...2013 Alice Walker Section 1 Biography According to Michael Mayer, Alice Walker, one of the best-known and most highly respected writers in the United States, was born in Eatonton, Georgia. She was the eighth and last child of Willie Lee and Minnie Lou Grant Walker. Her parents were sharecroppers, and money was not always available as needed. At the tender age of eight, Walker lost sight of one eye when one of her older brothers shot her with a BB gun by accident. This left her in somewhat a depression, and she secluded herself from the other children. Walker felt like she was no longer a little girl because of the traumatic experience she had undergone, and she was filled with shame because she thought she was unpleasant to look at. During this seclusion from other kids of her age, Walker began to write poems. Hence, her career as a writer began. Walker found the love of her life in 1967, a white activist civil rights lawyer named Mel Leventhal, and they married him in 1967. A year later she gave birth to their daughter, Rebecca. It was not until she began teaching that her writing career really took off. She began teaching at Jackson State, then Tougaloo, and finally at Wellesley College. Walker was involved in the Civil Rights Movement and spoke for the women’s movement, the anti-apartheid movement, for the anti-nuclear movement, and against female genital mutilation. She also started her own publishing company: “The Wild Trees Press”, in 1984. Walker refused...
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...“The Color Purple” by Alice Walker The Color Purple is an epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. It was later adapted into a film and musical of the same name. This novel is making arguments on the topic “racism and sexism”. The Color Purple is an extraordinary novel that’s full of surprises. Taking place mostly in rural Georgia, the story focuses on female black life in the 1930s in the southern United States, addressing numerous issues including their exceedingly low position in American social culture. Alice Walker’s biography [pic] Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1994, in Eatonton, Georgia. Living in the racially divided South, Walker attended segregated schools. She graduated from her high school as the valedictorian of her class. With the help of a scholarship, she was able to go to Spelman College in Atlanta. Later, she switched to Sarah Lawrence College in New York City. While at Sarah Lawrence, Walker visited Africa as part of a study-abroad program. She graduated in 1965—the same year that she published her first short story. After college, Walker worked as a social worker, teacher and lecturer. She became active in the Civil Rights Movement, fighting for equality for all African Americans. Her experiences informed her first collection of poetry, Once, which was published in 1968. Better known now as a novelist, Walker showed her talents...
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...The Color Purple Walker, Alice- 1982 Alexis Moss Alice Walker wrote The Color Purple (book titles in italics) to give her insight of men, women, love or the lack thereof, physical, mental, and verbal abuse. The men within this book were very powerful. It would be safe to say that the men were slave owners, and the women were the slaves. Celie was the main character of the book, and she endures every form of abuse from individuals in her life that should have been showing her love. Everyone abused her except her sister Nettie, whom she found herself trying to protect from their father. Celie’s mother abused and cursed her, even while being on her sick bed because her husband desired to have sex with Celie more than her. Walker uses this unique protagonist to comment on the racism, sexism, and abuse of women who was so prevalent in the early 1900s. Walker used Celie’s inner monologue (in the form of letters to God and her sister Nettie) to convey the overarching message of the novel; the power of finding that inner voice that leads to freedom from the oppression of society’s expectations. The plot takes place over a 30-year period in the reconstruction South of Georgia. They live in a rural farm community and were a hotbed of activity for civil rights and suffrage. This book was written from the other side of racism, from the victim’s point of view forcing the reader to see the result of bigotry. Racism not only affected Celie’s life but also the life of her friend Sofia...
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...Perseverant Perseverance is defined as steady persistence in a course of action, in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement. In my personal opinion perseverant (the adjective of perseverance) represents this story in many aspects. Almost every individual throughout The Color Purple by Alice Walker had to be perseverant, especially the stories main character Celie. Throughout the story Celie faced many obstacles she was mentally and physically abused, her loved ones were taken from her, and she was alone. Yet, through all her trials and tribulations she continued to live and look after others. She looked after kids that weren’t hers though they gave her a rough time, she cleaned and cooked for a man who abused her and did nothing but sit on his butt while she worked in the field, and took care of another woman whom her husband was having an affair with and upon first meeting Celie called her ugly. Yet, Celie continued to look out for them and not complain. In addition to Celie her sister Nettie was perseverant. Though she was thousands of miles away from her sister in a foreign country she never stopped caring for her sister. She persisted in writing to Celie, though all the time she knew that Albert was withholding the letters from her sister, she even mentioned this fact in one of her letters to Celie. Shug was also perseverant in her singing career. Everyone was against her except for Albert who was in love with her and Celie whom admired her. Though people thought...
