Alice Walker is an American social activist, novelist, and poet. Her full name is Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker. She was born to Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Tallulah Grant on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia, a rural farming town. Her parents were sharecroppers. She was the youngest child among eight siblings and got enrolled in a school at four years.
She suffered from an injury when she was eight years old after her brother fired a BB gun. Walker could not receive immediate medical attention and thus got permanently blind in that eye. It was after this injury that Walker began reading and writing. She has described this in her essay "Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self".
Walker wrote the poems of her poetry book, titled "Once". Walker also worked for a short time for the New York City Department of Welfare before returning to South America. Walker also worked as a consultant in black history to the "Friends of the Children of Mississippi Head Start program". Walker published her first novel, "The Third Life of Grange Copeland", in 1970.
In 1982, Alice Walker published the novel "The Color Purple". To date, this novel is the most beautiful of all novels, and she was given the National Book Award for hardcover fiction. She later got the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well. She also wrote the novel "Meridian" and "The Third Life of Grange Copeland". Walker famously coined the term womanist meaning "A black feminist or feminist of colour", in 1983. Walker is today 76 years old and is actively a part of the Black women writing discourse. Below are some of the famous Alice Walker Quotes.
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.
People have the inherent power to bring a great change in this entire world. Yet one problem that refrains them from actual holding that power is their delusional belief. This belief is false, making them believe that they don't have any power at all. This entire delusion just makes them give up on that innate power.
I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.
This quote is inspired by Alice Walker's book "The Color Purple". The book is about colour discrimination and racism in America. The colour purple is a symbol that Walker uses to denote Afro-Americans or people of colour. Thus, she says that if you ignore a purple flower in a field, you are pissing off God as this colour is his beautiful creation.
Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.
Alice Walker was the first person to give us the term called "Womanism". This term is in contrast to Feminism in the sense that Womanism considers women of colour and strives to create a community of Black women. Thus, just like purple and lavender look almost the same, Womanism and Feminism look the same but are different.
No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow.
You cannot label a person being your friend who silences or trivialises your emotions. A friend is that person who lets you cry when you want to. He/she will let you sink whatever you are feeling in your heart. A true friend will never silence your growth or the right over it. They will rather be the propeller of it.
In search of my mother's garden, I found my own.
Alice Walker wrote this line in a famous book called "In search of our mother's gardens". This book was her attempt to trace how nurturing and motherhood played an important role in the lives of Black women. Here, she's telling us how she found her true self while trying to search for creativity in her mother's garden.
Continue reading some more Alice Walker Quotes...
Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me.
The presence of divine power can come through various means. It can be felt through a simple emotion or perhaps one simple entity. Walker says that if ever she felt some divine force reside in any Church, she would just bring that with herself and let it reside forever in her heart. She's trying to say that there need not be one God that you preach. Any number of beautiful creations can live in your heart.
The animals of the world exist for their reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.
Walker is a strong critic of the racism perpetrated by Whites in America and elsewhere. She uses the analogy of animals to explain to us how Blacks have their own unique space in this world. Animals don't exist in tandem with humans. They exist because they have their own identity. Similarly, Blacks exist because they have their reasons and not because they want to impress Whites.
Some more Alice Walker Quotes....
Is solace anywhere more comforting than that in the arms of a sister?
Sisterhood has been an important theme in Alice Walker's writing. Black women have been beautifully described by keeping in mind that women are collective sufferers. Thus, it's only a sister who helps another sister to heal herself. The kind of solace and protection you feel in a sister's arm is unparalleled.
Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.
Expectations are mostly disappointing. If they come out being the same as you expected, it may go well and good. Yet if it doesn't, then one feels utter crushing and dejection. So let's not fall into the trap of expectations and rather engage in things that give us surprises. Let's wait for every other moment expecting nothing.
All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.
When Walker says that all history is current, she means to say that history is not a thing of the past that's over. History comes together in some patterns, and it never stands redundant. Thus, if injustices have happened in the past, it doesn't mean that they won't take place at present. They are all out there, happening everywhere.
Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is proof.
When times are hard, you have to do furious dancing. This can mean two things. On its simple undertone, this line is asking us to dance even during pains and hardships. Yet Walker is asking us to go mad and crazy when times get hard on a deeper level. She's perhaps telling to tackle madness with madness and harshness with that equal amount of furiousness.
Time moves slowly but passes quickly.
Time moves at a slow pace. It takes a lot of time for time to move. Yet, the way you use that time shows how quickly it passes for you. If you do multiple things simultaneously, then it may seem to pass fast, and you may feel that it's flying. However, if you are free, you may find it too slow in its movement.
Activism is my rent for living on the planet.
Walker is a bold activist who truly inspires all of us in absolute ways. She says that activism is the rent she pays to stay on Earth. This means that her advocating of important issues or the voice she raises against atrocities is a way to pay for what Earth has given her. Earth gives us life, and her activism is a return gift to sustain the beautiful Earth.
Even as I hold you, I am letting you go.
Holding someone and not holding them can happen at the same time. There can be a moment in your life when you are holding someone by hand. At the same time, you are not holding them because you are just in control of their hands. Their heart and mind are free to let go of you!
Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate.
Why do men make war? They do it because it's a manifestation of the hatred that takes a seat in their heart. They live in this bunkum belief that waging war against someone will relieve them and let them gain power. But little do they realise that war in no way is a demonstration of power. It's just a bad portrayal of self-hatred.
Few more Alice Walker Quotes...
Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming.
Present and future have a beautiful connection with each other. It's the present that becomes the cause of the future. So just beware of how you are weaving the present. Look at the pattern that your present is following. And make sure that whatever that's happening in your present looks exactly like what you dream about the future!
What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears.
If you can't understand something, you automatically make yourself believe that it doesn't exist. Even worse than that, you either take that thing as the supreme God or villain. So that you either worship or start fearing it. This is an unconscious reaction to something that's otherwise incomprehensible.
Horses make a landscape look beautiful.
A landscape may not look pretty in isolation. It may rather give us a dreary and lonely look. Thus, Walker here puts forward a pertinent point that life adds beauty to another life or lifeless thing. In this case, a horse is adding beauty to the otherwise lifeless landscape.
I'm mad about the waste that happens when people who love each other can't even bring themselves to talk.
There's something quite weird about love. Especially when we look at unrequited love, two people can love each other in the purest way possible, yet they would never confess or speak to each other about it. Walker is then in this quote telling us of how wasteful this whole exercise of love is, which doesn't even confess!
People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.
Pleasing the Gods by gifting them some beautiful candles or other decorative religious items is not worth it. We, humans, believe in the folly of pleasing God. However, nothing like this is ever going to happen. If ever you do try appeasing Gods, you will realise that it's not going to happen vice versa always. God may not reciprocate your gesture!
