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Influence Of Life In The Color Purple By Alice Walker

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lker Commonly known as the author behind the epistolary novel, The Color Purple, Alice Walker is a native Georgian who considerably influenced the culture of the state. Her legacy begun February 9th, 1944 in Putnam County, Georgia when she was born to proud African American parents as the youngest of eight children. Her father, Willie Lee Walker, was a sharecropper blessed with a mind adept in mathematics, but cursed with substandard farming skills, and therefore was not a good source of income for his sizable family. Alice’s mother, Minnie Lou Tallulah Grant, was a hardworking woman who made up for her husband’s low income by working as a maid. Walker’s mother was also a woman who valued and recognized the importance of education. Jim …show more content…

With a facial extremity removed, it was as if Walker had a new lease on life as she reflected on her injury stating that during that period of time she learned to “ ...really see people and things, really to notice relationships and to learn to be patient enough to care about how they turned out.” This may be why her novels were so highly regarded; her ability to read people stemmed from her years in supposed solitude and elevated her thinking, allowing her to create characters whose lives one could truly feel. Walker graduated in 1961, and with a new sense of self-awareness, she attended Spelman College in Atlanta on a full scholarship. At Spelman, she became interested in the Civil Rights Movement because of her professor, Howard Zinn. She becomes reinvigorated into Civil Rights when she met Martin Luther King on campus, crediting her return to the American South to Dr. King. Later on, Alice traveled to New York to attend school at Sarah Lawrence College. Before her final year, Alice became pregnant and had an abortion that left her mentally crippled. Following these events, Walker spiraled into a deep depression leading to an attempted suicide. Once again, she turned to her writing to cope with her circumstances, and produced her first book of poetry titled Once while she was studying abroad in East Africa. . The same year,

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