Upon
the release of The Color Purple, critics sensed that Walker had created
something special. “The Color Purple … could be the kind of popular and
literary event that transforms an intense reputation into a national one,”
according to Gloria Steinem of Ms. Walker “has succeeded,” as Andrea Ford noted
in the Detroit Free Press, “in creating a jewel of a novel.” Peter S. Prescott
presented a similar opinion in a Newsweek review: “The Color Purple is an
American novel of permanent importance, that rare sort of book which (in Norman
Mailer’s felicitous phrase) amounts to ‘a diversion in the fields of dread.’”
Jeanne
Fox-Alston and Mel Watkins both found the appeal of The Color Purple in the
synthesis of characters and themes found in Walker’s earlier works, that it
brings together the best of the author’s literary production in one volume.
Fox-Alston, in Chicago’s Tribune Books, remarked, “Celie, the main character in
Walker’s third … novel, The Color Purple, is an amalgam of all those women
[characters in Walker’s previous books]; she embodies both their desperation and,
later, their faith.” Watkins stated in the New York Times Book Review, “Her
previous books … have elicited praise for Miss Walker as a lavishly gifted
writer. The Color Purple, while easily satisfying that claim, brings into
sharper focus many of the diverse themes that threaded their way through her
past work.”
Walker’s
writing reflects her roots in Georgia, where Black vernacular was prominent and
the stamp of slavery and oppression were still present. When she was eight,
Walker was accidentally shot in the eye by a brother playing with his BB gun.
Her parents, who were too poor to afford a car, could not take her to a doctor
for several days. By that time, her wound was so bad that she had lost the use
of her right eye. This handicap influenced her writer’s voice; she withdrew
from others and became a meticulous observer of human relationships and
interaction.
An
excellent student, Walker was awarded a scholarship to Spelman College in 1961.
The civil rights movement attracted her, and she became an activist. In 1963,
she decided to continue her education at Sarah Lawrence College in New York,
where she began to work seriously on writing poems, publishing several in a
college journal. After graduation, she moved to Mississippi to teach and
continue to engage in social activism, and she met and married Melvyn
Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. The two became the only legally
married interracial couple living in Jackson, Mississippi. After their divorce
in 1976, Walker’s literary output increased.
Walker
coined the term “Womanist” to describe her philosophical stance on the issue of
gender. As a Womanist, she sees herself as someone who appreciates women’s
culture and femininity. Her work often reflects this stance, as well as the
universality of human experience. Walker’s central characters are almost always
Black women; Walker, according to Steinem, “comes at universality through the
path of an American black woman’s experience. … She speaks the female
experience more powerfully for being able to pursue it across boundaries of
race and class.” This universality is also noted by Fox-Alston, who remarked
that Walker has a “reputation as a provocative writer who writes about blacks
in particular, but all humanity in general.”
Walker
is deeply invested in revealing the experiences of Black women. Thadious M.
Davis, in his Dictionary of Literary Biography essay, commented: “Walker writes
best of the social and personal drama in the lives of familiar people who
struggle for survival of self in hostile environments. She has expressed a
special concern with exploring the oppressions, the insanities, the loyalties
and the triumph of black women.”
Gloria
Steinem pointed out that Meridian (1976), Walker’s second novel, “is often
cited as the best novel of the civil rights movement, and is taught as part of
some American history as well as literature courses.” In Everyday Use (1994),
Barbara Christian found the title story—first published in Walker’s collection
In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973)—to be “pivotal” to all of
Walker’s work in its evocation of Black sisterhood and Black women’s heritage
of quilting. William Peden, writing in The American Short Story: Continuity and
Change, 1940-1975, called this same collection “a remarkable book.” David Guy’s
commentary on The Color Purple in the Washington Post Book World included this
evaluation: “the women [in the novel] are able to extricate themselves from
oppression; they leave their men, find useful work to support themselves. ...
In The Color Purple the role of male domination in the frustration of black
women’s struggle for independence is clearly the focus.”
