Alice Walker

In this course we will examine a variety of literature-poetry, short stories, and novelswritten by Southern authors and set in the American South. We will place particular focus on the post-World War II literature of the Southern Gothic. Students will be introduced to the particular artistry and concerns of Southern histories, cultures, and varieties of experience through a diverse group of authors. Important themes and issues emerging from our readings and discussion will include racism,

The aim of the research is to explicate the importance of understanding bio-centric equality in the process of Self-realization. It focuses on how the 17 th century Western concept of Selfrealization, through the process of individuation emphasizing human beings as separate entities, detached from other human and non-human aspects, has induced a selfish nature. Alice Walker's famous novel The Color Purple has been chosen to explore the importance of an alternate reality of a biophilic narrative with regards to the process of Self-realization. Rosemary Radford Ruether's concepts of "Gaia" and the "Human Consciousness and Altruism" are employed on the text by Alice Walker.

Through a content analysis of the maternal relationships in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers Gardens, the author evaluates how southern black women writers construct black motherhood. This study is based on the premise that Eurocentric paradigms of motherhood confine black mothers to controlling images that continue to criminalize, distort, and devalue black motherhood. The researcher finds that the institution of black motherhood exists independently of Eurocentric paradigms. The conclusions drawn from these findings suggest that black women writers construct motherhood in terms of Womanist leadership. In the aforementioned memoirs, Womanist leadership is learned and defined in the black church. In summation, this thesis finds that southern black women writers use spiritual reconciliation as a form of Womanist leadership.

The writer of every society is currently looking into a new way of expression than his predecessor. With this discovery, there have been many changes in the literature, especially when Marxism applied in literature as a background then makes great changes in the literary environment into new dimensions. Marxism is the key to the development for writing outcome in present days. A new society has been made clear through practice for people who are tired of the social system that is rooted in traditional society. In order give solutions for problems of women Fredrick Engle stretched Marxism to Marxist feminism, according to Marxist feminist philosophy, one of the reasons for women's oppression is the lack of prospects for women to produce and individual useable resources. Fredrick Engle mainly highlighted three major causes for women subjugated in his Marxist feminism that patriarchy and economic dispossession and capitalism. I have chosen Alice walker's three novels for this paper they are "The Meridian", "The Color Purple" and "The Temple of My Familiar.

Alice Walker Annelerimizin Bahcesinin Arayisinda (1983) adli eserinde acikladigi kadincilik teorisiyle siyah feminizme yeni bir boyut getirmistir. Amaci; irk, toplumsal cinsiyet ve etnik farkliliklara bakmaksizin mucadelesini dunyadaki tum insanlari kapsayarak evrensellige erismektir. Bunun icin, Walker’a gore, insanlarin tarihini, ana soyunu ve onlara mucadele etmeleri icin ilham veren siyahi ve siyahi olmayan yazarlarin eserlerini kabullenip bilmesi gerekir. Walker, Kadinin Hasi Kolay Ezilmez (1981) baslikli eserindeki “Elethia” ve “Ilkbahar’da Eve Ani Yolculuk” baslikli iki oykusunde kadinci anlayisini temsil etmektedir. Walker’in kadin sorunsalina iliskin evrimlesen durusunu yansittigi icin adi gecen oykuler calismada incelenmektedir. “Elethia” ’nin baslik karakteri ve “Ilkbahar’da Eve Ani Yolculuk” oykusundeki Sarah sorunlariyla yuzlesir ve onlarla nasil savasabilecegini anlar. Boylece, calisma, Walker’in secilen oykulerini inceleyerek, yazarin Elethia ve Sarah adli karakterler...

What differentiates the work of this essay from previous critical work on Mules and Men and Dust Tracks on a Road, namely the astute analyses by Cheryl Wall, Susan Willis, Valerie Boyd, and Lillie Howard, is my focus on Hurston’s interfamilial and friendship relations as read through the lens of Alice Walker’s definition of womanism. My application of Alice Walker’s womanist concept to Zora Neale Hurston showcases the ways in which Hurston embodies and perhaps serves as a creative influence for Walker’s definition of womanist. I explore Hurston as a womanist in the context of her relationship with her mother, Lucy Ann Potts Hurston, and her father, John Cornelius Hurston, as well as in the context of her friendships with Big Sweet, a woman Hurston meets and befriends while collecting folklore in 1928, and with the famous blues singer/stage performer, Ethel Waters, whose
friendship Hurston sought and won in the 1930s.

