The Influence of Alice Walker
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The influence of Alice Walker
The first African American indentured servant was brought to the western world in 1619. This marked the beginning of oppression and discrimination of African Americans for centuries to come (“African American History”). Dating back to Colonial America, women were never treated equally, and still continue to fight for equality to this very day. These were strong stances which influenced Alice Walker to tackle the contents she filled her novels, poems, and short stories with. She put her first footprint in society with her hit novel The Color Purple in 1982 which focuses on a girl Celie who faces abuse and bigotry in the face of her father, and future husband Albert Johnson. She once said, “My main impulse on writing fiction is to record history, and the history of my family, like that of all black southerners, is one of dispossession” (Cornish). The issues Alice Walker tackled were some of the most controversial issues to ever come across the human race, as a society oppression and discrimination are issues we still face today, but thanks to activist like Miss.Walker, we are bounds and leaps closer to ending these issues for good.
Alice Malsenior Walker was one of the most influential figures in society, who casted her views on feminism and racism in a public manner which gave her a devoted following. ”I am preoccupied with the spiritual survival, the survival whole, of my people. But beyond that, I am committed to exploring the oppressions, the insanities, the loyalties, and the triumphs of black women. … For me, black women are the most fascinating creations in the world” (Interview with Mary Jarrett). She is stating how African American woman have always been held back from their potential in society due to sexism and oppression. She then wrote her books to exemplify the bigotry that African Americans faced in everyday life, and to show the inequality African Americans/women faced in society. Miss.Walker was born February 9, 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia to Minnie Lou Tallulah Grant a maid, and Willie Lee Walker a farmer. Alice Walker was the last of eight children, and enjoyed a relatively happy childhood despite living in poverty, discrimination in the face of Jim Crow laws, and threats from the Ku Klux Klan (Cornish). Even with all of those obstacles her parents still made sure she received an education along with the rest of her siblings. “I grew up believing there was nothing, literally nothing, my mother couldn’t do once she set her mind to it. So when the women’s movement happened, I was really delighted because I felt they were trying to go where my mother was and where I always assumed I would go”(White 22). Her mother was a very powerful influence in her life, she got into the activist movement because as a child her mother showed her what a strong determined woman looks like. Alice Walker has been faced with many obstacles in her life, including when A game of “cowboys and Indians” ended tragically when one of Walkers older brothers shot her in the eye with a BB gun. The familys isolation and poverty meant that the injured girl did not visit a doctor until a week later. By that time a cataract had already formed, leaving her blind in one eye (Lystad). She wouldnt let her disability limit her though, Walker graduated from high school in 1961 as class valedictorian, prom queen, and received a scholarship to attend Spelman College in Atlanta, one of the first historic black women’s colleges in the U.S. (Lystad). She would later transfer out of Spelman to attend Sarah Lawrence College where she would finish her education at the primarily white womens school, in Bronxville, New York. During her last year there, Walker learned she was pregnant. She later got an abortion which led her into a deep depression (Kimmich). After college, Walker worked as a social worker, teacher and lecturer (Lystad). She became active in the Civil Rights movement fighting for equality for all African Americans.
Hand in hand with the recurring theme of the black woman’s struggle in a white dominated society is Walker’s potrayal of the black man and the black woman’s struggle against in society. In The Third Life of Grange Copeland, Meridian, and The Color Purple, black men react against their economic and social oppression by dominating their wives, lovers, and daughters (Jarrett). Walker has received harsh criticism for these portrayals, but she creates them from a moral responsibility to what she believes to be the truth through honesty and understanding. In The Third Life of Grange Copeland, Walker analyzes her black male characters’ she describes violence in an attempt to understand the frustrations and results of hidden anger. Walker ultimately demands that black men take responsibility for their actions. The tension between black men and women usually takes priority in Walker’s novels over the issue that triggers the oppression of black people by white people. In the tradition of Hurston’s fiction ( one of Walkers biggest inspirations), Walker’s black characters do not think about white people constantly. Sam Cornish once said “What’s different about Alice is that she had the most incisive way of telling the truth….She wrote with a daring force that separated her from the rest”(Cornish). Walker focuses more on the internal struggles of black people and the African American community than on the relationship between the races. Walker demands that black men take responsibility for their actions, so she makes all of her black characters look at themselves, to find their inner strengths and talents and improve their lives. This is not to say that civil rights issues and political activism do not play a role in Walker’s fiction, only that civil