Criticism

Allan, Tuzyline Jita. "Womanism Revisited: Women and the (Ab)Use of Power in The Color Purple." In Feminist Nightmares: Women at Odds, edited by Susan Ostrov Weisser and Jennifer Fleischner, pp. 88-105, New York: New York University Press, 1994.

Discusses the negative aspects of female power in Walker's The Color Purple.

Baker, Jr., Houston A. and Charlotte Pierce-Baker. "Patches: Quilts and Community in Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use.'" Southern Review 21, No. 3 (July 1985): 706-20.

Compares the art of quilting in Walker's "Everyday Use" to overcoming chaos by skillfully stitching life's fragments.

Carter, Nancy Corson. "Claiming the Bittersweet Matrix: Alice Walker, Sandra Cisneros, and Adrienne Rich." Critique XXXV, No. 4 (Summer 1994): 195-204.

Discusses the journey of the artist as portrayed in Walker's In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, Sandra Cisneros's The House of Mango Street, and Adrienne Rich's Your Native Land, Your Life: Poems.

Dieke, Ikenna. "Toward a Monistic Idealism: The Thematics of Alice Walker's The Temple of My Familiar." African American Review 26, No. 3 (Fall 1992): 507-14.

Discusses interdependency and the universal chain of being in Walker's The Temple of My Familiar.

Digby, Joan. "From Walker to Spielberg: Transformations of The Color Purple." In Novel Images: Literature in Performance, edited by Peter Reynolds, pp. 157-74, London: Routledge, 1993.

Compares and contrasts Walker's novel The Color Purple to the film based on the novel directed by Steven Spielberg.

Estes, David C. "Alice Walker's 'Strong Horse Tea': Folk Cures for the Dispossessed." Southern Folklore 50, No. 3 (1993): 213-29.

Analyzes the place of folk medicine in the African-American tradition, especially as it relates to women, in Walker's "Strong Horse Tea."

Harris, Norman. "Meridian: Answers in the Black Church." In his Connecting Times: The Sixties in Afro-American Fiction, pp. 98-119, Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1988.

Discusses three themes found in Walker's Meridian, including "(1) a form of parental and institutional socialization that does not connect the individual to his or her history, (2) problems within relationships between black men and women, and (3) the ascendancy of the black power movement (nationalism) and the diminution of the civil rights movement (integration)."

Hernton, Calvin C. "Who's Afraid of Alice Walker?" In his The Sexual Mountain and Black Women Writers, pp. 1-36, New York: Anchor Press, 1987.

Asserts that Walker's The Color Purple is basically a slave narrative, and discusses the fear generated by the novel because of its treatment of black men.

Hite, Molly. "Romance, Marginality, Matrilineage: The Color Purple." In her The Other Side of the Story: Structures and Strategies of Contemporary Feminist Narrative, pp. 103-26, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989.

Compares Walker's The Color Purple to Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and discusses how the two novels relate to literary tradition.

Hollister, Michael. "Tradition in Alice Walker's 'To Hell with Dying.'" Studies in Short Fiction 26, No. 1 (Winter 1989): 90-4.

Offers a review of Walker's "To Hell with Dying" saying that the story "derives emotional power from universalist values, archetypal imagery, and recurrent rhythms."

Jamison-Hall, Angelene. "She's Just Too Womanish for Them: Alice Walker and The Color Purple." In Censored Books: Critical Viewpoints, edited by Nicholas J. Karolides, Lee Burress, and John M. Kean, pp. 191-200, Metachun, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1993.

Asserts that people are uncomfortable with Walker's The Color Purple because in it she is "womanish," resisting convention and insisting on exploring new levels.

Karrer, Wolfgang. "Nostalgia, Amnesia, and Grandmothers: The Uses of Memory in Albert Murray, Sabine Ulibarri, Paula Gunn Allen, and Alice Walker." In Memory, Narrative, and Identity: New Essays in Ethnic American Literatures, edited by Amritjit Singh, Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr., and Robert E. Hogan, pp. 128-44, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994.

Discusses the use of recall and amnesia in several works, including Walker's The Temple of My Familiar.

McKay, Nellie Y. "Alice Walker's 'Advancing Luna—and Ida B. Wells': A Struggle Toward Sisterhood." In Rape and Representation, edited by Lynn A. Higgins and Brenda R. Silver, pp. 248-60, New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

Discusses the issues of rape, power, and the relationships between black and white women as seen in Walker's "Advancing Luna—and Ida B. Wells."

Marvin, Thomas F. "'Preachin' the Blues': Bessie Smith's Secular Religion and Alice Walker's The Color Purple." African American Review 28, No. 3 (Fall 1994): 411-21.

Discusses the role of Shug Avery as a catalyst to Celie's metamorphosis from a passive victim to a confident woman in Walker's The Color Purple.

Mason, Jr., Theodore O. "Alice Walker's The Third Life of Grange Copeland: The Dynamics of Enclosure." Callaloo 12, No. 2 (Spring 1989): 297-309.

Discusses the use of both physical and fictive enclosure in Walker's work, especially The Third Life of Grange Copeland.

Nadel, Alan. "Reading the Body: Alice Walker's Meridian and the Archeology of Self." Modern Fiction Studies 34, No. 1 (Spring 1988): 55-68.

States that Walker's "Meridian is a lesson in the power of language, the power to retain as well as to distort, to affect as well as to deny."

Selzer, Linda. "Race and Domesticity in The Color Purple." African American Review 29, No. 1 (Spring 1995): 67-82.

Analyzes the relationship between public and private discourse in Walker's The Color Purple.

Wall, Wendy. "Lettered Bodies and Corporeal Texts in The Color Purple." Studies in American Fiction 16, No. 1 (Spring 1988): 83-97.

Asserts that the letters in Walker's The Color Purple act as a second body and give Celie a voice against the power structure.

Waters-Dawson, Emma. "From Victim to Victor: Walker's Women in The Color Purple." In The Aching Hearth: Family Violence in Life and Literature, edited by Sara Munson Deats, Ph.D. and Lagretta Tallent Lenker, M.S., pp. 255-68, New York: Insight Books, 1991.

Discusses how the black women of Walker's The Color Purple overcome victimization through self-love and a reliance on the tradition of their maternal ancestors.