Alice Walker

Abstract

This study highlights the works and efforts of Alice Walker and her Perspectives about Black women that are reflected through her works. It also discusses Alice Walker's perspective about the creativity and intellectual thinking of these Black women. Her book “In search of our Mother's Garden” clearly proves the fact that these Black women are also able of creative thinking and much more than inferior animals. This study also highlights treatment with these Black women as machines and tools for the labor. Against all these social perspectives, Alice's works reflect that Black women are strong and creative.

Alice Walker

“Some colored people so scared of whitefolks they claim to love the cotton gin”

(Alice Walker, The Color Purple)

Introduction

Alice Walker was born on 9th February 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia. She was eighth child of Willie Lee and Minnie Lou Grant Walker. Like other Blacks, their life was not much different. They worked in the farms borrowed from the White landowners. Alice walker was a bright student and she always loved to read works by great writers and scholars. Her interest in reading and writing began to flourish with the passage of time. She learned reading and writing at school, and small home filled with brothers and sisters, taught her to fight and struggle to face the challenges and truth of life. She observed people around her, their sufferings and problems faced by her father. Depression and degradation faced by the whites and his spirit to serve for their people and to have their rights as free citizens were all important factors to mould her thoughts in a productive way.

Discussion

Life and Works of Alice Walker

In her childhood while playing with her brothers she was accidently got injury in the right eye. She got shot with the toy gun of one of her brother. Her father tried to carry her to the doctor, but there was no transport and when her father stopped a car of a White man and he told him to take his daughter to the hospital he drove off. She lost her right eye and even then she continued her education. She joined a new school, after they moved to new community; she faced difficulty to adjust with her other students. Her parents realized this problem and send her back to the old community to her grandparents where she completed her studies.

Her success in school helped to gain the scholarship and she joined Spelman, a college for black women in Atlanta, Georgia. She completed her studies and was awarded with the degree of bachelor of Art from Sarah Lawrence College in 1965. This provided her opportunity to travel different places and seeing different people. She learnt methods and techniques of old artists and learn about different cultures. She also worked at various places including New York City Welfare Department and then joined activists and participated to get freedom from slavery. She married to Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal and gave birth to a ...