Walker, Alice
Walker, Alice ( 1944 – ),black American novelist, poet and short story writer, best known as the writer of The Color Purple ( 1982 ), which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1983 . This epistolary novel tells the harrowing story of Celie, a young black woman in the segregated Deep South, raped by the man she believes to be her father and then forced to marry an older man she despises. Told through letters from Celie to God, and to and from her missionary sister Nettie, this story, like much of Walker's work, celebrates the strength of women engaged in struggles against the twin oppressions of sexism and racism.
She has published four collections of poetry, including Once: Poems ( 1968 ) and Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems ( 1973 ). Her other work includes two volumes of short stories and a collection of essays, In Search of My Mother's Garden: Womanist Prose ( 1983...
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