Some
reviewers criticize Walker’s fiction for portraying an overly negative view of
Black men. Charles Larson, in his Detroit News review of The Color Purple,
remarked, “I wouldn’t go as far as to say that all the male characters [in the
novel] are villains, but the truth is fairly close to that.” However, Larson
did not feel that this is a major fault in the novel, and he noted that by the
end of the novel, “several of [Walker’s] masculine characters have reformed.”
This
idea of reformation, this sense of hope even in despair, is at the core of
Walker’s vision. In spite of the brutal effects of sexism and racism suffered
by the characters of her short stories and novels, critics note what Art
Seidenbaum of the Los Angeles Times called Walker’s sense of “affirmation …
[that] overcomes her anger.” This is particularly evident in The Color Purple,
according to several reviewers. Ford, for example, asserted that the author’s
“polemics on … political and economic issues finally give way to what can only
be described as a joyful celebration of human spirit—exulting, uplifting and
eminently universal.” Prescott discovered a similar progression in the novel.
He wrote, “[Walker’s] story begins at about the point that most Greek tragedies
reserve for the climax, then … by immeasurable small steps … works its way
toward acceptance, serenity and joy.”
Davis
referred to this idea as Walker’s “vision of survival” and offered a summary of
its significance in Walker’s work. “At whatever cost, human beings have the
capacity to live in spiritual health and beauty; they may be poor, black, and
uneducated, but their inner selves can blossom.” This vision, extended to all
humanity, is evident in Walker’s collection Living by the Word: Selected
Writings, 1973-1987. Although “her original interests centered on black women,
and especially on the ways they were abused or underrated,” New York Times Book
Review contributor Noel Perrin believed that “now those interests encompass all
creation.” Judith Paterson similarly observed in Tribune Books that in Living
by the Word, “Walker casts her abiding obsession with the oneness of the
universe in a question: Do creativity, love and spiritual wholeness still have
a chance of winning the human heart amid political forces bent on destroying
the universe with poisonous chemicals and nuclear weapons?” Walker explores
this question through journal entries and essays that engage with Native
Americans, racism in China, a lonely horse, smoking, and response to the
criticism leveled against both the novel and the film version of The Color
Purple. Derrick Bell noted in his Los Angeles Times Book Review critique that
Walker “uses carefully crafted images that provide a universality to unique
events.” The critic further asserted that Living by the Word “is not only
vintage Alice Walker: passionate, political, personal, and poetic, it also
provides a panoramic view of a fine human being saving her soul through good
deeds and extraordinary writing.”
Though
Walker’s fourth novel, The Temple of My Familiar (1989) received harsh reviews
by critics, novelist J. M. Coetzee, writing in the New York Times Book Review,
implored the reader to look upon the novel as a “fable of recovered origins, as
an exploration of the inner lives of contemporary black Americans as these are
penetrated by fabulous stories.” Bernard W. Bell, writing in the Chicago
Tribune, felt that the novel is a “colorful quilt of many patches,” and that
its “stylized lovers, remembrances of things past, bold flights of fantasy and
vision of a brave new world of cultural diversity and cosmic harmony challenge
the reader’s willingness to suspend disbelief.”
For
Walker’s Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems, 1965-1990 Complete
(2003), a Publishers Weekly reviewer offered high praise, characterizing Walker
as “composed, wry, unshaken by adversity,” and suggesting that her “strong,
beautiful voice” beckons us “to heal ourselves and the planet.”
Critics
celebrated Walker’s controversial fifth novel, Possessing the Secret of Joy
(1992), about the practice of female genital mutilation in certain African,
Asian, and Middle Eastern cultures. Writing in the Los Angeles Times Book
Review, Tina McElroy Ansa said that taking on such a taboo subject showed
Walker’s depth and range. The critic also felt that her portrait of the
suffering of Tashi—a character from The Color Purple—is “stunning.” And Donna
Haisty Winchell wrote in her Dictionary of Literary Biography essay that this
novel is “much more concise, more controlled, and more successful as art” than
The Temple of My Familiar, and demonstrates an effective blend of “art and
activism.”