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...the most important in literary masterpieces because everything within an literature work depends on the theme. The theme outline the whole story and what is going to take place. The prior expectations regarding the literary masterpieces and my expectations of this course are based off not only my own knowledge but the way I critically analyze literature and my experiences with literary masterpieces. In all honesty, when it comes to a literary masterpiece, I expect them to fall into literature categories such as, novels, short stories, poems, comedies, dramas, mysteries, nonfiction and fiction. The reason being is based off my experiences from my very first English literature class. Where we had to read literary masterpieces such as, Alice Walker short story,"Everyday Use" and "Color Purple". Also, Langton Hughes poems," Let America be America" and "Still Here." The poem " Let America be America Again," express the past events that occurred in history not only the racism amongst blacks but also whites and it reflects the history of today with having the first African American President. Also, the poem " Still here" express the struggle a person may go through on a daily basic regardless of the harsh treatment from people at the end of the day your...
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...The color purple is a story about resilience and victory in life. This story line moved me and lifted me up, it is a great, warm, battling, unforgiving and triumphant movie. It reflected on how male dominance in a society or marriage could impact a woman’s life. This movie shows the struggles women faces and how bond in friendship can help in gaining power to overcome oppression. The movie showed the life of a young black, oppressed and naive girl Celie, who grow up in the early 1900's. By age fourteen she has been pregnant by her father twice. Both of children were both taken away from, after having the second baby her father took the baby away from her arm and warned her not to tell anybody. Since she lost her mother the only person closer to her is her younger sister Nettie. Their close relationship is torn when Celie she was forced to marry a local farmer, "Mister" (Albert Johnson) a widower with four small children. Who actually wanted to marry Celie's younger, prettier sister, Nettie. While in her husband’s house Celie was beaten, he uses her as a maid and as a receptacle for his lust, and constantly tells her she is ugly, a continuation of what her father started. Her sister Nettie, flee for safety when their father tries to assault her. While living with Celie in her husband house Nettie teaches her how to pronounce and read words. But then Albert comes after her, making sexual advances towards her, when she refused he throws her off his land. Leaving Celie more distraught...
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...Alice Walker the author of the book The Color Purple had many difficulties thought out her childhood. For Alice growing up in her time was not as easy as it might seem. She faced many obstacles that made it seem impossible for her to accomplish her goals, even though she had a long run through difficulties Alice still tried her very best to accomplish what she wanted and didn't let her obstacles stop her from trying. Even Though, Alice faced many difficulties she still had many extraordinary accomplishments that made her the person who she is today. Alice Malsenior Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton Georgia and is still alive till this day. Alice is known as an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and activist. She worked as a teacher, social worker and lecturer and Alice was part of the Civil Rights Movement that took place in Mississippi in the 1960s....
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...Alice Walker This video is about a woman by the name of Alice Walker. If you recognize that name that is because she is the person who wrote The Color Purple. Alice Walker was born in Georgia in the 1940s. She was in the middle of the civil rights movement. She saw and experienced everything from peaceful protests all the way to being put in jail for the same thing. Alice experienced the pain of being discriminated against just for being black. There were some things in her life that she could not control and some that she could. She could not control the fact that she was black but she could control the fact she married a person of a different color. So not only was she a person of color but she also married someone of what was called the “opposite color” back then. She experienced many challenges in life because of the color of her skin. Her parents grew up as slaves and she was a sharecropper. Alice worked 11 hours a day for $17 per week to help pay to go to college. She was voted valedictorian in high school. She eventually went on to go to Spelman College and transferred to Sarah Lawrence College on a full scholarship and graduated in 1965. Alice became interested in the civil rights movement because of her professor Howard Zinn. The man that she went on to marry was named Melvyn Roseman Leventhal. After she married him she was a writer for Jackson State College and Tougaloo College. Alice was also inspired by Zora Neale Hurston. Alice went on to write lots of...
