Meridian

by Alice Walker

The second novel written by Alice Walker, preceding The Color Purple is a heartfelt and moving story about one woman's personal revolution as she joins the Civil Rights Movement. Set in the American South in the 1960s it follows Meridian Hill, a courageous young woman who dedicates herself heart and soul to her civil rights work, touching the lives of those around her even as her own health begins to deteriorate. Hers is a lonely battle, but it is one she will not abandon, whatever the costs. This is classic Alice Walker, beautifully written, intense and passionate.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, African American, Classics, Feminism, Literature, 20th Century

262 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1976

About the author

Noted American writer Alice Walker won a Pulitzer Prize for her stance against racism and sexism in such novels as The Color Purple (1982).

People awarded this preeminent author of stories, essays, and poetry of the United States. In 1983, this first African woman for fiction also received the national book award. Her other books include The Third Life of Grange Copeland , Meridian , The Temple of My Familiar , and Possessing the Secret of Joy . In public life, Walker worked to address problems of injustice, inequality, and poverty as an activist, teacher, and public intellectual.

Reviews

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought provoking..Educational..A great discussion book

The inside cover over of this book says it was published in 1976 and this fits. I can see it. The Civil Rights 60's are over. What was The Movement has either died or morphed into something else. This book is almost a reflective look at its history, humble beginnings, the height and what became of it. All this metaphorically speaking through the protagonist character of Meridian, the books namesake.

In an Alice Walker book, Alice is a good story teller but you won't read one sentence that within its lines she isn't try to teach you a lesson. She wants you to think. You could things to be the straight story line but you just know she meant it to be a metaphor for the subject at whole. Meridian is the story of a black woman who grows up in the south. We learn by looking back into her childhood and moving up through her adulthood how she experienced and then combatted and later became involved in the Civil Rights Movement. We learn the story of her parents, grandparents and even people in her community who shaped her life. We peek into glimpses of her various trials and tribulations in relationships in the ever changing world around her. And all the while as Meridians story is the main story, Meridian is almost a code word, if you will, the whole thing a metaphor for the history of the beginning, middle and death or transmutation of the 1960's Civil Rights movement as per the eyes of the author.
It's very interesting to see the growth from a change in thought, to fliers voter registration and sit ins..to speeches marches and arrests.. To enduring hatred and violence but determined peace.. To the point when all the leaders have met with violence and suddenly there is chaos and a change in action to militancy or a dropping of the subject as a whole.

Meridian also has a few close friends: Truman, Lynne, AnneMarion and even her mother who's very character existence and relationship to Meridian is metaphor for life in this time. It all reminds me very much of a song by hip hop artist Common called "I Used To Love Her", where he used the story of his relationship with a woman as a metaphor for the history of hip hop and how it grew and changed. I always thought that was so cleaver but now wonder if he may have been reading a bit of Alice Walker and was inspired. Meridian is a woman character but also she is the Civil Rights movement and all other characters and locations are their involvement and relationship to it. There is so much to think about. Truman, a black mans perspective. AnneMarion, a young black woman with college communist thoughts but capitalist dreams. Lynne, a white woman who enthusiastically gets involved at the height the Movements popularity, out of a rebellious spirit and a sense of curiosity but who in old age lives to hate and regret not only herself but the very people she aligned herself with. Meridian's mother who is an embodiment of the old quiet fearful ways.

This book makes you think a lot. It was a complete learning experience for me. Having read some of Ms Walkers books previously, I was reminded of why I don't do it so very frequently. It can be a bit exhausting because it does make you think. It drills up in you emotion and consideration. I felt sometimes, sad, disgusted, annoyed, in disagreement or angered at times. I also was told a lot I didn't know or just don't bother to consider and was grateful for the lesson. It prompted a lot of discussion for me. My best friend said of Alice that she writes the uncomfortable to make you think. I say maybe she writes to make you think and doesn't care that it may make you feel uncomfortable because she wants you to hear and feel it. I also had some great discourse with my husband in regards to the male and female point of view regarding the triangle of Meridian, Truman and Lynne. This is definitely a thought provoking book and would be a wonderful suggestion for a group or buddy read as it absolutely lends itself to discussion. You have to discuss it. You can't have read this and keep it to yourself. You'll burst. Heavy no. Educational and thought provoking, oh yes.
I would like to ask Ms Alice now, in 2015 is Meridian still alive? Is Truman? Is AnneMarion? Where have they gone? What would she say they are doing now? Because I don't know that I have ever come across any of them. Lynne... Well, we won't say anything about the Lynne's of the world.. There are too many to talk about.