Style composes the gist of literary works, as it is an inseparable element that forms a coherent meaning in texts. The style in the literary texts is mainly achieved with the usage of various linguistic variants. The representation of the literary style in the translation poses a significant challenge for the translator, as these linguistic variants are hard to be rendered in the target language. This study focuses on to what extent the stylistic features in the literary works can be reflected to another language and, to that end, it analyses Alice Walker’s well-known novel The Color Purple and its Turkish translation Renklerden Moru by Armağan İlkin as a case study. A comparative stylistic analysis is carried out between the two texts within the framework of Antoine Berman’s analytic of translation. The twelve deforming tendencies suggested by Berman in this analytic are adopted as the focal methodological and theoretical framework of this present thesis. Each of these tendencies handles different stylistic aspects which are often deformed during the translation process. Within this mindset, The Color Purple and Renklerden Moru are evaluated in accordance with twelve deforming tendencies and, by extension, the stylistic aspects represented by these tendencies. In line with this thought, the question of whether the style of the source text is deformed or preserved in the target text has been explored. At the end of this study, it is concluded that the style of the source text cannot be fully retained in the target text and it is deformed to a certain extent.

“Sisterhood is powerful,” as a rallying cry, masked the reality that the attainment of feminist sisterhood is a process, perhaps one that is never-ending.  As each of the Black feminists discussed remind us, Black feminist sisterhood, whether actual or of the imagination, can foster change; it can allow for an interchange of ideas and shared knowledge that can enhance and transform lives, and it can mean very necessary and encouraging community.  Black feminist sisterhood is a force in the world.  It has touched and transformed and elucidated my life, as well as the lives countless others. And it has done so primarily through writing.

Alice Malsenior Walker, born (February 9, 1944) in Eatonton, Georgia is the youngest of eight children to sharecroppers, Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Lou Tallulah Grant. After an early day's misfortune which blinded her in one eye, she went on to become valedictorian of her neighboring school, and attended Spellman College and Sarah Lawrence College on scholarship. Alice Walker volunteered in the voter registration drives of the 1960s in Georgia, and went to job after college in the Welfare Department in New York City. She was married in 1967, and unfortunately divorced in 1976. Her first volume of poems was published in 1968 and her earliest novel was published just after her daughter's birth in 1970. Her poems, novels and short stories dealt with the themes of troubled relationships, violence, rape, multi-generational perspectives, isolation, sexism and racism, etc.

Black masculinity is a highly convoluted social concept. It is nearly impossible to define Black masculinity without referring to its antithesis, White hegemonic masculinity. White hegemonic masculinity, according to Josef Benson’s text, Hypermasculinities in the Contemporary Novel: Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, and James Baldwin, derives from the basic social characteristics of White, rural men. Benson argues that these men are often personified in literature and film as saviors rescuing the White race from “savage Native Americans” (xii). These basic characteristics of White, hegemonic masculinity are still prevalent in 21st century America and have been adopted by the collective White social structure. Most White men are groomed to lead and protect their homes/families from the outside infiltrations of Black, brown, and indigenous people men. White men are often characterized as triumphant heroes, whereas Black men are characterized as aggressors. Prolific literary figures of the African American literary canon have long sought to resolve the racial and gender discrepancy. In the late 19th Century, W.E.B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington codifies the concept of a Black hegemonic masculinity that limits black male performance. In other words, Washington believes that the masculinity of black men is dependent upon their ability to assimilate into the larger white society. Dubois believes that the masculinity of black men is dependent upon their intellectual prowess. From those two Victorian thinkers our present day ideals of Black masculinity are not culturally relevant. As a result, African American literary figures challenged (and continue to challenge) DuBois and Washington’s notion of black manhood.   
Readers can draw inferences of Black masculinity through the short stories of renowned African American authors such as Zora Neal Hurston (1891-1960), Richard Wright (1908-1960), James Baldwin (1924-1987), and Alice Walker (1944).

