Alice Walker is an African-American Novelist and poet who is most known for her novel The Color Purple. Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton Georgia. In her works of novels and poetry, she candidly expresses her experiences being a black woman during the second half of the twentieth century. “From the time she first appeared on the literary scene in 1968 with a collection of poems called Once, Walker has viewed her writing as a means of survival.” This collection of poems showcases her experiences during the civil rights movement and her travels to Africa. Most critics describe her writings as feminists and sexists, but Walker describes herself as a womanist. “Walker coined the term "Womanist" to describe her philosophical stance on the issue of gender” (“Alice Walker”). A lot of her poems are influenced by her being an activist and fighting for not only human rights, but …show more content…
She then transferred to a women’s college in Bronxville, New York where she almost committed suicide. She spent her junior and senior summer in Africa where she became pregnant. Through all these hard times in her life of her contemplating suicide, she wrote a lot of poems about this topic in her collection of Once according to John O’Brien interview (1973), “Most of the poems on suicide in Once come from my feelings during this period of waiting.” These poems relate to the confusion, isolation, and suicidal thoughts she experienced. An example is found in her poem Be Nobody’s Darling “Be an outcast;/Be pleased to walk alone (Uncool).’’ She encourages readers that it’s okay to be an outcast or different from others, just be yourself. The advice Walker gives in this poem is given because Walker herself has experience the feeling of being an outsider when she was younger but was able to overcome these negative feeling by not caring what people think and being