Alice Walker

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorHigh School, 12th grade February 2008

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Byron Gladden Mrs. Farlow Honors English April 12, 2002 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, through personal experiences. 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. Alice Walker writes through her feelings and the morals that she has grown with, she writes about the black woman's struggle for spiritual wholeness and sexual, political, and racial equality.

Mrs. Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia, the eight and youngest child of Minnie Tallulah Grant Walker and Willie Lee Walker. Her parents were poor share- croppers but wealthy in spirit and love.

Her father's great-great-great grandmother, Mary Poole, was a slave forced to walk from Virginia to Georgia with a baby in each arm. Her mother 's grandmother, Tallluhah, was mostly Cherokee Indian. Mrs. Walker was always deeply proud of her cultural in heritances. In the sumer of 1952 while playing "cowboys and indian" with her brothers ( Mrs. Walker was the Indian with bow and arrow in hand), she was blinded in her right eye by a BB gun pellet. She was always self concious of the large white scar tissue left in her eye. It goes without saying that Mrs. Walker was not an outgoing person . Most of her time was spent in seclusion and in reading every thing that she could get her hands on. Mrs. Walker lived vicariously through the characters in the books that she read. At...