4 stars from me. I do recommend it but one does have to have a certain temperament and openness to an Alice Walker book because oh yes you will get a story but you will also get an education and be expected to go out and participate in the conversation as a whole.

[Ilyhana Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Meridian" is a challenging read. It dips into places that are often raw and sometimes beyond comprehension.
The novel is described as being about a woman named Meridian hill, an activist in civil rights work in the American South in the 60's. I found that it was equally the story of the white woman Lynne, who also joined the Civil Rights Movement.
This is not a 'read for pleasure' book, but more of an understanding of the distortion experienced in relationships affected by racism.
The story zig-zags around in time and I found this confusing, as well as sometimes not knowing which character was now speaking.
There's something of a tightness in the writing style, a containment that made me wonder what it would be like to write such a book.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for the #1976club challenge in the blogosphere hosted by Simon and Karen - this aligned with the goal to read more books by Black women, although I've read Alice Walker before, both novels and poetry.

Meridian is a woman who feels a calling to not live a normal life but to centralize her body in protest and defiance. It's the 1970s and she lives two hours from Atlanta (some of the novel is at a college in Atlanta, but the timetable of all of it is a bit chaotic) - the south is seeing the fallout of desegregation (communities taking revenge by filling in pools, firing black teachers, etc) and Meridian also spends a lot of time trying to convince people to vote. She's a pretty memorable character, in one of those in between time periods I always feel I don't know enough about.

[Rowland Pasaribu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though Alice Walker has worked in a variety of genres, including children’s literature, poetry, nonfiction, and screenwriting, she is best known for her novels, which give voice to the concerns of an often doubly oppressed group: African American women. She is best known for her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Color Purple, which extends and solidifies many of the themes she first touched upon in her early work, which includes Meridian. In many ways, Meridian anticipates and paves the way for Walker’s future preoccupations: it focuses on women’s lives and examines how the past and the present interconnect and construct the future. Meridian, Walker’s second work of long fiction, is set against the turbulent backdrop of the civil rights movement, which gained force in the 1960s, triggering sit-ins, demonstrations, and protests against the racist and segregationist policies that controlled and shaped the lives of African Americans in the South.

Meridian is in some respects autobiographical, but Walker and Meridian Hill, the novel’s protagonist, differ in many significant ways. Both Walker and Meridian were raised in rural Georgia and became pregnant as young students, though Walker, unlike Meridian, did not have the child. While Meridian’s relationship with her mother was fraught with problems, Walker blossomed under the influence of her mother, Minnie. Minnie bought the young Walker three pivotal and symbolic gifts: a sewing machine to encourage self-sufficiency, a suitcase to nudge her curious and errant spirit, and a typewriter to nurture the gifted wordsmith and budding writer in her daughter. Additionally, Meridian’s Saxon College is loosely based on Spelman College, the all-black women’s college in Atlanta where Walker started her formal education in 1961. At the time, Atlanta was a hotbed of civil rights activism, but like the young women of Saxon, Spelman’s students were viewed as ladies in training, too refined and upstanding to throw themselves into the fray of social protest. Walker resisted such rigid control of her life and transferred to Sarah Lawrence College, north of New York City. Walker returned to Georgia during the summer of 1965 to canvass voters in Liberty County. When she sat down to write Meridian almost a decade later, she drew from these experiences walking the dusty roads and encouraging residents to register to vote.

A tireless crusader on behalf of women, Walker in her later career defended her work against censorship and continued to speak out against the horrors of domestic violence, sexual abuse, and genital mutilation, a ritualistic practice employed by several native African cultures. Not precisely aligned with broad feminist concerns, Walker has often labeled herself a “womanist,” establishing her primary goal as a writer and individual to free women from oppression in all of its forms. Walker is also a student of history, and she strives to create a dialogue in her work between the past and the present in an attempt to elucidate eternal truths as well as eternal struggles and hardships. Like Meridian’s father, Walker has an abiding love of and respect for Native Americans and sees their plight as instructive and an important correlative to the black experience in the United States throughout the centuries.

