Alice Walker
Alice Walker, American author of novels, essays, and poetry is best known for her 1982 work The Color Purple. She was the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. She is a known advocate for racial rights, women’s rights, and peace. She has written over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She has always taken on the challenge of providing light and direction in dark times, portraying the struggle of black people throughout history, particularly the experiences of black women. Some of her topics include rape, violence, sexism, racism, isolation, and despair (6).
She was the youngest of eight children. Alice Walker grew up in a small rural town in Georgia where her parents were impoverished sharecroppers. A childhood accident left
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The shot of a bb gun left her blind. She retreated into a world of books. At fourteen, doctors removed the cataract in her eye and restored her appearance and sense of self esteem(6). Adored by all, she by all means enjoyed a happy early childhood. Her father was a sharecropper on a white owned farm, and her mother was working in the cotton fields and later as a maid (6).Despite poverty and discrimination in the face of Jim Crow Laws and threats from the KKK, the Walkers saw to it their children that they would attend school. Her father being a sharecropper on a white owned farm, and her mother working in the cotton fields and later as a maid(6). Walker attended a segregated school. She recalled she had terrific teachers who encouraged her to believe the world she was reaching for actually existed. Although she grew in a poor environment, she was supported by her community(10). She graduated from high school in 1961 as class valedictorian and prom queen and also received a scholarship to attend Spelman college in Atlanta, one of the first historic black women’s colleges in U.S. She then became