AbstractThe Christian missionary as the harbinger of colonialism in Africa has been given critical attention in Chinua Achebe studies. On its part, Alice Walker's The Color Purple has been seen as bearing the experiences and existential vagaries of African Americans in America. However, the complementary nature of Christian missionary activities as represented in both works has missed critical interest despite that in The Color Purple, we are offered in a substantial measure textualised missionary activities, which to readers is an unexpected and curious version of the diasporan involvement in the presumed purely white civilizing and Christianising mission to Africa. Through postcolonial and close readings that focus on the categories of outside/inside perspectives of origin and identities and the problematic of sameness within contrast involving the narrators and some characters, the relationship of complementarity of the Christian missionary venture in both texts is bared. It ...

This article investigates the role of shame in shaping the epistolary form and aesthetic structure of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. I argue that the epistolary framing presents a crisis in the development of Celie’s shamed self-consciousness. To explain the connection between shame and Celie’s self-consciousness, I build on Jean Paul Sartre’s theory of existentialism and explore three phases of Celie’s evolution as it is represented in three phrases that I identify as significant transitions in the text: “I am,” “But I’m here,” and “It mine.” The first section examines how shame fractures Celie’s self-consciousness; the second focuses on how Celie positions and locates herself in the world; and the third explains how Celie mobilizes shame by connecting her self-consciousness to a past that is shameful but also generative. I conclude by considering the novel’s emergence in the Cosby/Reagan era in order to illuminate the mutual constitution of black familial pride and black racial shame.

Lo scopo di questo breve intervento è quello di introdurre la biografia della scrittrice americana Zora Neale Hurston, vissuta a cavallo tra la fine dell'Ottocento e la prima metà del Novecento (1891-1960), con particolare riferimento al suo romanzo più famoso, Their Eyes Were Watching God, dato alle stampe nel 1937.

The horrible experiences of slavery and racism have elicited various responses, which have found expressions in the literatures (oral and written) that have marked the landscape of history and contemporary experience.  The responses have differed according to the writers’ respective contexts. In the very early oral forms, for example, specifically the Negro spirituals, Africa stood out as the symbol of the freedom that was a constant dream.  Accordingly, “Canaan” and “the promised land” became metaphors that expressed that yearning, while “Egypt” and “Pharaoh” respectively described America the land of their harsh experiences, and the slave masters themselves.  With time, however, Africa gradually ceased to hold the same attraction to all Blacks in the Diaspora.  Some began to see Africa merely as a romantic object of pedigree curiosity.  Their lands of Diaspora had come to stay not merely as adopted homes but as home.

The emergence of the cult of true womanhood in the early 20th century had triggered the movement called Black Madonna Movement, which caused a great number of black women to embrace the values of true womanhood. Alice Walker is one of many woman authors who write about black womanhood.
The article finds that in the setting of early 20th century, Alice Walker portrays black women aligning with the values of true womanhood. Walker portrays Celie as the product of Black Madonna Movement thus making her the idealized woman among her Black peers. However, she also represents the image of 'empowered' women in other characters, defying the 'code' of true womanhood as believed by the society at that time.

Alice Walker (1944-) has brought a new dimension to black feminism with her theory of womanism, which she explains in In Search of Our Mothers’ Garden (1983). She aims at achieving universality by extending her struggle to all people around the world, regardless of race, gender, and ethnical differences. According to Walker, it requires people to acknowledge their history, matrilineal descent, and black and non-black authors’ works inspiring them to struggle. She represents her womanist understanding in “Elethia” and “A Sudden Trip Home in Spring” in her collection entitled You Can’t Keep A Good Woman Down (1981). The title character of “Elethia” and Sarah in “A Sudden Trip Home in Spring” face their problems and realize how to struggle against them. Thus, analyzing Walker’s selected stories, the study indicates that she presents a womanist way out for black people in the racist society through Elethia and Sarah.