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...Cathcart 1 Ciera Cathcart Period 0 Mrs.Allan Honors English 28 April 2014 The Hidden Outlier Truth Lies, fairness and kindness is the reality of all americans no matter what color, race, or who you are. Nobody wants to be singled out ever.The treatment of women has always been a hard subject in society and many subjects of novels. Walker dramatically shows realistic imagery, as she reels the reader in by conditions black women put up with and what life can be like when you are abused. In The Color Purple ,by Alice Walker, tackles the subject of sexism in communties. The first amendment does issue the fact that women's rights should be their and that everyone has the freedom, and that we all have quality The Color Purple written by Alice Walker should not be banned, through various arguments. Some including that it is an honest depiction of African-American life in the early 20th century, it addresses child abuse issues, rape, that still need to be addressed in our society, and because the freedom of speech is a constitutional right. The Color Purple was banned due to explicit language, sexual content, and racist stereotypes. Although, you would think the banning of the book is very difficult or hard but it is actually simple. There are two different ways to get a book removed, either banning or challenging. Banning a book is the removal no matter what. A Challenged book is when its an attempt to remove...
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...Culture struggle In the story “Everyday Use” Alice Walker clearly depicts two contrasting meanings of heritage through characterization and symbolism of her two daughters, walker highlights the difference between two interpretations of African American culture and heritage. The gist of the story in “Everyday Use” is how mama bit by bit rejects the superficial beliefs of Dee, her older and extraordinary daughter in admiration of the values about heritage from her less fortunate daughter Maggie. With a more profound thought walker is going into the contrasting culture and heritage of African Americans and superficial African Americans. Mama narrates the story, Ms. Johnson or “Mama” is a woman whose everyday life is part of her culture and heritage. Mama describes herself as, “a large, big-boned woman with rough, man working hands. In the winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day. I can kill a hog as mercilessly as a man”(155). With knowing that only has a second grade education we can say that she has no choice but to follow tradition and heritage, and stay in the home like she grew up in and work the field as other before her did. Even as mama is more or less forced to do so, still she has a great understanding and value of the concept of heritage and culture. In knowing Mama’s love and compassion for her heritage she gives the quilts to Maggie, because Dee wants the quilts to preserve and display her heritage of her ancestors. Mama gives the quilts...
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...their lives and from society. In the novel, The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, the narrator is an abused black woman named Celie. Walker uses this unique protagonist to comment on the racism, sexism, and abuse of women that was so prevalent in the early 1900s. Walker used Celie’s inner monologue (in the form of letters to God and her sister Nettie) to convey the overarching message of the novel; the power of finding that inner voice that leads to freedom from the oppression of society’s expectations. Celie started off the book as a powerless victim of the men in her life with no voice. Walker uses Celie’s first person point of view to tell her life story of abuse and submissive silence. Celie’s only form of communication about her thoughts and feelings are through letters to God that are brief at first but then are more complex as Celie gets more confident and finds her voice. In the beginning, Celie’s inner voice had been beaten into silence at an early age by her abusive step-father and later by her husband with emotional and physical abuse. She survived by “[not] fight(ing)… stay[ing] where (she) told” and staying silent letting her step father believe that she is” too dumb to keep going to school” (Walker 2.254, 3. 342) Celie was only able to find her voice once she stood up to her husband and confronted him about his abuse telling him “youse children is rotten”, “why you beat me for what you done to them?” (Walker 7.94,7.92) Once Celie found her voice, she began to “see the...
