Alice Walker's Blog, page 19

On the Sound of Freedom Film and “Men’s Work: Ending male violence.”

Esta publicación de la película Sound of Freedom en español “Men’s Work:  Ending male violence.” I once shared my life with a man who co-founded a men’s group and that was their slogan. I think of it now, having seen, finally, Sound of Freedom.  I have been far from theaters but caught it on its last day in a town hours away.  I was deeply moved.  It is so true that the work of rescuing children from pedophiles and other predators is the most crucial work on the planet; and preventing the traffi...

A Trove of Rarely Seen Photographs of Revolutionary Black Women

Reprint of Article A Trove of Rarely Seen Photographs of Revolutionary Black Women An exhibition at the Alice Austen House in Staten Island showcases Jean Weisinger’s formidable body of portraiture — and finally tells the photographer’s story. Elaine Velie July 30, 2023 Jean Weisinger, “Self-Portrait: Northern California” (1992); “Seeing Myself Through Alice Walker’s Eyes (Self-Portrait): California” (1991) (all images courtesy Alice Austen House) Jean Weisinger spent much of the 1990s capturing...

The Community, by Jamiyla Chisholm

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.  I think I read that somewhere… and so it is with this book. In the 1990s I flew home to Putnam Country, Georgia as often as I could to visit my sick mother.  She had fallen severely ill and her inability to move briskly about as I had always known her was a huge challenge to my spirit; I can only imagine how it must have troubled hers. On one of these visits an older brother informed me that a nation of black folks calling themselves Nuw...

Article: 25 Truths About the Death of Young Nahel in France

Sometimes the news is unbearable.~aw   REPRINT OF ARTICLE: 25 Truths About the Death of Young Nahel in France By Salim Lamrani Global Research, July 11, 2023 A 17-year-old teenager was killed by a police officer during a traffic stop, sparking strong emotions in French society. 1. At 8 a.m. on June 27, 2023, in Nanterre, near Paris, two police officers stopped a car occupied by three people, all minors, following a refusal to stop. The driver was a 17-year-old teenager called Nahel. When the car...

Single. Black. Female. The Gift of Tracy Brown

     Novelist Tracy Brown; Light Bringer Were We There Enough? ©2023 By Alice Walker Getting close to the end of SINGLE BLACK FEMALE I was so overwhelmed with emotion that I knew I must search out the author, just to see her face. To beam my happiness on her for writing a book as useful as any we are likely to have on life among single black women whose partners are locked up in prison, locked up in drug use, locked up in machismo.  Locked up in their own hurt to have encountered a home, a socie...

Rebel Cinderella: the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes

I appreciate this book for connecting and elucidating threads of our cleverly hidden working class history.  It is the compelling story of a poor immigrant Jewish girl, Rose Pastor Stokes, who somehow, miraculously, falls in love with, and marries, one of the richest WASPS (white Anglo-Saxon protestant) in America, James Graham Phelps Stokes. Their romance and marriage is a wonder in itself, but the pleasure of reading this book is in discovery of the names and behaviors of activists, most of th...

Pacific Stories….

Kiana Davenport is an extraordinary writer.  I knew this years ago from reading Shark Dialogues.  But even that book which relieved me of considerable ignorance about Hawaii and Hawaiians did not prepare me for the breathtaking stories and magically precise writing, in this book.  A book not only about the people of Hawaii but of Fiji, Guam, Easter Island, Tahiti, Australia, New Zealand, and other places in the Pacific I’d never heard of. I have never encountered characters like the ones in thes...

Daniel Ellsberg, Presente!

Daniel Ellsberg, Presente! Toward the end It is said you enjoyed The foods you liked And returned with gratitude And humor The smiles Of your beloveds and friends. We will miss you. Though you must Realize You are not really gone? This is how it works; as Thich Nhat Hanh Reminded us: A cloud never dies. Therefore: Like truth, Courage is a cloud That can drench us With eternity. Thank you. For yourself, and for standing with another courageous one: Julian Assange. ~aw

Daniel Ellsberg, Presente

Daniel Ellsberg, Presente! Toward the end It is said you enjoyed The foods you liked And returned with gratitude And humor The smiles Of your beloveds and friends. We will miss you.  Though you must Realize You are not really gone? This is how it works;  as Thich Nhat Hanh Reminded us: A cloud never dies. Therefore: Like truth, Courage is a cloud That can drench us  With eternity. Thank you. For yourself, and for standing with another courageous one: Julian Assange. ~aw

To Speak of Palestine One Must Go To Palestine

This interview on Rumble with RFK, Jr. by Glenn Greenwald is more sad than I expected ever to feel again about American politics. It is simply extraordinary that someone so smart and so courageous and so aware as Kennedy could be so oblivious about Israeli treatment of Palestinians in Palestine.  Having been there twice and almost a third time on a boat turned back by armed commandos, I can only recommend my own contribution to anyone's enlightenment: Overcoming Speechlessness: (which we must!) ...