The Christian missionary as the harbinger of colonialism in Africa has been given critical attention in Chinua Achebe studies. On its part, Alice Walker's The Color Purple has been seen as bearing the experiences and existential vagaries of African Americans in America. However, the complementary nature of Christian missionary activities as represented in both works has missed critical interest despite that in The Color Purple, we are offered in a substantial measure textualised missionary activities, which to readers is an unexpected and curious version of the diasporan involvement in the presumed purely white civilizing and Christianising mission to Africa. Through postcolonial and close readings that focus on the categories of outside/inside perspectives of origin and identities and the problematic of sameness within contrast involving the narrators and some characters, the relationship of complementarity of the Christian missionary venture in both texts is bared. It concludes that the complementary nature of this venture in re-informs and questions at the same time the discourse of (post)colonialism through offering a paired and somewhat alternative view to a conventional African representation of the missionary question in African literature, ascribed to the white man alone.

"The truth telling Walker engages in in 'One Child of One's Own' reflects her bold unwillingness as a Black feminist artist and mother to silence, distort, or suppress her experiences of and ideas about motherhood and mothering. Although not without risk, this practice of truth telling is compelling, revolutionary, and a central, defining characteristic of Walker's womanist maternal."

Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, the African American novelists have presented in their novels the problems of the women. The realistic portrayal of the excruciating experiences of Black African women given by both the writers is hairsplitting and heart rending. The brutal treatment, given to women by Whites as well as by their own persons, makes these women more vulnerable in nature. In my paper, with the help of two popular novels of both the writers The Color Purple and Beloved, which forcefully illustrate the victimized self of women, I have attempted to present the Amazonian picture of women who wrestle with the world but ultimately assert their own self.

Abstract: This paper discusses Alice walker’s The Color Purple. Since
its publication in 1982 it has caught attention of critics and researchers.
It’s the story of a girl, Celie, physically and emotionally isolated,
victim, quiet and submissive in the beginning of the novel but she later
develops into a strong bold character. So this study works under the
subject, “From “being” to “becoming” and The Roles of Behaviors: A
Psychoanalytic Study of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.” Walker’s
own life is a turn from a self-conscious thought “For a long time, I
thought I was very ugly and disfigured” (Walker 2015) to an active
social worker, teacher and mighty writer.
The study aims at recognizing the psychological motivations by
specially focusing on patterns of behaviors, constructive and
destructive, that play major roles in Celie’s journey from her dead,
passive existence into her living bold, identified, and financially,
spiritually and emotionally independent life. In order to carry this out
the qualitative method of textual analysis is conducted with related
theoretical framework of Psychoanalytic Criticism. The study
investigates the primary text in terms of Sigmund Freud’s (1856-1939)
concepts of psychology that behavior is determined by unconscious core issues. They work behind one’s acts and that the behaviors play
unavoidable part in building one’s true self-image (Tyson 2006, 14-15).
Besides, the study seeks to draw attention with its findings, on the
basis of textual analysis, to the fact that Celie’s mind and her journey is
in all way an output of behaviors, to the fact that they unquestionably
shape our spirit; and for such study Psychoanalytic Criticism befits
more intensely. For psychology has got the immediate and sufficient
goal of knowing individuals and groups by each researching specific
cases and forming general principles and for most it eventually aims to
help society through its findings (Types of behaviors 2014).

Keywords: Alice Walker, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Patterns of
behavior, Freud, Celie.

This paper approaches the theme of human rights from the perspective of racism (social and political discrimination based on biological differences) and sexism (the discrimination of the woman based on the opinion that she is less able than the man).  Those were issues that engaged the greater attention of black writers of the mid-twentieth century, such as Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, Lorraine Hansberry, and Ralph Ellison.  From a survey of selected works by African-American writers of that period, the paper argues that the black population, while it hailed the structural racial reforms, was concerned that the legislative dismantling of segregative structures had not changed the fundamental discriminatory attitude of whites. It further shows that the black woman faced another kind of discrimination not only as a person of colour but also because of her gender; discrimination, sadly, even from her own black society.