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...Laquedia Kelly English 1102 MWF Professor Wruz 20 March 2014 EVERYDAY USE Alice walker Alice walker’s “Everyday Use” is a story about the differences of a family split between tradition/heritage and the allure of dreaming big. Told in 1st person point of view, the narrator is the matriarch of the family dubbed “mama” throughout the story. The narrator’s name is never revealed because her role as speaker, through lengthy inner monologues, diminishes the “true focus” of the story which is on Maggie and Dee, “Mama’s” two daughters. So, to counteract this problem the author doesn’t give Mama a name thereby shifting focus to the interactions between the daughters. Race plays a major part of this story as the author capitalizes on the idea of heritage; however, she does not let it overwhelm the plot, slowly dropping subtle hints about their appearances/ race using situations of happenstance. She writes when explaining a thought, “Who can even imagine me looking a white man straight in the face” (590) and “Don’t ask me why: in 1927 colored ask fewer questions than they do now.” when explaining her reasons for never having a proper education. We find out over a span of a couple paragraphs that the characters are black. Two worlds clash as the narrator guides us through the lives of her two daughters who are completely different, one living a life of “golden opportunity” the other a life of simplicity. The story opens as Mama is awaiting the arrival of her eldest daughter...
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...Hannah Huie Kate Evans Composition II 05 February 2015 Analysis of Characters in “Everyday Use” Alice Walker’s short story, “Everyday Use,” illustrates the importance of family and heritage. Many times in the story, Ms. Walker brings up heritage and the importance of recognizing of what it means to belong to something or someone. Her characters each go through change. Mama seems to switch her favoritism from Dee to Maggie and realizes that Dee is not the perfect child she had come to idolize her as being. Dee comes back home to realize that she no longer able to get her way as she used too and that her place in the household has changed. Lastly, Maggie is recognized as having the gift of knowing her heritage and having the ability to add to it by being able to quilt. As we read through the story we see that Ms. Walker paints a wonderful picture of difference between Dee and the family she left behind. Mama is the voice behind this short story. She narrates and you only see the story through her point of view. As she waits for her daughter Dee to arrive she has a fantasy about her life being on a TV show. She dreams of being a beautiful women, whose hair glistens in the spotlight of the stage, whose witty tongue has the famous TV personality Johnny Carson trying to keep up. As the reader continues they would be able to see that Mama’s true view of herself is not as flattering, she doesn’t mince the truth, and doesn’t have any false illusions about her looks...
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...Brianna Morrell Professor Richard Raleigh ENC 1102 (02): Composition and Literature 12 November 2015 Alice Walker From Evelyn C. White’s “A Life” Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award, dedicated her life to establishing a literary canon of African American women writers and to encouraging the “survival whole” of all women. She has actively sought to win recognition for literary “foremothers” such as Zora Neale Hurston and to place their contributions within the fabric of her own artistry. Walker was the valedictorian of her high school class, and when she was graduated in 1961, she was offered a scholarship to Spelman College in Atlanta. After traveling to Africa in 1964. Walker returned to the United States and entered Sarah Lawrence College. She soon discovered that she was pregnant, and just as quickly she found herself depressed and on the verge of suicide. Walker made a decision to end the pregnancy instead of her life and subsequently wrote her first published short story, “To Hell with Dying.” She also produced Once (1965), her first published collection of poems, during her years at Sarah Lawrence. Alice entered the world before the midwife’s arrival February 9, 1944(White 12), into a family of sharecroppers near Eatonton, Georgia. Her father, Willie Lee Walker, was the grandson of slaves. Alice birth marked the first time that Mr. and Mrs. Walker were able to pay the midwife for her assistance (White 13) Walker’s relationship with her father became...
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...In The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, Celie, Nettie, and Mr. are developed gradually throughout the novel and their actions all seem to be intertwined and what happens to one of them effects one if not both of the other two. There is a strong relationship between Celie and Nettie not just because they are siblings but because Nettie is one out of two people Celie loves, and this doesn't exist between Celie and any other of her siblings. There are various things that bring these two even closer, one being the discovery that they both come from a different father which Celie discover from a letter from Nettie which reads "...and I pray with all my heart that you get this letter, if none of the others. Pa is not our Pa." (182) and the one they thought was there flesh and blood father was actually only their step father. This brings them closer for it is so important and they are each other’s direct relatives for both parents are dead and they do not have any other brothers or sisters. The second point is that they keep in contact when Nettie is traveling to and from Africa. This is more or less an escape for Celie for she does not really have anyone except for Shug that she loves so the letters are a way for Celie to keep not only with Nettie but also her two children that she has only seen for a for a couple of days in her entire life. So the main bond between Nettie and Celie is one of love, and they demonstrate this by constantly trying to stay in touch even though...
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