Alice Walker's Blog

Nothing is Stronger Than a Circle Which is Why, as Black Elk Teaches us, Everything Tries to Be Round Thoughts on the Russell Tribunal re: International Corporate Complicity in the Destruction of the People of Palestine Copyright©2010 by Alice Walker November 19, 2010 In many of my talks to young people, to women, to peace activists, etc., I advocate that in these times of planetary disasters and instability people everywhere should gather together in circles of friends, in each other’s homes, o...

Meridian Seminar, The Nineties A recent seminar on my 1976 novel, Meridian, arranged by Robert Cohen, author of the much anticipated and highly praised Freedom’s Orator: Mario Savio, and the Radical Movements of the 1960s, gave me the opportunity to look back at that book, as I had not done, possibly, ever.  In speaking with the alertly interested young UC students around me, I was reminded of what I had wanted, all those years ago, to show: that the “meaning” of the Civil Rights Movement in tha...

Michelle Obama as a child. We Could Have Been a Contender! (Thank you, Marlon Brando):  The “Manhood” of Michelle Obama It has been many things to see the fascination numerous white men have with the question of whether or not Michelle Obama is a man. In black rural culture, growing up, I experienced many women, including my mother, who might have been “mistaken” for men. After all, there they were, tilling fields, milking cows, repairing shacks.  Then, come Sunday, they ditched the overalls, ba...

Like Buddhist Tibetans and the Three Wise Men of Christian mythology, I have felt my way to my ancient identity by my own efforts. And through dreams and synchronicities. The mythical, to some, Native ancestry I’ve felt since my earliest days, has puzzled but not entirely mystified me. Fortunately in my hometown environment of Putnam County, Georgia, ancestors of that land left behind an enormous eagle made of stones to remind descendants that our tribe had once been there. They were amazing to ...

SOBRE NOLAN      |     Todos los niños On Nolan Nolan Xavier Wells was a seriously good-looking young man. A perfect blend of his handsome dark father and his very cute, curly haired, bright-skinned mother.  He was already integrated, as most people of color are, and so the leap to having white companions must have seemed barely a bump to him. Most black people in America have integrated the world within their own families, and so it is a challenge, sometimes, while young, to understand why not ...

Thank you, South Africa, for remembering how it has felt to face a people’s devastation seemingly all alone. To have learned valiant soul by valiant soul that you were not unaccompanied in your struggle. That if you rose, others would rise with you. Like Gaza, you bled for so long, it seemed to be your fate. What a cost for you, so many deaths and humiliations, to awaken a world in unified courage. But you have done so. You are a miracle, really, a magical beacon of hope. That the peoples of the...

Why write Speech you will never hear again? To Enjoy It. ©2016 by Alice Walker In the first third of The Color Purple it is clear we are dealing with people who have creatively fashioned a language, a way of speaking, that is like a photograph of themselves.  Some have labeled this “dialect.” But if you do this you will notice that the actual people, with their full personalities, soon disappear beneath this dismissive term.  I prefer black folk speech.  Nothing diminished, but rather so much to...

The Best Thing I Learned At Sarah Lawrence ©2016 by Alice Walker During my senior year at Sarah Lawrence College I wrote my “contract” (thesis) on the anti-Nazi, anti-Fascist rebel combatant and war correspondent (always depicted wearing a cool trench coat), Albert Camus.  He was also a great writer.   My “Don” or primary teacher dissuaded me from spending the year dissecting Thomas Hardy’s emotionally complex novels, which I adored, finding linkages in them to my Southern “black” folk country s...

A Poem Started Years Ago By Alice Walker In a few years I will be eighty.  Eighty. What does it feel like to grow old? Well, it’s true you get tired a lot And take these delicious, bottomless Naps And also you forget at least half Of the stuff That doesn’t matter to you. I’m liking it a lot. Still, there are things that rankle: Like this abortion business. And so I will need to speak on that As someone who knows, and remembers the terrain, Quite well.     ***

Sharing My Love of  Shamanic Huichol  Art ©2013 by Alice walker During the last trimester of pregnancy some forty-odd years ago, I felt well enough, to fly off, along with my husband – who disliked travel and had finally, for sheer love of his wife, consented to go – to explore several cities and their environs, in Mexico.  We didn’t know what to expect.  A lawyer, he had spent every free moment of our time in Mississippi handling difficult legal matters.  I had spent whatever time I wasn’t naus...