Walker’s various aesthetic and social concerns are harmoniously combined in Meridian, an exploration of a young woman’s coming of age and her journey from loneliness, guilt, and self-doubt, to self-acceptance, empowerment, and love. Like Walker once was, Meridian is set on a path to greater self-realization and endures the hardships of firmly and irrevocably establishing her identity amid the chaos of social upheaval, sexual alienation, and people who are not always approving or supportive of either the woman or the cause.

Meridian is energized by a younger generation coming into its full power and raising its voice in dissent against the institutional racism that prevailed through the 1960s. Through occasionally violent protests and demonstrations, Meridian and other activists attempt to institute change and alter perceptions. Idealistic as they are, they ultimately find various degrees of satisfaction with the goals and ideals of the civil rights movement. Meridian feels that she will always stand on the fringes of the movement since she is unprepared to take her dissent to a radical, if not murderous, level. Lynne struggles with adapting and applying her own idealism to meaningful change in the lives of southern blacks. Truman eventually sours to the movement, having lost sight of its intentions in his self-absorption. In the end, Meridian realizes the fatuousness of dying or killing for the movement, concluding that the battle is won in small ways, such as getting blacks registered to vote and improving the lives of people victimized by the unchecked expression of racism.

In Meridian, young activists attempt to break with tradition by bringing an end to the racism and segregation that had overshadowed black Americans for centuries. Walker shifts her focus from the present to the past to explore the lives of people who helped pave the way to the present moment. The experiences of Louvinie and Feather Mae, for example, frame the issues that Meridian and her father face. The serpent mound also evokes this powerful historical precedent, serving as a vital connection between Meridian, her father, and the ancestors who came before her. Throughout Meridian, Walker stresses the universality of the human experience and suggests that no one has cornered the market on suffering. Rather, many individuals from a variety of groups and backgrounds share a common history of exploitation, guilt, suffering, violence, and, ultimately, freedom, triumph, and acceptance.

Meridian is plagued by a mysterious inherited illness, much like epilepsy, which parallels and triggers her spiritual and physical transformation. The sickness renders her unconscious, episodes she refers to as “falling down,” and it subjects her to paralysis, blindness, and hair loss. On one hand, the condition connects her directly with her father and great-grandmother, who suffered the same burden. The illness is also the physical rendering of Meridian’s deep emotional and spiritual angst, the grief and sadness that have marked and gripped her throughout her life. The illness becomes a means for Meridian to suffer, to perform penance for this ambiguous wrong she felt she has done. It also offers her atonement and, ultimately, self-acceptance. When she is well again, rising out of her sick bed and heading full force into the future, she can finally forgive herself and love and accept herself for who she is.

Walker prefaces her novel with a lengthy list of definitions and traditional usages of the word meridian. A total of twelve different meanings are included for both the word’s noun and adjectival form. This alone signifies the fact that Meridian resists easy definition or simple categorization. She is a complex and capacious character whose presence and identity cannot be reduced to a simple phrase or formulation. The term also sets up a comparison between Meridian and the growing civil rights movement. One of the most common definitions of the term is “zenith, the highest point of power, prosperity, splendor.” Not only does the novel trace the rise and growing power of social activism, united in the face of racist and segregationist policies, but it also tracks the ascent of Meridian from her spiritual and physical pain to a newly whole being in full charge of her capacities and inner wealth. An alternate meaning, “distinctive character,” applies just as well to the novel’s protagonist and namesake.