Este libro parte de un acercamiento poliédrico al blues y al jazz como temas literarios, como ritmos transgresores, como espacios de reivindicación y como estandartes de la música que surgió del contacto cultural en la diáspora africana. Bajo esta premisa, Sonidos de la diáspora explora la influencia de ambos géneros musicales en la obra literaria de Toni Morrison, Alice Walker y Gayl Jones, de quienes apenas se ha destacado que rompen con la tradición de vincular los temas y la estética del blues y el jazz únicamente a poetas masculinos del Harlem Renaissance o del Black Arts Movement. Otra de las aportaciones del presente estudio reside en analizar el contexto sociocultural convulso en el que emergieron el blues y el jazz en Estados Unidos: desde los circuitos teatrales segregados de principios del siglo XX, hasta el posterior éxito de los ritmos sincopados dentro y fuera del país. Asimismo, Sonidos de la diáspora profundiza en el impacto cultural de cantantes como Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey o Billie Holiday y de instrumentistas femeninas, ausentes en la mayoría de historias del jazz, como la pianista Mary Lou Williams, la trombonista Melba Liston o la saxofonista Elvira Redd. El libro está dividido en tres capítulos, precedidos por una Introducción que detalla la influencia del blues y el jazz en la literatura negra, con énfasis en las voces femeninas. Los textos literarios seleccionados musicalizan memorias de opresión racial, sexual y de clase, a partir de los ritmos precursores de la música negra.

5TH Undergraduate Conference on Anglo-American Literature: “Multiculturalism” 2015 Conference Abstract Submission
IS CORNEL WEST RIGHT AS HIS AMERICAN DREAM FOR BLACK INTELLECTUALS IN HIS NEW CULTURAL POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE?
( T. Morrison’s Sula and A. Walker’s The Color Purple will be the Literary Sources)
EKMEKÇİ, Çelik
Here in this paper, multiculturalism as a literary theory will be the core theory that is going to be the target literary discipline whose theoretical principles and characteristics are going to be discussed in terms of the consistency of the main argument, under “Multiculturalism for Black Intellectuals” which is pointed out within the illumination of Cornel West’ New Cultural Politics of Difference. Thereby, this situation will be aimed to be discussed whether these multicultural concepts for Black Intellectuals whose features are politically oriented take place politically or not? Is it done under Eurocentric power? In other words is it Racism or Multiculturalism in Nationalism? Furthermore, Is West consistent enough to hold this multicultural idea in keeping it under Black Intellectuals? Thus, whilst the author’s so called American Dream takes place, these characteristics are attributed to West’s Black Intellectuals whose works are also going to be scrutinized. So, these questions and circumstances are the main purposes, in order to be clarified and discussed in this paper which includes variety of theoretical articles, academic & literary quotations and target black feminist novels: “The Color Purple”, “Sula.”
Key Words: Problematized American Dream, Multiculturalism, Black Intellectuals, Cornel West, New Cultural Politics of Difference, Morrison’s Sula, Walker’s The Color Purple
(INSTRUCTOR) ÇELİK EKMEKÇİ (PhD Candidate) / ÇANKIRI KARETEKİN UNIVERSITY/ ÇANKIRI
PhD CANDIDATE IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE AT ISTANBUL AYDIN UNIVERSITY/ ISTANBUL

Este trabajo plantea una aproximación a la recepción en España de literatura afroamericana escrita por mujeres, a través de la comparación de los casos de Toni Morrison y Alice Walker. Actualmente, ambas autoras se han convertido en dos pilares no solo de la literatura estadounidense, sino también a nivel internacional y han conseguido trasladar la realidad de la identidad afroamericana a culturas diversas. En este contexto, mi trabajo pretende investigar los factores que han propiciado la traducción y difusión de la obra de estas autoras en España, así como determinar el modo en que su asociación como figuras fundamentales de un colectivo literario concreto ha influido en la recepción de sus novelas por parte del público español.

This paper aims to highlight the similarities between the condition of the African-American woman and that of the Egyptian woman. As a result, this proves that in order to empower Egyptian women to solve their problems of oppression and inequality, they cannot do with Feminism (which is a movement that is dominated by white women and not inclusive of women of color who incidentally face much harsher socio-economic conditions) but rather Womanism, which is a term coined by Alice Walker to be a more inclusive type of Feminism. This is proven through examining four short stories by two female writers: African-American writer Alice Walker (“Roselily” and “How Did I Get Away With Killing One of the Biggest Lawyers in the State? It Was Easy.”) and Egyptian writer Salwa Bakr (“Kol Hatha Al Sawt Al Gameel Allathi Ya’ti Min Dakhiliha” or “This Beautiful Voice Coming from Within Her” and “Thaat Al Gholaf Al Aswad” or “She Who is Wrapped in Black”) through a Womanist perspective. Some of the works in choice have been tackled in numerous studies, however, not in comparison to each other, to the best of the researcher’s knowledge. After examining the stories and comparing them it was concluded that African-American and Egyptian women have quite similar struggles (namely: poverty, inequality, and the oppression of patriarchy while being the primary supporters of their families). As a result –and since Feminism has proven not to be as inclusive as it should be of the issues of women of color—Womanism has proven to be the answer to their problems.

