Alice Walker - the Temple of My Familiar
Pulitzer prize novelist Alice Walker is best know for her stories about the life of African American women, their struggle with society for survival, racial, sexual and economical equality and spiritual wholeness. She writes through her personal experiences. Most critics consider her works as feminist, but Walker describes herself as a „womanist“, showing appreciatiation of women and their abilities no matter what the colour of their skin is.
She was born in Eatonton, Georgia, a small town where most blacks worked as tenant farmers. In 1961 she moved to Atlanta where she started to participate in the civil rights movement while her studies there. This had a great influence on her later works as she experienced love, individualism and revolution in this period. She married Melvyn Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer, and soon had a child, Rebecca. They lived in Mississippi where she became a teacher and an activist. In 1976 Walker and Leventhal divorced and since then Walker had turned all her attention to writing and teaching.
In her novels she discusses questions of gender, races, violence, troubled relationships as well as isolation, environment, love, hate and suffering. She talkes about problems of African American women, who does not know the value of their selves because they have never been given a chance to improve what they are good at. Walker criticises men for being ignorant of women’s feelings and for taking away the power women once possessed back in the time when people were created by God.
She tries to provide a comprehensive picture of society and its development from prehistoric times until today. Walker describes mainly the differences of women’s way of life in the past in comparasion to what their conditions are nowadays. Walker is a very influential author among the black community but has also a lot of fans in the white society. Her narration is easy to folow and thanks to her ability to express her thoughts such well, one feels as he
She was born in Eatonton, Georgia, a small town where most blacks worked as tenant farmers. In 1961 she moved to Atlanta where she started to participate in the civil rights movement while her studies there. This had a great influence on her later works as she experienced love, individualism and revolution in this period. She married Melvyn Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer, and soon had a child, Rebecca. They lived in Mississippi where she became a teacher and an activist. In 1976 Walker and Leventhal divorced and since then Walker had turned all her attention to writing and teaching.
In her novels she discusses questions of gender, races, violence, troubled relationships as well as isolation, environment, love, hate and suffering. She talkes about problems of African American women, who does not know the value of their selves because they have never been given a chance to improve what they are good at. Walker criticises men for being ignorant of women’s feelings and for taking away the power women once possessed back in the time when people were created by God.
She tries to provide a comprehensive picture of society and its development from prehistoric times until today. Walker describes mainly the differences of women’s way of life in the past in comparasion to what their conditions are nowadays. Walker is a very influential author among the black community but has also a lot of fans in the white society. Her narration is easy to folow and thanks to her ability to express her thoughts such well, one feels as he