Happy Birthday, Alice Walker
Born February 9, 1944, Eatonton, GA
Today, the Best American Essays newsletter celebrates the eighty-first birthday of novelist, poet, activist, and essayist Alice Walker. A prolific essayist, Walker is best known for her 1982 novel The Color Purple, which won a National Book Award and made her the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize.
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"Reading comes in layers: there's the reading one does to understand the current crisis, whatever it is; the reading for pleasure; the reading for the soul."
“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is what is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or person who explained it to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before.”
First published essay:
“The Civil Rights Movement: What Good Was It?” The American Scholar, 1967.
Select nonfiction bibliography:
The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm’s Way, The New Press, 2013.
The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker, The New Press, 2011.
Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer’s Activism, Penguin Random House, 1998.
Essays by Alice Walker reprinted (R) in The Best American Essays (BAE), or listed in Notables (N):
“Redemption Day,” Mother Jones, 1986 (BAE 1987, N).
“Father: For What You Were,” Essence, 1985 (BAE 1986, N).
See also:
Visit Alice Walker’s website.
Visit the Library of Congress collection of Walker’s selected works.
Watch this interview at the Chicago Humanities Festival, 2018.
Listen to Walker reading her poems in the Library of Congress audio archive, 1979.
Read this interview by Donna Seaman, “A Conversation with Alice Walker” in American Libraries Magazine, 2013.
Read “In Search of Alice Walker, or, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” by Valerie Boyd in Creative Nonfiction, 1999.
While I share 1938again's deep and justified misgivings (see her comment) about Walker's unfortunate and deplorable endorsements of various heinous ideas and those who promote them, cancellation is a form of censorship, and censorship is something I cannot endorse in any way. One of the beautiful parts about democracy is being able to choose what and who you read. Eliminate one writer because of their politics, and you are on a slippery slope that will lead right to your own door. IN SEARCH OF OUR MOTHERS GARDENS was an important book for me as a (much younger) writer, as were THE COLOR PURPLE and THE TEMPLE OF MY FAMILIAR. I am deeply troubled and sad that Walker has became so entrenched in alternative facts. Your comment opens a dialogue about it, and that dialogue becomes part of a writer's legacy, for better or for worse. It also reflects our country, for better or for worse. To omit a writer because their politics are deservedly (or not) troubling or impossible to stomach means we won't have these conversations. We will always have proverbial thorns in our sides and they will always hurt. I wager that 90% of writers we include in the Essayist's Calendar have had views and opinions contrary to someone's views and opinions or have done regrettable or unconscionable things. We struggled recently, in particular, with the Norman Mailer post. Nonetheless, these writers are part of the American literary landscape. No writer is a complete paragon of virtue. Please know that doesn't mean I endorse racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynist, classist, or other forms of oppressive behaviors. I'm just recognizing that humans are flawed. And writers are humans.
Bay Area Book Festival
Bay Area Book Festival Statement on our Decision to Rescind our Invitation to Alice Walker for the 2022 Festival
April 28, 2022
Our decision [to disinviteWalker] was based purely on Ms. Walker’s inexplicable, ongoing endorsement of David Icke, a conspiracy theorist who dangerously promulgates such beliefs as that Jewish people bankrolled Hitler, caused the 2008 global financial crisis, and staged the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He also argues that Covid-19 is a conspiracy spread by Jews. (See his book “And the Truth Shall Set You Free,” available full-text on the Internet Archive, and his many more recent online articles and Youtube videos). Icke also regularly promotes “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a fabricated, uber-antisemitic text that was widely read during the time of social upheaval in pre-WWII Germany and turned public sentiment against Jews—a truly dangerous document for any populace to embrace. Finally, we note that Ms. Walker provided financial support for, and participation in, a documentary celebrating Icke and his work.
In our statement of April 4, we linked to articles that summarize the many hateful claims made by Icke, and the controversy over Ms. Walker’s ongoing endorsement of him. We provide some of them here again. This Vox article summarizes the New York Times controversy. A Tablet article, on author Cheryl Strayed’s quick and horrified removal of her interviews of Ms. Walker once she learned about the Icke endorsement, also notes that Icke was banned from Facebook and YouTube for claiming that the coronavirus had been created by Jews. Forward dissects the claims of Ms. Walker around Icke and antisemitism.
Ms. Walker has promoted Icke’s ideas frequently on her blog (see the entire category). One post features Icke’s Youtube interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of Infowars. Ms. Walker’s caption: “I like these two because they’re real, and sometimes Alex Jones is a bit crazy; many Aquarians are. Icke only appears crazy to people who don’t appreciate the stubbornness required when one is called to a duty it is impossible to evade.” Jones has supported white nationalists and has spread disinformation about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and September 11 attacks, among other tragedies. These are the ideas that the public can discover by going to Ms. Walker’s website.
Ms. Walker has doubled down on her support of Icke as recently as 2021, in this blog post responding to Hudson Valley Community College’s disinvitation of her as a virtual commencement speaker.
Because of Ms. Walker’s celebrity, her endorsements carry weight. People will run to buy a book that a major author recommends. The Bay Area Book Festival couldn’t encourage the dissemination of these ideas.
Some valued advisors in our community shared some analogies—not perfect, but still instructive:
Would we allow a renowned writer on our stage who is known for, and unapologetic about, his friendship with KKK leader David Duke, even referring our audience to Duke’s writings and videos?
How about an author who says that she herself doesn’t espouse ideas about eugenics, but she recommends a writer who does? Or one who demonizes LGBTQI people?
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