Nicole Johnson
EN102
Professor Erin Severs
World Famous novelist, poet and feminist Alice Walker, She is best known for her work in the Civil Rights department as well as several feminist Movements. Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia, the youngest in a family of eight children. Her father lee Walker, worked as a sharecropper, her mother as a maid to support their family only taking in Seventeen dollars each week. In the Jim Crow south where black children were expected to work the fields with their parents. Alice’s mother wanted to keep her safe and out of the fields therefor Alice's mother enrolled her in first grade at the age of four. Throughout her childhood, Alice excelled academically while attending segregated schools.
A few years later at the age of eight, walker was shot in the right eye from her brother by accident while playing with a BB gun. As a result of this terrible accident walker developed a good amount of scar tissue over the injured eye. With all this scar tissue forming over her eye it made walker extremely self-conscious about the way she appeared. With this accident it brought great thought to Alice. Having no way to cope with the way she looked walker turned to the books. Walker started to dive into reading and writing poetry. As a result of all this focusing on books walker was an outstanding student academic wise. When it came to graduating high school Walker graduated from Butler-Baker HS in 1961. She received valedictorian of her class and also qualified for a scholarship for disabled students to Spellman College, Which was a prestigious black women’s college in Atlanta. While walker was attending Spellman College on a full scholarship. Getting involved in the growing civil rights movement, a movement which only called for equal rights among races. She knew something wasn’t right when she didn’t agree with the emerging of the civil rights movement. Walker taking part in demonstrations downtown brought conflict to her especially with the conservative administration at Spellman. Walker felt called to a life of activism to make an art, self-expression possible form herself as well as others. Walker shortly left Spellman to head to Sarah Lawrence College in New York with another scholarship in 1963 and receiving her Bachelor degree. While at Sarah Lawrence College Walker couldn’t have felt any closer to the real action. Walker’s junior year was spent in Africa as an exchanged student. Also spending summers in Georgia. Over that summer Walker met Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, a white Jewish civil rights attorney. When walker was back from her trip she found out some news that was extremely unexpected. Walker was pregnant with a baby girl. Without money and support walker seriously considered suicide before anything else. This was a tough situation for her. During this time she turned to writing and actually took it upon herself to slip her poems underneath one of her Professor’s door. Her professor Muriel Ruykeyser’s gave them to the editor of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, which in a few years gets published forming the base of all her writing.
After graduation, Walker was awarded fellowship to both the Bread Loaf Writers’ conference and the MacDowell Colony, which is where walker started to begin writing her first novel, “The third life of grange Copeland in 1967. Returning to Georgia Walker married civil rights lawyer Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal. They were the first legally married interracial couple in Mississippi in 1967. In the same year while living together with Leventhal Alice finally published her story “To hell with dying”. Realizing down the line after a couple years that things were not working out, Walker and Leventhal got a divorce in 1976. Although along with that Walker also published her novel “The third life of grange Copeland” in 1970 just a few days before her daughter Rebecca was born.
Walker made the decision to venture to northern California. After being in California for a while Walkers career started to really take off. Her daughter attended the urban school of San Francisco and surly took after her mother in the academic department of things. Walker taught African American Women’s studies to college students at Wellesley, the University of Massachusetts at Boston, Yale, and the University of California at Berkeley. She is a huge supporter when it comes to environmental causes, and her protests that deal with the oppressive rituals of female circumcision in Africa and the Middle East, making Walker a huge advocate for women’s rights all around the world. Alice soon received a Radcliffe institute scholarship, a Rosenthal foundation award. And an American academy and intuition of arts letters award for her stories published “In love and Trouble” between 1971 and 1973. Walker then came out with a second novel in 1976. “Meridian” which is about the civil rights movement and a series of flashbacks, which was inspired by activist Howard Zinn who was one of her professors at Spellman College. Going right to the next novel “The Color Purple” which was published in 1982. “The Color Purple” explores the female African American experience through the life and struggles of the narrator Celie. This novel won Walker a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the national book award for fiction in 1983. This novel was adapted into a big screen film, directed by Steven Spielberg. Staring many famous people such as Oprah Winfrey to Whoopi Goldberg. “The Color Purple” received 11 Academy Award nominations and later on this novel/movie went even further and landed a spot on Broadway.