Alice Walker

Her parents were sharecroppers in Putnam County, Georgia, and she was the eighth and last of their children, born in Eatonton on February 9, 1944. At eight she was shot in the right eye with a BB gun by one of her brothers. They told her to say a wire had flown up and struck her. The family had no car, no doctor saw her in time, and the eye went permanently blind. Scar tissue sat over it until a surgeon removed most of it when she was 14. She stopped looking people in the face and went into books instead, reading alone and writing poems. She left Eatonton as class valedictorian, on a state scholarship to Spelman College in Atlanta.

After Sarah Lawrence she went South, registering voters in Georgia and Mississippi and working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in Jackson. In 1973 she and the scholar Charlotte Hunt went to Fort Pierce, Florida, searched a weeded field, found what they took to be Zora Neale Hurston's unmarked grave, and paid for a headstone: A GENIUS OF THE SOUTH. Her 1975 essay in Ms. about that search is substantially why Hurston is read today. In 1983 she coined womanist, meaning a Black feminist or feminist of color, to name a politics grown from Black women's lives rather than borrowed.

The Color Purple appeared in 1982 and took both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award the following year, the first Pulitzer for fiction won by a Black woman. Steven Spielberg filmed it in 1985 with Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey. Then came the argument. The NAACP picketed the Los Angeles premiere and accused the film of stereotypical portrayals of Black males. Ishmael Reed called the book a near-criminal assault on Black family life and heterosexual relationships. James Baldwin said the film mangled the novel. Michele Wallace wrote that it smothered Walker's feminist message in syrupy Disney-like sentimentality. Winfrey answered that it was one woman's story, not a history of every Black man or woman in the country. Clarence Page called it a debate that divided much of the nation's Black intelligentsia against itself.

Since 2012 she has recommended David Icke's books. The British conspiracist writes that shapeshifting reptilians and Rothschild Zionists run the world. On Desert Island Discs she named one as her desert island book. In a 2018 New York Times Book Review column she listed another, which draws on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and questions the Holocaust. A poem she posted in 2017 about the Talmud was read by critics as antisemitic. The Anti-Defamation League called her 2013 essay collection replete with fervently anti-Jewish ideas. Walker denies antisemitism, says Icke is not antisemitic, and calls the criticism an effort to silence her support for Palestinians. In 2022 the Bay Area Book Festival withdrew its invitation.

Alice Walker's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Once book
  First poetry collection, begun in East Africa and finished at Sarah Lawrence 1968
• The Third Life of Grange Copeland book
  First novel, written while she taught in Mississippi 1970
• Meridian book
  A novel of civil rights workers in the South 1976
• The Color Purple book
  Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, filmed by Spielberg in 1985 1982
• In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose book
  36 pieces written between 1966 and 1982, and where womanist is defined 1983
• Possessing the Secret of Joy book
  A novel about female genital cutting, carrying characters over from The Color Purple 1992

• February 9, 1944 aged 0 Born in Eatonton, Georgia, the eighth and last child of two sharecroppers Her mother, Minnie Tallulah Grant, also took in sewing.
• 1952 aged ~8 A brother shoots her in the right eye with a BB gun She was eight. The family had no car, and the eye was permanently blinded.
• 1961 aged ~17 Leaves for Spelman College as valedictorian, on a state scholarship Howard Zinn and Staughton Lynd taught her there. When Zinn was fired she took a scholarship to Sarah Lawrence.
• March 17, 1967 aged 23 Marries the civil rights lawyer Melvyn Leventhal in New York, because Mississippi forbids it They moved to Jackson that year and were the first legally married interracial couple in the state since it banned such marriages.
• 1973 aged ~29 Finds Zora Neale Hurston's unmarked grave in Fort Pierce, Florida, and buys a headstone The marker reads A GENIUS OF THE SOUTH, a line from Jean Toomer.
• 1975 aged ~31 Publishes In Search of Zora Neale Hurston in Ms. magazine The essay is substantially why Hurston is read today.
• April 18, 1983 aged 39 Wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Color Purple The first Black woman to win it. The National Book Award followed the same year.
• December 18, 1985 aged 41 The Spielberg film premieres in Los Angeles and is picketed by the NAACP It drew 11 Academy Award nominations and won none.
• March 8, 2003 aged 59 Arrested outside the White House protesting the coming Iraq War Maxine Hong Kingston and Terry Tempest Williams were among the 26 others taken in.

• Zora Neale Hurston 1891–1960
  Novelist and folklorist whose work preserved Black Southern speech and culture and became central to the American canon. recovered
• Howard Zinn 1922–2010
  Historian and Boston University professor whose A People's History of the United States reshaped historical narratives. mentor
• Martin Luther King Jr. 1929–1968
  Baptist minister and civil rights leader whose nonviolent activism ended legal segregation in America. influenced by
• Gloria Steinem b. 1934
  Writer and organizer who became one of the most visible leaders of second-wave feminism. colleague at Ms.
• Steven Spielberg b. 1946
  Director and producer whose blockbusters and dramas have defined American cinema for five decades. filmed her novel
• Oprah Winfrey b. 1954
  Media executive and talk show host who built a multimedia empire and became one of the most influential women in the world. starred in the film of her novel