1. The Biography of Alice Walker

3. The Color Purple published in 1982, Walker’s 3 rd novel many reviewers were disturbed by her portrayal of black males, which they found unduly negative While she was criticized for negative portrayals of her male characters, Walker was admired for her powerful portraits of black women.

4. The Color Purple (continued) Reviewers praised her for her use of the epistolary form, in which written correspondence between characters comprises the content of the book, and her ability to use black folk English. Walker focuses on the theme of double repression of black women in the American experience.

5. The Color Purple (continued) Walker contends that black women suffer from discrimination by the white community, and from a second repression from black males, who impose the double standard of white society on women. The primary theme of The Color Purple reflects Walker’s desire to project a positive outcome in life, even under the harshest conditions.

6. The Color Purple (continued) received the Pulitzer Prize for literature and an American Book Award a film was made in 1985, which was critically acclaimed despite the fact that the screenplay departs dramatically from the novel the most obvious differences are the exclusion of Nettie as a central character, and the almost complete removal of the subplot of Nettie, Corrine, and Samuel in Africa movie received 11 Academy Awards

8. The Life & Work of Alice Walker born on February 9, 1944 the youngest of eight children and the daughter of sharecroppers always a precocious child, but after being blinded in one eye by a BB gun, she became more insecure and withdrawn Walker has always given credit to her mother for encouraging her to make something of herself.

9. Biography (continued) her father and four of her five brothers failed to give her a positive male role model she was especially influenced by her father’s brutality, which served as a model for Mr. she reconciled her feelings with her father once she understood the difficult life he had led and the abuse that he himself experienced (his mother was murdered coming out of church)

10. Biography (continued) entered Spelman College in 1961 transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in 1964 after a trip to Africa, she returned to America pregnant, which isolated her from her family and threw her into a deep depression she became suicidal and eventually had an abortion

11. Biography (continued) she was fascinated by female writers, but eventually became frustrated by the lack of black women writers in the curriculum of colleges Walker eventually “discovered” Zora Neale Hurston, who is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes were Watching God

12. Biography (continued) she married the white civil rights attorney Melvyn Leventhal in 1968, but divorced in 1976 she has been fiercely political she is a prominent lesbian and feminist her political views have been made the focus of her novels critics of Walker have stated that she has portrayed black men as cruel in her works