Alice Walker Biography Essay

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Alice Walker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, African American novelist and poet. Walker is most famous for authoring The Color Purple. Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia. Mrs. Walker was the youngest of eight children. The daughter of two sharecroppers, father Willie Lee Walker and mother Minnie Lou Tallulah (O’Reilly 1). Walker attended segregated schools at the age of four she was in the first grade (White as cited in Wolff 19). Walker school teacher noticed her intelligence she was amazed by her intellect (White as cited in Wolff 19). The elementary school where walker attended her father helped to organize (White as cited in Wolff 19). When Walker was eight years old she was shot in the eye with a BB pellet while playing with her two brothers. The whitish scar tissue formed in her damaged eye and she was self-conscious of her visible mark. After that incident Walker withdrew herself from the world around her. Living in the racially divided South (O’Reilly 1). You can be anything you imagine if you put your mind to it. …show more content…

Walker received a scholarship affording her to attended Spelman College in Atlanta Georgia (O’Reilly 1). Then she later transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in New York City. Walker was one of six African American who took part at the college (Abbott 1). While she was at Lawrence Walker went to Africa as part of her study –abroad program. Walker returned from Africa to find out she was with child. She wanted to kill herself due to being pregnant instead she terminated her pregnancy in 1965 (Abbott 1). Walker graduated in 1965 from college in the same year she published her first short story (O’Reilly