Home » Reading & Literature » African-American Women's Lit » Alice Walker - Womanist Writer

Alice Walker - Womanist Writer

© Dorothy Harris

Alice Walker (born 1944) can be considered one of the major contemporary writers in late 20th century American literature. Her contributions to the genre of African American women's literature, to American literature, and to women's literature have been tremendous. She has published six novels: The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), Meridian (1976), The Color Purple(1982),The Temple of My Familiar (1989), Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), and her newest novel, The Light of My Father's Smile (1998); two collections of essays: In Search of Our Mother's Gardens (1983), and Living By The Word (1988); five collections of poetry: Once: Poems (1968), Five Poems(1972), Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems (1973), Goodnight, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning (1979), Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful (1984), and Her Blue Body, Everything We Know (1991); three collections of short stories: You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down (1981), In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973); and other books of non-fiction: The Same River Twice: honoring the difficult: a Meditation on Life, Spirit, Art, and the Making of the Film, The Color Purple, Ten Years Later (1996), Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women (with Pratibha Parmar, 1993), and Anything We Love Can Be Saved (1997).

Alice Walker's writing has been key to naming and defining African American women's thought for African American women as well as for non-African American feminist scholars. She coined the term "womanism" in 1983 in her collection of essays entitled In Search of Our Mother's Gardens, which would define African American feminism for a large number of African American women who had been trying to define ourselves within and without the white dominated feminist movement. This term continues to be used to describe current feminist thought by women of African descent and it is applied to the historical understanding of Black women's writings, theories and history.

Walker's strength as a writer lies in her ability to write about topics that are generally taboo, to construct characters, themes and plots that are often untouchable for mainstream writers and audiences, and to continue to raise topics whose popularity fizzles while the issues continue.

Walker has consistently received criticism for her woman centered writing, often accused of being anti-male -- and particularly anti- African American male. While Walker's work proves that it is not anti-male, but is pro-female, she is clear about the oppressive relationships between women and men in this society, and in African and African American communities. She writes of the oppressions of women, for instance, in all comunities, without being reluctant to name their oppressors. Despite the negative criticism, Walker continues to write from the perspectives of the oppressed. She also points out the impact of oppressions on all members of societies which are constructed through oppressive practices.

The copyright of the article Alice Walker - Womanist Writer in African-American Women's Lit is owned by Dorothy Harris. Permission to republish Alice Walker - Womanist Writer in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.