Alice Walker
There are many different types of authors in the world of literature, authors of horror, romance, suspense, and the type that Alice Walker writes. Alice Walker writes through her feelings and the morals she has grown with, she writes about the black woman's struggle for spiritual wholeness and sexual, political, and racial equality. Although most critics categorize her writings as feminist, Walker describes herself as a "womanist", she defines this as "a woman who loves other woman...Appreciates and prefers woman culture, woman's emotional flexibility... and woman's strength... Loves the spirit... Loves herself, Regardless". Walker's thoughts and feelings show through in her writing of poetry and novels. Much of Walker's fiction is informed by her Southern background. She was born in Eatonton, Georgia, a rural town where most blacks worked as tenant farmers. At the age eight she was blinded in the right eye when an older brother accidentally shot her with a BB gun, after which she fell into somewhat of a depression. She secluded herself from the other children, and as she explained, "I no longer felt like the little girl I was. I felt old, and because I felt I was unpleasant to look at, filled wit
In the end of the novel, Grange returns to his family a broken yet compassionate man and attempts to make up for all the hurt he has caused in the past with the help of his granddaughter, Ruth. Some felt differently about certain points the book made, one being the its negative portraits of black men, people like Darryl Pinckney state, "Walker's work shows a world divided between the chosen (black women) and the unsaved, the poor miserable critter' (black men), between the 'furnace of afflication' and a 'far off, miystic land of. His traits are passed on to his son, Brownsfield, who in time murders his wife. " In 1961 Walker won a scholarship to Spelman College in Atlanta, where she became involved in the civil rights movement and participated in sit-ins at local business establishments. While in her teens, Celie is repeatedly raped by her step-father, who sells the children. She eventually finds peace with the help of Albert's mistress, Shug Avery, a blues signer who gives her the courage to leave her marriage. Because of his sense of failure, Grange Copeland leads his wife to suicide and abandons his children to seek a better life in the North. The was the first book I had read by Alice Walker, the novel traces thirty years in the life of Celie, a poor Southern black woman who is victimized physically and emotionally by her step-father and husband. I retreated into solitude, and read stories and began to write poems. Not enough credit has been given to the black woman who has been oppressed beyond recognition. At the end of the novel, Celie is reunited with her children and with her long lost sister Nettie. While some people accused Walker of reviving stereotypes about the dysfunctional black family, others praised her use of intensive, descriptive language in creating believable characters.
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Acceptance Essays
