/Alice_Walker_Everyday_Use_Unco
mmon_Art.htm
Johannes Timpe, 2005, Alice Walker - Everyday Use, München,
GRIN Verlag GmbH,
<http://www.hausarbeiten.de/faecher/vorschau/109496.html