Today is International Women’s Day and it is also Women’s History Month. Join me in recognizing the contributions of women across the world who committed to missions that have advanced the freedom, culture, health, and development of not only women but countless people everywhere.
Main Facts
Alice Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia, on February 9th 1944. She is a Women’s Rights Activist and a Civil Rights Activist. In 1983, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel The Color Purple (1982).
Early Years
She comes from a poor sharecroppers’ family. At the age of eight, she was seriously injured in the right eye from a BB gun fired by one of her brothers; after this accident, she became shy and withdrawn. She resorted to writing and reading poetry. As a high-school student she excelled; she attended the Sarah Lawrence College in New York and went to Africa as part of a study-abroad program. She published her first short story in 1965, the same year she graduated.
Early Career
After her graduation, she was employed as a social worker, a teacher, and a lecturer. She became involved in the Civil Rights Movement, claiming equality for African Americans. Her talent in writing novels became evident with the Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970). She produced literary work in all its forms, while she also played a key role in the black feminist movement.
Major Novel
Her third novel, The Color Purple (1980) won her great critical acclaim and two awards: the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Award for Fiction in 1983. The narrator is Celie, a woman that is abused by her father and subsequently by her husband; it is a gripping exploration of the female African American experience; which consisted in facing double oppression as a colonial object in a racist white culture and as woman in a sexist black culture.
A Consistent Activist
Her encounter with Martin Luther King in 1960 convinced her to go back to the American South and fight for the Civil Rights Movement. In 1983, she invented the word Womanism, which refers to Black feminism. It is meant to unify all colored feminists. In March 2009, as a member of the Code Pink, she and 60 other female activists went to Gaza in order to provide assistance to the people suffering from the Gaza War and persuade Egypt and Israel to open their borders with Gaza. She is a passionate advocate of human rights as well as of rights of all living beings. She often travels to support the poor and the oppressed, and also claims her allegiance to revolutionary teachers and leaders who want to effect a positive change in the world.
Have Your Say…
What do you think has been the greatest contributions of Alice Walker? What inspires you about her work?
Celebrate women today on International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month (and everyday)
Tell us who we should be talking about this month?
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