Alice Walker: A Critical Companion

by Gerri Bates

Alice Walker, born in Eatonton, Georgia in 1944, overcame a disadvantaged sharecropping background, blindness in one eye, and the tense times of the Civil Rights Movement to become one of the world's most respected African American writers. While attending both Spelman and Sarah Lawrence Colleges, Walker began to draw on both her personal tragedies and those of her community to write poetry, essays, short stories, and novels that would tell the virtually untold stories of oppressed African and African American women, providing readers with hope and inspiring activisim. Perhaps best known for her novel The Color Purple (1982), which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 and became a controversial film three years later, Walker has introduced and developed womanist theory, criticism and practice, and continues to champion the causes of women of color by encouraging their strength and liberation in her life and her writings.

Literary works analyzed in this The Third Life of Grange Copeland , Meridian , The Color Purple , The Temple of My Familiar , Possessing the Secret of Joy , By the Light of My Father's Smile , The Way Forward Is With a Broken Heart , Now is the Time to Open Your Heart .

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Cardyn Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the genre and narrative technique section about The Third Life of Grange Copeland, Dr. Bates remarks that Alice Walker’s “use of language is amazingly clear and plain, not intimidating to readers... a masterful aggregate of detail and effect that produces density and depth.” The same is true of Alice Walker, A Critical Companion.

This well-crafted application of literary theory about the scope of Walker’s life and work organically integrates personal, political, philosophical, economic, and historical context to frame the evolution of Walker’s writing. Dr. Bates is clearly a fan of the author and uses her scholarship to make an irrefutable case for Walker’s significant, enduring impact on literature and society.

The works are presented in chronological order from 1970 through 2004. Each study is jam-packed with information, beginning with an overview, then dissections according to structure & plot, historical context, genre & narrative technique, themes, character analyses, and a sociological reading. Alice Walker, A Critical Companion is engagingly readable and a valuable resource for any reader, literary scholar or not. There’s an extensive bibliography.

Its quality sets my expectations high for reading other titles in the Critical Companions to Popular Contemporary Writers series.


[Disclosure: Dr. Bates has agreed to review my upcoming 2016 erotic fiction release, Dodging Eros, Through Past, Present and Pleasure, although she has not read DE as of the posting of this review.]