Alice Walker: Eyes into the Soul of a Black Woman

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Realism is often portrayed by writers such as Alice Walker. Her poems, essays, short stories, and novels portray her views on feminism and civil rights while giving a realist approach that has provoked readers for many years. Her horrific and brutally honest writing style made the world see a different view of minority women and allowed her to receive the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Color Purple (“Alice Walker”). She lived a life of poverty and racial discrimination, which led her to become an opinionated feminist. Walker’s realistic writing style portrays her obscure upbringing and her feminist opinions; in her work The Color Purple, she shows the aspects of growing up as a minority woman and the frequency of racial discrimination.
The straight forward, honest writings of Walker allow her to be classified as a realist writer. Realism originated in nineteenth century France and extended into the early twentieth century. It is characterized by writing where one “describe[s] life without any idealization or romantic subjectivity“ (Writers History). Instead of romanticizing, as many other authors did, this kind of writing is meant to portray things as they truly are; sometimes this includes: intense images, hurtful speech, and morally unjust topics. Walker used this form of writing to show audiences how life was in the South, which makes many readers remorseful for the nation's unjust past. In her novel, The Color Purple, Walker makes readers question everything in his or her life; she uses incestuous relationships between the protagonist, Celie, and her father to scare readers and open their eyes to what has happened in America's history. Incestuous relationships between father and daughter were common in the early 1900s. In ...

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Bobo, Jacqueline. "JUMP CUTA REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA." Black women's responses to "The Color Purple" by Jacqueline Bobo. N.p., 28 Feb. 1988. Web. 30 Apr.
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Flowers, R. Barri. Sex crimes, predators, perpetrators, prostitutes, and victims: an examination of sexual criminality and victimization. Springfield, Ill.: C.C. Thomas, 2001. Print.
Walker, Alice. The color purple: a novel. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982. Print.
Whitted, Qiana. "Alice Walker (b. 1944)." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 26 November 2013. Web. 02 May .
"Writers History." Writers History. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 May 2014. .

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