VPARA NPAR@ ` :TEXT ` ,Walker, Alice1944╨ novelist and poetBorn on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia, Alice Walker was the eighth child of African-American sharecroppers. She spent most of her time with her five brothers. While still a child, she was accidentally blinded in one eye by one of them. Her mother gave her a typewriter and allowed her to write instead of doing chores. She excelled in school in her small, Southern town and graduated as class valedictorian. She received a scholarship to attend Spelman College, where she became an activist. In 1963 she transferred to Sarah Lawrence College where she acquired a different perspective on the South and on the African-American community. She graduated with a B.A. in 1965 and later received an honorary Ph.D. from Russell Sage College in 1972. In the 1960s she campaigned in Georgia to register voters and to protest on behalf of those removed from the welfare rolls. During that period she also worked with Head Start in Mississippi and took a job with the Welfare Department in New York City. Walker╒s first book of poetry, Once, 1968, comprised poems publicly acknowledging the pain and isolation of an early pregnancy and abortion, which she considered a social experience shared by others that transcended her personal experience. She was married in 1967 (and later divorced in 1976); she gave birth to Rebecca three days after finishing her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, 1970, a narrative that spans sixty years and three generations. A second volume of poetry, Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems and In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Woman, both appeared in 1973. The latter, her first collection of short stories, bears witness to sexist violence and abuse in the African-American community. Meridian, 1976, about the coming of age of several civil rights workers in the 1960s was followed by Good Night Willie Lee, I╒ll see you in the Morning, 1979, a third collection of poems. You Can╒t Keep a Good Woman Down, 1981, Walker╒s second book of short stories, addressed violence, rape, pornography and difficult relationships. The Color Purple, 1982, an epistolary novel loosely based on the story of Walker╒s great-grandmother, depicts the growing up and self-realization of an African-American woman between 1909 and 1947 in a town in Georgia. It won a Pulitzer Prize and its already broad appeal increased with the release of Steven Spielberg╒s popular film adaptation of it. Besides fiction and poetry, Walker published Langston Hughes, American Poet, 1974, a biography of Langston Hughes. She also recovered and championed the work of Zora Neale Hurston. In 1983 Walker published a collection of essays entitled In Search of Our Mothers╒ Gardens: Womanist Prose praising the beauty and love she found in her own heritage and introducing the term ╥womanist╙ to designate African-American feminists. The Temple of My Familiar, 1989, and Possessing the Secret of Joy, 1992, condemned the African practice of female circumcision. Throughout her works, Walker confronted the struggle, pain, and spirituality of African-American society and history. She held several university-level teaching positions and won many literary awards, including the American Book Award, 1983, and a Guggenheim fellowship, 1979. She moved to the San Francisco area in 1979. ≥styl ` % ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ + !I ╥ 5¬ ╙ !I # 5¬ $ !I C !I G !I Æ !I │ !I ≈ 5¬ ° !I !I 9 !I > !I i !I !I !I k !I ¥ !I ┬ !I Γ !I V 5¬ W !I g !I τ !I