On 28 th August 2013 a news report came out in the online edition of a newspaper 1 about the racially inappropriate figure of "Black Pete" who is seen to accompany St. Nikolaus in the Dutch celebration of Christmas. The piece is curiously titled as "Black Pete: Tradition or Throwback to Slavery?" This points to the fact that the whole thing is being seen through the white gaze of the European, for whom supposedly slavery and tradition are distinct. It is an attempt to exorcise slavery from the white tradition to forget the horrors it brought for another race. But for a black writer, the tradition is rooted in the violence of the slavery era, in the narratives the subsequent generations heard from their parents or grandparents which became a part of the narrative they were creating themselves and giving a voice to erstwhile silenced attempts at self expression-ones that were not paid any heed to. Here, as I attempt to delineate Tony Morrison and her treatment of tradition in her novels, (especially The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby and Beloved) and her non-fictional writings, I will take into consideration memory, parent-child relationships, Names and her overall use of history and myths in consolidating her tradition in her writings and try to show how important a role the idea of tradition itself plays in these novels. As a parallel I would use a set of essays by Alice Walker and the novel "Ceremony" by Leslie Marmon Silko to show through walker that the importance of tradition in the black context finds resonance in other chief writers too (almost all black writers, but I choose Walker as a fellow female compatriot of Morrison) and through Silko's Native Indian narrative that in cultures other than the blacks which have been marginalised by the whites in the US, the path of resistance is to hold on to one's own traditions. For Morrison, tradition is the source of inspiration, and she moves above just her own racial past and goes on to identify with the Greeks as a source of inspiration and with whom the black art has lots in common.

1st vice president and then co-president of the local union with Bill Lipkin. Along with other union leaders Bill and Dave spent countless hours dealing with the inequities and disrespect shown to adjunct faculty. They went to many conferences and workshops to keep up with pedagogical changes and the growing issues in Higher Education.

Since the translator is not independent of the religious, political, and socio-cultural norms in his/her society, finding adequate equivalences for taboo words such as slang and swear words in literary texts can put them under pressure. Thus, censorship of these taboo words by institutions, society, or sometimes by translators themselves is a high possibility. In the present work, the translation of taboo words in the Turkish translation of Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple will be evaluated. The translation used is that of Armağan llkin (Renklerden Moru 1984). For the evaluation of the strategies that are chosen while translating the taboo words, the norms that are proposed by Gideon Toury within the framework of descriptive translation studies will be adopted.

This book argues that literature is one of the cultural spaces in which African Americans defend, embrace, and affirm same-sex erotic desire. I highlight the ways these affirmations occur in fiction through the characters' expressions of faith, belief in the supernatural, or humanist principles.

This article offers an analysis of Alice Walker's novel The Temple of My Familiar. It critiques the claim that humans' ability to use language, regarded in this article as equivalent to one sense of the word representation, marks the essential difference of humans from animals. The argument has two stages. The first claims that the novel offers a way to bridge this supposed fundamental difference in order that representation, in a second sense of speaking or advocating for animals, can effectively occur. Impor tantly, the context of this is Walker's anti-oppressive politics of race and gender. It analyzes the portrayal of characters who understand their lives, the past, and their relationships with nonhuman animals by creating myths and stories, rather than via conventional written history. The second stage of the argument shows that this essentially creative understanding of worldviews other than the " norm " of western culture transcends the distance that language is said to insinuate between humans and animals. Creative, imaginative understanding allows humans to get close to animals. " Can one speak of the animal? Can one approach the animal? " (Derrida, 1997, p. 271)