Alice Walker Biography Essay

The life of Alice Walker

Born February 09, 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia and the last child of eight, from sharecroppers Willie Lee and Minnie Grant Walker, Alice Walker was one of the bestselling African American authors of all time. At eight years old, Walker experienced a terrible incident that caused her to be blinded in one eye. Her brother shot a BB gun at her, praying and pleading to not mention to her parents the truth of what was done. She lied, just so that he could not receive a beating, but the worse of it all, she became blind with a white surface covering her eye that caused her to be picked on in school. Walker’s grades plummeted and she hated the way that she looked. She moved in with her brother and his wife at 14 years old in Boston to care for his family. They paid the doctor for her eye to be fixed, removing the white cataract so that her eye can have a normal look. She fell in love with herself and she finally felt beautiful (Blooms, 11).

In 1961,

Walker began working as an editor at Ms. Magazine and completed a second novel and another collection of poetry, both which reflected her experiences in Mississippi, while married to her husband. She relocated to San Francisco in 1978 and four years later, in 1982, she published the color purple. The Color Purple was Walker’s third novel. It won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for fiction. The novel won increased fame, and in 1985 a film was released, directed by Steven Spielberg. Walker did not know who Spielberg was and jokingly to her daughter concluded that “Well, maybe if he can do Martians, he can do us” (Winchell, 85). Spielberg was known for his blockbuster release of E.T. and Close Encounter of the Third Kind. Quincy Jones who was responsible for the films music as well as the coproducer convinced Alice that “neither they nor their race will not be embarrassed” (Winchell,