Walker's collection of early nonfiction serves as the manifesto of a young artist—and an illuminating self-portrait  What is a womanist? Alice Walker sets out to define the concept in this anthology of early essays and other nonfiction pieces. As she outlines it, a womanist is a person who prefers to side with the oppressed: with women, with people of color, with the poor. As a writer, Walker has always taken such people as her primary subjects, and her search for paths toward self-possession and freedom always holds out hope for the transformative power of compassion and love. Whether she's taking on nuclear proliferation, the promise and problems of the civil rights movement, or her own creative process, Walker always brings to bear a fearless determination to tell the truth.   This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alice Walker including rare photos from the author's personal collection.

ReviewA thin, often didactic, largely disappointing collection of stories from an enormously gifted author of short fiction (In Love & Trouble) and novels - whose storytelling powers seem wasted on the generally simple-minded material here. The book's first story, for instance, jumps right off with a dazzlingly convincing narrative voice - that of a black Southern small-town woman - but interest soon sinks as the story's bland premise becomes clear: it's a fictionalized, sentimental little riff on Elvis Presley and the black blues writer-singer whose music helped make him famous (with unsubtle echoes of the familiar exploitation issue). Likewise, a vignette of an elderly black, much-feted writer - which is deliciously told but holds only the most obvious ironies. And most of the more intensely serious stories here appear to sacrifice texture of character and incident to sociological debate-and-discussion: reminiscences of black/white sex during the Civil Rights years; two contrasted black women's lives over the years; a monologue-anecdote about a black woman who kills her white lover/abuser; plus some unabashed propaganda re pornography (with special reference to the portrayal of black women in porn). When concentrating on love and marriage, however, Walker seems to ease off a bit and does some genuine exploring: "The Lover" - about a black woman having an affair with a charming, intellectually petty New York Jew at a writers' colony - is unformed but alive; "Laurel" verges on melodrama - a now-married black woman haunted by her mad, white-country-boy ex-lover - but has undeniable grab; and best of all is "The Abortion," the painful anatomy of a deteriorating marriage. Ragged, often superficial work, then - with more sociological interest (the black/feminist intersection) than literary. (Kirkus Reviews ) About the AuthorBest-selling novelist ALICE WALKER is the author of five other novels, five collections of short stories, six collections of essays, seven volumes of poetry, including the most recent Hard Times Require Furious Dancing, and several children’s books. Her books have been translated into more than two dozen languages.

Review"Alice Walker is a lavishly gifted writer."--The New York Times Book Review"Almost no one has tried to tell us about the early lives, the INNER early lives of Black people.... Alice Walker is a storyteller." -- Robert Coles, The New Yorker"Alice Walker is exceptionally brave, and takes on subjects at which most writers would flinch and quail..." -- Alice Adams, The San Francisco Chronicle "Walker dares to reveal truths about men and women, about blacks and whites, about God and love.... And we, like Alice Walker's marvelous characters, come away transformed by knowledge and love but most of all by wonder." --EssenceAbout the AuthorBest-selling novelist ALICE WALKER is the author of five other novels, five collections of short stories, six collections of essays, seven volumes of poetry, including the most recent Hard Times Require Furious Dancing, and several children’s books. Her books have been translated into more than two dozen languages.

In Walker's follow-up to The Color Purple, webs of characters are drawn toward critical confrontations with history In The Temple of My Familiar, Celie and Shug from The Color Purple subtly shadow the lives of dozens of characters, all dealing in some way with the legacy of the African experience in America. From recent African immigrants, to a woman who grew up in the mixed-race rainforest communities of South America, to Celie's own granddaughter living in modern-day San Francisco, all must come to understand the brutal stories of their ancestors to come to terms with their own troubled lives. As Walker follows these astonishing characters, she weaves a new mythology from old fables and history, a profoundly spiritual explanation for centuries of shared African-American experience.