ALICE WALKER - ONEWORLD'S FEB. 9, 2014 BHM HONOREE

[N'Zinga Shani]

Happy Birthday Alice Malsenior Walker – 70 years young on this Feb. 9, 2014, and today’s OneWorld Black History Month Honoree.  Alice Walker is a gift to America.

Alice Walker is an African-American, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, poet and feminist, best known to the American public as the author of The Color Purple.  Alice Walker, a committed civil rights activist, has done a great deal more than pen a powerful story about aspects of the African American woman’s experience in the 1900.  One of the courageous things she did as a young person was to turn down a scholarship to study in Paris, and to go instead to Spellman College in Atlanta and later to Sarah Lawrence in New York.  That decision has had a significant impact on Ms. Walker and on a large segment of the American population for reasons one can understand by learning more about the life of this remarkably brave, brilliant and insightful woman.

The Color Purple, published in 1982, was her third novel. The compelling work won Walker both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction in 1983. The book was later turned into a movie, directed by Steven Spielberg; the leading actors were Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover. In the humble opinion of this writer, “Possessing the Secret of Joy” published in 1992 is one of the most powerful piece of writing she has produced.  The book led to a wonderful documentary (by British-Indian film-maker, Pratibha Parmar) called “Warrior Marks.” However, in our world, where the needs and concerns of Third World Women do not get the attention it deserves, the media world has not responded to this novel as it did for the Color Purple.

As a child, after a devastating accident that left her with a self-conscious eye injury, Alice Walker found an escape in reading. She was the Valedictorian of her high school graduating class. Alice Walker’s success is solid proof that EDUCATION MATTERS, and it should matter a great deal to African American children if we are to break –the- cycle of poverty and despair.

Learn a great deal more about Alice Walker at her official site linked here as well as several other links that provide a more comprehensive view and reflections (especially from the UK) of this brilliant, complex and insightful creative force.

•  http://alicewalkersgarden.com/about-2/  Alice Walker's official web site
• http://www.biography.com/people/alice-walker-9521939/videos Short video with Ms. Walker
• An ode to Alice Walker, a complex, special author weathering all assault - http://articles.philly.com/2014-02-07/news/47093692_1_warrior-marks...
• Author-activist Alice Walker profiled in PBS film 'Beauty in Truth' 
• http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/walker/walker-alice_NOVELS.html Alice Walker Unbanned. Here readers will find a list of all of her novels that have been published todate.