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For the first time, the edited journals of Alice Walker are gathered together to reflect the complex, passionate, talented, and acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winner of The Color Purple. She intimately explores her thoughts and feeling as a woman, a writer, an African American, a wife, a daughter, a mother, a lover, a sister, a friend, a citizen of the world.
In an unvarnished and singular voice, she explores an astonishing array of events: marching in Mississippi with other foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr.; her marriage to a Jewish lawyer, defying laws that barred interracial marriage in the 1960s South; an early miscarriage; writing her first novel; the trials and triumphs of the Women's Movement; erotic encounters and enduring relationships; the ancestral visits that led her to write The Color Purple; winning the Pulizter Prize; being admired and maligned, sometimes in equal measure, for her work and her activism; and burying her mother. A powerful blend of Walker's personal life with political events, this "revelation, a road map, and a gift to us all" (Tayari Jones, New York Times bestselling author of An American Marriage) offers rare insight into a literary legend.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 12, 2022 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781797118628
- File size: 647514 KB
- Duration: 22:28:59
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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September 1, 2022
Edited by the late writer and critic Boyd, this compilation of over three decades of Walker's journal writings provides an intimate window into the musings, worries, irritations, and dreams of the National Book Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Narrator Janina Edwards and actress and producer Aunjanue Ellis join their voices with Walker's in order to present this sprawling and completely absorbing portrait. Voicing Boyd's editorial comments, Edwards's narration is precise and polished. Walker herself reads the postscript, sharing her poet's voice--seasoned, resonant, and true. It is Ellis's narration, however, that steals the show, which is fitting, as her part as the younger Walker is at the heart of this audiobook. Listeners will be enchanted by the playfulness and authenticity that she infuses into her performance, allowing the fullness of Walker's words to shine. Each nuance and emotion--a suppressed laugh, the tightness of rage, and the prickliness of frustration--comes through in the narration. VERDICT Highly recommended. This audio treat for fans of Walker and her contemporaries is an essential purchase for libraries wishing to honor the achievements of Black authors, creators, and activists.--Sarah Hashimoto
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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January 31, 2022
Over three decades of journal entries from Pulitzer Prize-winner Alice Walker come together in this impressive compendium. Things start off with Walker as a university student, having just moved to Sarah Lawrence University in the Bronx from Spelman College in Atlanta, before chronicling her courtship with and eventual marriage to civil rights lawyer Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal. The entries offer an intimate take on the breakdown of their marriage, which Walker describes as one of boredom (“I can’t think now of anything unexpected Mel has said to me in the last year”). Alongside personal struggles come illuminating encounters with other major literary figures: Langston Hughes was Walker’s “friend and mentor,” Ishmael Reed criticized her writing, and Toni Morrison made her “a little jealous? A little envious? Probably.” Walker meticulously documents her own questions and doubts about writing, as well: “Why is it we always feel embarrassed by what we write?” Taken together, the entries offer a moving look at Walker’s process and milieu; as editor Boyd poignantly writes in the introduction, the journals are “both a deeply personal journey and an intimate history of our time.” Walker’s fans are in for a treat. Agent: Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary Agency.
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