Alice Walker is an African American novelist, short-story writer, poet, essayist, and activist. Her most famous novel, The Color Purple, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1983. Walker's creative vision is rooted in the economic hardship, racial terror, and folk wisdom of African American life and culture, particularly in the rural South. Her writing explores multidimensional kinships among women and embraces the redemptive power of social and political revolution.Walker began publishing her fiction and poetry during the latter years of the Black Arts movement in the 1960s. Her work, along with that of such writers as Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor, however, is commonly associated with the post-1970s surge in African American women's literature.
Genres: Literary Fiction
Series
Color Purple
The Color Purple (1982)
The Temple of My Familiar (1989)
Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992)
The Color Purple (1982)
The Temple of My Familiar (1989)
Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992)
Novels
The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970)
Meridian (1976)
Finding the Green Stone (1991)
By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998)
Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004)
Meridian (1976)
Finding the Green Stone (1991)
By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998)
Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004)
Omnibus
Alice Walker: Color Purple / Meridian / The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1990)
The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar (2011)
Meridian / The Third Life of Grange Copeland (2018)
The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar (2011)
Meridian / The Third Life of Grange Copeland (2018)
Collections
Revolutionary Petunias (poems) (1973)
In Love and Trouble (1973)
Once (poems) (1976)
Good Night, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning (poems) (1979)
You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down (1981)
Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful (poems) (1984)
Alice Walker Poetry (poems) (1985)
Her Blue Body Everything We Know (poems) (1991)
Everyday Use (1992)
Giving Birth, Finding Form (1993) (with Isabel Allende and Jean Shinoda Bolen)
Quartet of Stories (1993) (with Maya Angelou, Lorna Goodison and Olive Senior)
The Complete Stories (1994)
The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (2000)
Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth (poems) (2003)
A Poem Traveled Down My Arm (poems) (2003)
Collected Poems (poems) (2005)
Hard Times Require Furious Dancing (poems) (2010)
The Alice Walker Collection: Fiction (2013)
The World Will Follow Joy (poems) (2013)
Collected Essays, Prose, and Stories (2018)
Taking the Arrow out of the Heart (poems) (2018)
In Love and Trouble (1973)
Once (poems) (1976)
Good Night, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning (poems) (1979)
You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down (1981)
Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful (poems) (1984)
Alice Walker Poetry (poems) (1985)
Her Blue Body Everything We Know (poems) (1991)
Everyday Use (1992)
Giving Birth, Finding Form (1993) (with Isabel Allende and Jean Shinoda Bolen)
Quartet of Stories (1993) (with Maya Angelou, Lorna Goodison and Olive Senior)
The Complete Stories (1994)
The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (2000)
Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth (poems) (2003)
A Poem Traveled Down My Arm (poems) (2003)
Collected Poems (poems) (2005)
Hard Times Require Furious Dancing (poems) (2010)
The Alice Walker Collection: Fiction (2013)
The World Will Follow Joy (poems) (2013)
Collected Essays, Prose, and Stories (2018)
Taking the Arrow out of the Heart (poems) (2018)
Picture Books
Non fiction
Life of Thomas Lodge (1974)
In Search of Our Mother's Garden (1984)
Art Against Apartheid Works for Freedom (1986)
Langston Hughes (1987)
Living By the Word (1988)
Warrior Marks (1993) (with Pratibha Parmar)
Women of Hope (1994)
The Same River Twice (1996)
Banned (1996)
Anything We Love Can Be Saved (1997)
Go Girl! (1997) (with Barbara Chase-Riboud and Lucinda Roy)
Pema Chodron and Alice Walker in Conversation (1999)
Sent By Earth (2001)
There Is a Flower at the Tip of My Nose Smelling Me (2006)
We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For (2006)
Why War Is Never a Good Idea (2007)
Overcoming Speechlessness (2010)
World Has Changed (2010)
In Search of Our Mother's Gardens (2011)
The Chicken Chronicles (2011)
The Alice Walker Collection (2013)
The Cushion in the Road (2013)
My Life as My Self (2015)
Gathering Blossoms Under Fire (2018)
In Search of Our Mother's Garden (1984)
Art Against Apartheid Works for Freedom (1986)
Langston Hughes (1987)
Living By the Word (1988)
Warrior Marks (1993) (with Pratibha Parmar)
Women of Hope (1994)
The Same River Twice (1996)
Banned (1996)
Anything We Love Can Be Saved (1997)
Go Girl! (1997) (with Barbara Chase-Riboud and Lucinda Roy)
Pema Chodron and Alice Walker in Conversation (1999)
Sent By Earth (2001)
There Is a Flower at the Tip of My Nose Smelling Me (2006)
We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For (2006)
Why War Is Never a Good Idea (2007)
Overcoming Speechlessness (2010)
World Has Changed (2010)
In Search of Our Mother's Gardens (2011)
The Chicken Chronicles (2011)
The Alice Walker Collection (2013)
The Cushion in the Road (2013)
My Life as My Self (2015)
Gathering Blossoms Under Fire (2018)
Anthologies containing stories by Alice Walker
Short stories
A Woman Is Not a Potted Plant (1991) |
Awards
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Alice Walker recommends

Cane (1923)
Jean Toomer
"[Cane] has been reverberating in me to an astonishing degree. I love it passionately; could not possibly exist without it."

A Piece of Mine (1984)
J California Cooper
"In its strong folk flavor, Cooper's work reminds us of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston... It is a delight to read."

Dessa Rose (1986)
Sherley Anne Williams
"A deep, rich, compelling work... I am astonished, moved and delighted with the language, the thought, the obvious collaboration of the ancestors and the love I read on these pages."

Nervous Conditions (1988)
(Nervous Conditions, book 1)
Tsitsi Dangarembga
"I am delighted to recommend this remarkable novelist."

A Dog's Purpose (2010)
(Dog's Purpose, book 1)
W Bruce Cameron
"An amazing book. I laughed and smiled and cried. Wise and sure to open the hearts of all who read it. Bailey has much to teach us about a dog's love of liberty."

All Woman and Springtime (2012)
Brandon W Jones
"One of the most absorbing, chilling, beautifully written and important novels I've read in many years."
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