[Rebouh Abderezak · Rating 3 out of 5]

الرواية محبوكة ببراعة، الشخصيات والأحداث وحتى فكرة الرواية جميلة، لكن وقد يصعب تصديق هذا، الذي اعجبني في الرواية حقاً هو الأبيات الشعرية لآنا أخماتوفا النخب الأخير أثملتني هذه لأبيات من شدة قوتها، صحيح لم أرى نفسي في الأبيات لكن قوة التلذذ بالشعر الجميل أينما كان جعلتني أفهم مراد الكاتبة من الرواية، أتركك صديقي القارئ مع الأبيات:

النخب الأخير
أشرب نخب بيتنا المدمَّر؛
نخب بؤس حياتي،
نخب وحدتنا معاً؛
ولك أنت أرفع كأسي عالياً؛
طعنتنا في الظهر؛ للعيون التي لا تعرف الرحمة،
الباردة كالموت،
ونخب الحقيقة القاسية:
حقيقة أن العالم وحشي وقاسٍ،
وان الله حقيقةً لم يخلّصنا.

أخماتوفا.

[Brandelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is definitely a book I will have to read multiple times to catch all of the hidden themes and messages so I cannot give a complete review of my thoughts quiet yet. I will say, however, that Alice Walker stunned me with her uncanny ability to speak on behalf of the generation and to give voice to the needs of women everywhere. On the first go round I have to say this book was a delicious read.

[Randy · Rating 4 out of 5]

PBS recently aired a fascinating documentary on the writer Alice Walker who rose literally from a hardscrabble existence to reverence as writer and activist. I have always been a fan of her clear prose and rich characters, and I was reminded that I had never read Meridien, her second novel, which is now available for e-readers, as are all her works.
While The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy are better known novels, and worthy of their accolades and readership, I found this early work especially interesting as I felt I was taking Walker's journey to activism with her.
When you re-read a writer you like, you immediately settle into their prose as if you've just run into an old friend. Walker never manipulates her reader, she just tells it like it is. Taking place largely during the sixties, a young woman is thrust into the harsh realities of sex and racism too soon to make sense of it, at first. Living in a small southern black community, she encounters civil rights fighters in black and white, and discovers the depth of the divide between the races, while also discovering her own desire to make a difference.
However the path to change for Meridian, like her people, is fraught with obstacles, not the least of which is her own community, filled with an assortment of unusual characters.
"The majority of black townspeople were sympathetic to the Movement from the first, and told Meridian she was doing a good thing... Her mother however was not sympathetic... God separated the sheeps from the goats, and the blacks from the whites."
Meridian is the embodiment of truth. She suffers physically for her own and others' sin: a lightning rod for the storms around her. She struggles to forgive and to be forgiven. She longs for what she cannot describe. The man in her life, Truman, who also evolves over the decade, abandons her after a heated affair for a long-term relationship with a white woman, Lynne, whom he also ultimately abandons in the hopes of rekindling his life with Meridian, who by then has found her voice and her mission.
Lynne, like many Jews who supported the civil rights movement, is one of the more fascinating characters, for me, as Walker digs deep into her psyche, revealing her motives for activism, a woman who suffers for the oppression of her people. Like Germans who sheltered Jews during WWII, were they compassionate or were they compensating for the sins of their nations? Walker also deftly portrays the mixed feelings among her people towards the whites who invaded their movement and some, like Lynne, who loved their men as well.
"By being white, Lynne was guilty of whiteness. Then the question was, is it possible to be guilty of color?"
In my own novel, "Colors of the Wheel" I explore contemporary challenges of race, and novels like Meridian that reflect with such authenticity on the civil rights movement confirm that much has changed, and too much hasn't.
Read Alice Walker for your own edification and reading pleasure or consider Meridian for your book group, definitely good material for dialogue.

[Bookish · Rating 4 out of 5]

At certain points throughout the book I thought to myself, I'll need to read this again. I can see this as one of those books that gives you more with every reading. Well this time around, I saw race, racism, and how people related to each other because of these two pathologies - largely within the context of the struggle of the Civil Rights movement in the American South. With these characters though -Meridian Hill, Truman Held, and Lynne Rabinowitz - this novel gave me a three dimensional appreciation for the cancer that "race-thinking" has been for humanity, bloody Gobineau's of this world. From this one extremely flawed, pseudo-scientific rationale with a strong economic motivator that one "race" was better than another, the Europeans and Americans enslaved Africans, and later African-Americans.

