Alice Walker is one of the most widely known and celebrated activists, writers, and poets of the contemporary era. Born February 9th, 1944, she was the eighth child in a poor sharecropping family in Eatonton, Georgia. At the age of eight, Walker was blinded in her right eye in a BB gun accident. It has been said that this handicap caused her to become more reserved and her reserved nature allowed her to become observant and introspective, thus making her a better writer.

After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 1965, Walker moved to Mississippi where she participated in the civil rights movement. She was briefly to Jewish civil rights lawyer, Melvin Levanthal, making the couple the only legally married interracial couple living in Jackson Mississippi at the time.

Walker published two volumes of poetry and a novel titled, The Third Life of Grange Copeland before publishing her masterwork, The Color Purple in 1982. The Color Purple is an expository novel depicting the life of Celie, a young black woman, who struggles to escape the abuse of her father and husband. Through friendship and self-realization, Celie is able to escape her abuse and reconcile with her trauma. The novel received widespread critical acclaim as well as a Broadway adaptation and a wildly popular film adaptation. The novel and movie sparked controversy and had no shortage of critics complaining about the subject matter and its depiction of black men. Critics stated the movie contained negative stereotypes about black men and portrayed them as violent and cruel with little to no redeeming qualities. Many fans defended Walker’s work, saying that while the novel and movie are addressing the black community, the works depict the experience of one black woman and are not meant to represent the black men or the black community as a whole.

Throughout Walker’s career, she placed activism for women’s liberation at the forefront of her work. Walker coined the term “Womanist” in her book, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, where she describes her outlook on gender, which is that she appreciates the femininity and culture of women. She and other black women who later adopted the label wanted a movement that promoted harmony between black men and black women while addressing issues that affect black families. Many other minority women have also adopted the label “womanist” because they identify more with the philosophy laid out by Walker than the one laid out by mainstream feminism that they often find alienating.

While Walker mainly writes about black women and black women’s experiences, her stories are universal to the human experience. Many critics have acknowledged the way her stories cross boundaries of race, sex, and class by speaking to the soul of the reader.