Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Walker, Alice (Vol. 103) - Barbara T. Christian (essay date 1986)

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Barbara T. Christian (essay date 1986)

SOURCE: "We Are the Ones That We Have Been Waiting For: Political Content in Alice Walker's Novels," in Women's Studies International Forum, Vol. 9, No. 4, 1986, pp. 421-26.

[In the following essay, Christian discusses the interdependence of individual and societal change in Walker's novels.]

Because women are expected to keep silent about their close escapes I will not keep silent.

                                   —(Walker, 1979)

There is no question that Alice Walker's works are directed towards effecting social change, that she is a writer with political intent. Black women writers have little choice in this regard. Even if they could manage blindness, deafness to the state of black people, their status, as black, female, writer, a triple affliction, would, at some point, force them to at least consider the effect of...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Barbara Christian (essay date March/April 1981)
   2. David Bradley (essay date 8 January 1984)
   3. Alma S. Freeman (essay date Spring 1985)
   4. Philip M. Royster (essay date Winter 1986)
   5. Barbara T. Christian (essay date 1986)
   6. Susan Willis (essay date 1987)
   7. J. Charles Washington (essay date Spring 1988)
   8. Alice Hall Petry (essay date Winter 1989)
   9. Robert James Butler (essay date Summer 1993)
   10. Judy Mann (review date 16 January 1994)
   11. Victoria A. Brownworth (review date September-October 1994)
   12. Tobe Levin (review date Fall 1994)
   13. Claire Messud (review date 11 November 1994)
   14. Alyson R. Buckman (essay date Summer 1995)
   15. Francine Prose (review date 2 January 1996)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Alice Walker