Keeping this is mind as a starting point, as it were, makes it easier to understand the relationships and the dynamics of how these work in the novel. The relationship between Meridian and her mother, Meridian's adolescence and the sexual abuse at the hands of Daxter etc, the concept of black family, sexuality, and citizenship, and the way black women know white men have perceived them and acted on those perceptions. The inclusion of Lynne as a character and her rape by Tommy Odder was an interesting wrench to throw in the mix. There is so much more, for instance society's warped conception of what motherhood should be, the nature of revolution and how survival fits into that, and more. The inclusion of an indigenous presence within the novel was also really good to see. A lot of American novels simply ignore or write out the Native Americans, oddly enough, so this simply added to the list of things I appreciated about Meridian.

[L.P. Coladangelo · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5

To paraphrase Zora Neale Hurston, it felt like I had to have gone there to know there, and therefore, a great deal of the book felt as if it had a very particular audience (that was not this reader) in mind. This portrait of the Civil Rights Movement is not dewy-eyed and rose-colored; in fact, it's a political and personal landscape populated by, at best, complicated, and at worst, horrible, people. The story seems to provide something of an inside scoop into what it was like to be a part of the Movement, but altogether, very, very little of it is about the day to day struggles in the fight for civil rights, as the messy interpersonal relationships of the fighters themselves dominate the text. Some of the novel's strongest moments indeed show the seminal events that lead to Meridian's awakening to social justice, and how her understanding of the sanctity and dignity of life become her North Star. But the cacophony of her relationships with selfish and self-righteous people weigh her down, and the book and the action along with it. Through all of that, however, Meridian still retains a resilience, a strength, and a wellspring of hope grounded in intense realism. Perhaps that's how Walker meant it; even in the face of personal anguish, disappointment, and pain, while also pushing against the larger forces of oppression, Meridian is almost destroyed, but only almost.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book that lit my activist fire...

[Fleur van Duren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meridian sluit zich in de jaren zestig aan bij de beweging voor burgerrechten en voert in het diepe zuiden van Amerika een strijd voor emancipatie en gelijke rechten. Het is mij onduidelijk waarom dit boek Meridian heet - tweederde van het boek gaat over twee andere karakters, namelijk: Lynne en Truman. Deze verwarring over de gekozen titel sluit overigens aan bij een algemeen gebrek aan samenhang in dit boek.

Daarnaast stelt het boek een inkijk te geven in de burgerrechtenbeweging maar mijns inziens geeft het vooral inzicht in de rassenscheiding en voornamelijk (liefdes)relaties die zich op deze grens bevinden.

Toch is dit werk van Walker er wederom één waar ik nog vaak aan terug zal denken, die pijnlijke thematiek aansnijdt en mij met een groot verdriet achterlaat.

[Elif · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alice Walker’la tanışma kitabım Renklerden Moru olmuştu ve favorilerim arasında yerini almıştı. Hala kitaplığımda gördükçe ‘ne kadar güzel bir kitaptı’ diye düşünmeden edemem. Meridian yazarın çevrilen diğer eseri ve sırf öncesinde Renklerden Moru’nu okumuş olduğumdan yüksek beklentilerimin olduğu bir kitaptı. Irkçılık, sevgi ve en çok da sivil haklar hareketleri hakkında yazılmış ve yazar kurgudan çok fikirlerini ortaya dökmeye odaklanmış. Benim için sorun aslında tam olarak karakterlere gelindiğinde başladı. Anlatımı bir nebze sevme ve güçlü bulmuş olsam da karakterlere bir türlü ısınamamam kitabı sevemememe yol açtı. Meridian sevimsiz bir karakterdi bunun yanında Truman’ı okumaktan hiç keyif almadım. Aslında sevilmeyecek karakterler yazmak ve okura sunmak büyük bir cesaret çünkü kusursuz yazılan karakterlerde insan kendini bulmayı başaramıyor. Kitabı okurken kitabın uzun olmamasına rağmen birçok kısımda sıkıldığımı fark ettim. Aktivizm hakkında fazlasıyla durulmuş ki bu da kitabı güçlü kılan yer olmuş. Alice Walker iyi bir yazar ve bu kitapta değindiği konular da oldukça etkileyiciydi ama ne yazık ki sevemediğim kitaplar arasına girdi. Eğer yazardan bir kitap okunacaksa Renklerden Moru tercih edilebilir.

[Lesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I have given Meridian five stars, I would be cautious about re-reading it in the future. It is harrowing, gritty and extremely deep, in a most unpleasant way yet disguised by the beautiful writing of Alice Walker. Meridian Hill is a black woman in America's south, and the book relays in an non-linear style her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement as well as some other key characters in her life. It is not just a book about race and rights, although that were enough as her depiction of the inhumanity with which black people were treated by white society and people, as well as the brutality meted out by those in the movement upon their white aggressors, is truly horrifying. However it is also a book with sexual and feminist messages, as the treatment of women and girls regardless of ethnicity is shockingly savage. Walker's style is cleverly dreamy, so that you read the bloodthirsty horrors of the time in a rather dissociated state, drifting back and forth from one time to another in a seemingly formless fashion. A 'must read', but perhaps to be stored in the freezer until further notice!

[Faith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meridian is the story of a black woman in the South during the 60s. Meridian Hill is only 17 when she has been married, pregnant and divorced, and after giving her child away, she becomes politically involved in the 60s civile rights issues...

Hmm, I didn't really get the point of the book, I think... The plot was very diffuse (well, the Swedish word 'flummig', which I never use, would be the most right word). There wasn't that much happening in the book, and it took very long to get into the book and figure out what it was actually about. At times it was quite boring. Not a very deep book, I would say... I would have wanted to know more especially about Meridian and her feelings. So all in all not a very easy book to read. (Maybe I should go back to reading Alice Walker in Swedish...)

[Edelmira Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another one of my favorite books that I read many years ago.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was blown away by this book! Meridian Hill is...indomitable? I'm not sure. The book centers around a story of the struggle for black people to obtain the rights granted them by the Civil Rights Act in the American South. Walker doesn't take a singular view to the history. The voter drives Meridian does reveal stories of rural black people who have no interest is suffrage while the realities of desegregation are laid bare. "Freedom" is continually visited throughout the book. "Freedom" for a mother who is a slave is not having her children sold and sent away from her. "Freedom" is never within grasping distance to those fighting for it throughout this story. Meridian is captivating as a person, she does not go along with the crowd. Her convictions are very few, which makes it difficult for others in the revolution to accept her and even more difficult for traditionalists to accept her. But she may be the only non-hypocrite among them all. At the end, a character in the story tells Meridian "Your ambivalence will always be deplored by people who consider themselves revolutionists, and your unorthodox behaviour will cause traditionalists to gnash their teeth."

This is a beautifully complex novel.

[Caroline Bock · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the main character Meridian fascinating in this novel by the eminent Alice Walker. Set in the early 60s to the late 60s -- this novel is about race, particularly about a black women undergoing personal and political changes. Some beautiful images -- see Sojourner tree -- fertilized by the cut out tongue of slave woman. Structurally, the chapters shift from past to present, and the reader must pay attention. I like that. However, this is a story of a powerful story of race in America made very personal -- similar to my novel and different. LIE is primarily about the aftermath of a hate crime, of the white suburban response in the 21st century, now, told in immediate first person. Meridian feels historical, or perhaps more a classic, but still powerful. Someone in goodreads community urged me to read this, and so I did. I'm glad I did. But I think LIE is more immediate. But you judge!! more at www.carolinebock on LIE. Onward to more books, maybe a 19th century classic or two!!

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one dealt with some very heavy topics and was sometimes challenging to read, but I am glad I experienced it. I feel like this book helped to broaden my horizons. Alice Walker is a talented author and I will read more from her soon!

[Jess Whiteley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A change from crime trash and nice to revisit Alice Walker - haven't read her since A Level so quite nostalgic in it's tone. But hard work and a bit vague as to what's going on and who is who.

[Beth Konarski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although set in the 60s and published in the 70s, the subject matter (feminism, civil rights and identity) are as current as ever.
Reading this book was like reading cave paintings and hieroglyphs by flashlight on a stormy night. You're captivated by the imagery, totally enthralled, but suddenly your flashlight goes out, and you have only lightning from the storm to read by. Then the images come in flashes, and are sometimes disjointed and by the end you aren't sure you've read them in the correct order, but the sum of the picture in your mind is powerful, and the scenes you've read are vivid, sometimes pulsing.

