Alice Walker's Blog, page 3

Cory Booker April 2025

Where would we be without us? ~ aw ¿Dónde estaríamos sin nosotros?~aw

Nobody Is Coming to Save Us

I was born into an America that was always a myth.  Which is to say, its idea of itself was all there was; the reality of “America” as some imagined it, never existed. Land of the free, Home of the brave.  No. Never was. And what has that meant?  Neverland. This is the America witnessed every day by generations of Black, Brown, Native American, and poor White people.  Also Women who, though indoctrinated by religion and laws,  were aware of their second class citizenship, their enforced child be...

Gloria Steinem and Alice Walker: Ponder the Politics of Heaven

Writer, lecturer, and feminist activist Gloria Steinem and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker sit down with Wilma Mankiller to discuss gender and politics in today’s world. The three consider the path each took to became icons of the feminist movement, the ways religion plays into gender and power relations, and the future of feminism. In this clip, they ponder the politics of heaven.     Source: Alice Walker in Conversation with Gloria Steinem at the 92nd Street Y

What Can You Do? Avoid Ignorance.

Welcome Home, Leonard Peltier.

  True beauty cannot be disappeared. ~aw.                             Welcome Home, Leonard Peltier.   In communion with Leonard Peltier’s release from half a century of radically unjust imprisonment, I listened to MY LIFE IS MY SUNDANCE, his moving, informative, and spiritually powerful autobiography.  It is an excellent way for those unfamiliar with the Indigenous struggle in the United States to grasp some of the hidden complexities undergirding the American myth of freedom and equality.  Be ...

The Plantation is Ours: Shahid Bolsen Scatters Our Pessimism

Part of our despair is our ignorance of what things mean, and have meant.  I remember trying to follow a speech, decades ago,  by Fidel Castro  (brilliantly educated by Jesuits no less) as he talked about Bretton Woods and what a disaster it meant for the Global economy. In Bolsen’s brilliant commentary I grasp for the first time some of the interlocking threads of our domination and despair I could not have fathomed as a student. Information is powerful. Having a sense of history is powerful.  ...

THE TRUNK

El baúl: desempacando nuestras penas The Trunk:  Unpacking Our Sorrows Movies As Medicine This fuzzy photo does not do justice to these extraordinary actors, Gong Yu and Seo Hyun-ji, in THE TRUNK, a film/series on Netflix out of South Korea, a country that has an unusually  high level of misogyny.  The Trunk is a great creation, though you’d never know it from the misleading, incomprehensible way it is described in reviews on the Internet.  In fact, everything said about it appears to be wrong. ...

My Parents’ Teaching Story About Authenticity

When I was a child, it was understood that the worst thing to be was fake. It was worse than simply lying, because there was often acting involved.  There were stories that demonstrated this. Some of the Uncle Remus stories – our folk tales – spoke to this.   My favorite story was not one of these, however,  and in fact, I’ve never heard it anywhere except in our home.  It could be  told by either of my parents,  but usually my father, who loved naturalness more than anyone I knew, would tell us...

There Is No Hatred Like Envy

Welcome Home!: Ali Abunimah

From Ali Abunimah, editor of the Electronic Intifada.  I’m free! I wrote this on the plane and I’m posting it just after landing at Istanbul. On Monday evening I was brought to Zurich airport in handcuffs, in a small metal cage inside a windowless prison van and led all the way to the plane by police. This is after three days and two nights in a Swiss prison cut off from communication with the outside world, in a cell 24 hours a day with one cell mate, not even permitted to contact my family. On...