Alice Walker's Blog, page 5

Happy Birthday Zora! January 7th.

As soon as I found Zora Neale Hurston’s perfect collection of authentic African American stories and folktales,  Mules and Men, I knew I would take it home to my family in rural Georgia.  Some members of the family had moved North to Massachusetts but I followed them there, reading the stories Zora had collected and making them laugh as they recalled the sounds of people in our small community that they remembered and knew.  Many of our people they would never see again.  Travel South was expens...

Artificial Intelligence, Authentic Incompetence: Can We Love Ourselves?

New software on my computer, installed apparently by the computer, completes words for me as I am beginning to write them.  I have been writing for over half a century. I do not need this.  It is beyond irritating.  It appeared uninvited on my computer and apparently I now have to live with it. After a lifetime of writing, I know how to spell. But what of the young who do not? Will they ever know how? Have humans, afflicted with a belief in the God of AI, ever, now, learn anything on their own?W...

My Father’s Ghost Talks To Luigi

I love this young comedian, Josh Johnson.  Just when you think the world might have turned to Diddy along comes someone who is decidedly not. We are reminded that just as there will always be a Michael Jackson rising from the ashes, there will be a Josh Johnson or a Trevor Noah.  It is a wonderful thing. We must celebrate. ~aw My father’s ghost has shaken itself free of eternal slumber as his daughter muses on the fate of Luigi Mangione. I find myself carried back, in memory, to Georgia, USA, in...

The Courage of Self-Respect: Gisele Pelicot and the Dignity of Woman

Our hearts could break in silence over this abuse of our collective dignity. But no, our sister Gisèle Pelicot has stood up for us, by standing up for herself. This is a story for every women’s circle, every women’s campfire. It isn’t that we’ve been safe, anywhere on earth, before. Now we must fully comprehend how we may not be safe in our own beds. This is a turning point, both the reality of it and the resistance. ~aw. Bowing.

For Black Women Staying… Also, Going.

I came to Mexico in the 1980s led by characters in a dream I had in a small house in Brooklyn, New York some years before. Though I return to the US every spring to plant my garden in Northern California, I have been here every year since. Here I feel surrounded by people of mixed ancestry similar to my own (African, Cherokee, Scotch-Irish) though no one here seems to think much about it. The Indigenous vibe is strong, even if there are Mexicans who insist their ancestry is purely “Spanish.” Lik...

The truth will set us free.

This teacher never fails to shine a light on dark corners we have probably not considered before, or had the means to share widely. His voice signals an awakening to our real relationship as sisters and brothers of the globally exploited. Especially in the Southern hemisphere.  Listening to him today, I honor my parents, my grandparents, and all those who were trapped as servants and slaves of the one percent, going all the way back to the founding of America, which, as Langston Hughes so poigna...

Today Is Your Birthday on Earth

Photo by Vaschelle Andre Zelie and Alice, in Moloka’i.  Hawaii and Georgia embracing: This year your birthday falls on Thanksgiving. Your friends are gathering on islands and continents to talk story about you.  That you were here and knew us as sisters and friends is what we are thankful for. ~aw

Buddha in the storm.

Hoy nos enteramos de que nuestro país está en guerra. Buddha in the storm. Photo 2024 by Alice Walker Today we learn our country is at war. A line was crossed that did not have to be. There are rivers also in the sky. Anything is possible.  As with Gaza, it may be with us. Devastation. What time there is, miraculous.~aw   Hoy nos enteramos de que nuestro país está en guerra. Se cruzó una línea que no tenía por qué cruzarse. Hay ríos también en el cielo. Todo es posible. Como en Gaza, puede que n...

Time For Us, a new book for children by Rebecca Walker

Like mothers the world over the mother in this moving story must juggle the demands of work, of earning a living, of being creative in the adult world, with the need of herself and her child to have time that is theirs alone.  Time together to nourish their deep love and affection for each other.  A very important reminder to all parents, perhaps now more than ever, that the child is precious.  And the mother, also. ~aw

Book: Lifting As They Climb, Black Women Buddhists & Collective Liberation by Toni Pressley Sanon 2024

There is deep wisdom in this book. It reminds us of a core belief of Black culture: that we do not traditionally believe in advancing by ourselves. That we are climbers is a given because we are taught, some of us, to “jump at the sun” as Zora Hurston’s mother, Lucy, instructed her. But we are also instructed to have one hand stretched to earth to catch and hold on to whoever is behind us and also hoping to ascend. I believe Buddhism is deeply compatible with black people because we have, tradit...