Summary
Alice Walker is one of the few living writers whose work regularly appears in the high school curriculum. While she is known primarily for her best-selling novel and masterpiece The Color Purple, many of her other novels, essays, and poems are favorites of both students and teachers alike. In 1983 she became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Critical Companion to Alice Walker is a one-stop resource for anyone interested in this prolific author's life, works, and achievements.
Coverage includes:
- A concise but thorough biography of Walker
- Entries on all of Walker's major works, including such novels as The Color Purple, Meridian, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, and Possessing the Secret of Joy; essay collections and essays, such as "Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self"; poetry collections and poems; and short stories. Each entry on a major work of fiction contains subentries on the work's main characters
- Entries on related people, places, and topics, such as feminism, Zora Neale Hurston, Spelman College, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, and more
- Appendixes, including a chronology, a bibliography of Walker's works, a secondary source bibliography, and a list of recognitions and awards.
Specifications
Black-and-white photographs and illustrations. Index. Appendixes. Bibliographies. Cross-references. Chronology.
About the Author(s)
Carmen Gillespie is a professor of English at Bucknell University and director of the Griot Institute of Africana Studies. She is the author of Facts On File's Critical Companion to Toni Morrison and many scholarly articles. In 2010, she won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Prize for her collection Jonestown: A Vexation and was named one of Essence's 40 favorite poets in commemoration of the magazine's 40th anniversary.