[Kathy-Ann Fletcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a challenging read leaving many of the supposed great mysteries of the book unexplained or dealt with inadequately in my opinion. For example, What was this life challenging sickness that Meridian has? I found it hard to connect with any of the characters and had mild sympathy for the lead character. I generally love books like this but I feel like this was an example of no cohesiveness and poor character and plot development.

[Kenneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work doesn't have a very strong plot, and the ending is a little unclear. However, Walker's development and exploration of her characters is amazing. They are so real, so flawed, so beautiful, they basically leap from the page.

[Martha Troy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An insight into the civil rights movement from a different perspective. Brought back the 60's. Good writing , good read.

[Winter Sophia Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intense & Passionate! I Loved It!

[Tia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Formidable! Though I’m admittedly not sure what to make of some of the Lynne sections.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

A young Black girl attempts to find herself in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. She had little real direction in her early life. She understood she needed more. There was always her dedication to help people, even if the “Movement” group she became associated with was less then an upstanding group. It was an interesting book.

[Florence Ridley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very confusing, disturbing book. I thought the parallel between Lynne and Meridian was well done but found the whole thing a little too bleak for my taste. In depicting how women of all races suffer from sexual abuse Walker dances around intersectional feminism but she never actually offers it as a solution, just depicts the problem in harrowing detail. I closed the book feeling that the central message was “everything sucks”. It was phenomenal as a piece of art but I couldn’t help feeling that it would have benefitted from the tiniest bit of hope.

[Surafel Geleta · Rating 4 out of 5]

the last 30 pages or so of the book were amazing, and Meridian was a very compelling character with a lot of development even outside of her being an activist in the civil rights movement.

[Sondang · Rating 5 out of 5]

eperti biasa, aku suka cara bertutur Alice Walker (
Meridian mengisahkan perjuangan seorang perempuan bernama Meridian -as usual kulit hitam- dengan cita-citanya mensosialisasikan salah satu hak azasi manusi -pemilu-. Perjuangannya bukan hal yang gampang, karena ternyata tantangan itu bukan hanya datang dari perlakuan kaum kulit putih yang diskriminan (which is always beautifully written by Alice), tapi dari para kulit hitam sendiri. Dalam perjuangannya menegakkan apa yang diyakininya -dengan cara-caranya yang bisa membuat kita tersenyum dalam hati- Meridien juga merasakan jatuh cinta pada seorang lelaki, yaitu Truman, yang juga seorang aktivis. Truman adalah seorang kulit hitam yang juga tidak 'mengenali dirinya sendiri' dan tidak tahu keinginan hatinya, meski penampilan menunjukkan sebaliknya. Tipikal pemimpin. Truman menikahi seorang kulit putih, Lynn, yang pada akhirnya berpisah juga, tapi di saat itu Truman juga sudah tidak bisa meraih hati Meridien. Alice Walker menggambarkan perasaan ketiganya dengan hebat, pergumulan dalam hati Meridian -yang merasa dirinya sangat kompleks dan simpel di satu sisi dibanding hidup yg dijalaninya- , Truman -yang mencintai Lynn tapi INGIN mencintai -dan sebenarnya membutuhkan dan mencintai- Meridien dan emnjadikannya pasangan hidup, dan Lynn -wanita kulit putih yang merasa dirinya sangat cocok dengan kehidupan kulit hitam, dan membiarkan dirinya terbuang dari keluarganya atas pilihannya tersebut tapi akhirnya juga merasa kecewa pada teman kulit hitamnya. Alice kembali menggambarkan, tidak ada yang sangat jahat atau sangat baik dalam setiap pribadi. Dia juga bisa menggambarkan dengan jelas perasaan hati setiap tokoh, dan motivasi mereka dalam melakukan tindakan terkecil sekalipun, serta prasangka-prasangka mereka yang sungguh membuat kita terhenyak. Terhenyak karena satu hal, astaga, kok bisa-bisanya Alice 'menangkap' hal itu dan menuliskannya dalam runutan kata yang membuat kita tersentil karena somehow someway, di tengah majemuknya kehidupan kita berbangsa, rasanya tiap kita pernah merasakannya dan memikirkan hal tersebut.