Walker’s
concerns about the international issue of female genital mutilation prompted
her to further explore the issue, both on film and in the book Warrior Marks:
Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women (1993), written with
documentary film director Pratibha Parmar. According to a Publishers Weekly
contributor, Warrior Marks is a “forceful account” of how the two filmed a
documentary on the ritual circumcision of African women.
In
1996, Walker published The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult; A
Meditation of Life, Spirit, Art, and the Making of the film “The Color Purple,”
Ten Years Later. The book focuses mainly on Walker’s feelings about, and
struggles with, the filming of The Color Purple. While having the book
transformed into a film by Steven Spielberg was a high point in her life, it
was also riddled with difficulties. First, Spielberg rejected Walker’s
screenplay of the book and implemented one with which Walker was not happy. In
addition, the film itself was met with controversy and attacks on Walker’s
ideas—some people thought she had attacked the character of Black people in
general and Black men specifically. Also at the time, Walker’s mother was
critically ill, while Walker herself was suffering from Lyme disease. Included
in the book are fan letters, reviews, and Walker’s original version of the
script.
Walker’s
sixth novel, By the Light of My Father’s Smile (1998), focuses on female
sexuality. The main characters are the Robinsons, a husband-and-wife team of
anthropologists, and the story is told in flashback. Unable to secure funding
for research in Mexico in the 1950s, the husband poses as a minister to study
the Mundo, a mixed Black and Native American tribe. The couple brings along
their young daughter to this new life in the Sierra Madre. Sexuality is at the
heart of the story, though the father reacts violently upon discovering that
his daughter has become involved with a Mundo boy. This reaction has
repercussions throughout the novel. Again, Walker experiments with points of
view, even recounting the action through the eyes of the recently deceased
patriarch of the Robinson clan. According to Francine Prose, who reviewed the
novel in the New York Times Book Review, this novel deals with the “damaging
ways in which our puritanical culture suppresses women’s sexuality.”
In
her book Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer’s Activism (1997), Walker
details her own political and social struggle, while in the critically
acclaimed short-story collection The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (2000),
she employs fiction in a “quasi-autobiographical reflection” on her own past,
including her marriage to a Jewish civil rights lawyer, the birth of her
daughter, and the creative life she built after her divorce. For Jeff Guinn,
writing for the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, the 13 stories plus
epilogue of this collection “beautifully leavened the universal regrets of
middle age with dollops of uplifting philosophy.” A contributor for Publishers
Weekly described the collection as a reflection on the “nature of passion and
friendship, pondering the emotional trajectories of lives and loves.” This same
reviewer found the collection to be “strong … [and] moving.” Adele S.
News-Horst, reviewing the book in World Literature Today, found that it is
“peopled by characters who are refugees, refugees from the war over civil
rights, from the ‘criminal’ Vietnam-American War, and from sexual oppression.”
News-Horst further commented that the “stories are neither forced nor
unnatural, and there is a sense of truth in all of them.” And Linda Barrett
Osborne, writing in the New York Times Book Review, called The Way Forward a
“touching and provocative collection.”
After
publishing The Way Forward, Walker had, she thought, given up writing, taking
time off to study Tibetan Buddhism and explore the Amazon. Fueled by the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, however, she began writing poems. In
2003, she published Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth, which includes
poems that engage with the attacks on New York and Washington, DC. Guinn described
the verse in the new collection as “choppy, with sparse clumps of words
presented in odd, brisk rhythms.” Such devices resulted, Guinn thought, in
occasional “sophisticated thought in simple, accessible form.” Short lines in
free verse are the skeletons of most of the poems in the collection, many of
them dealing with “social and environmental justice, and America’s blinding
ethnocentrism,” as Kelly Norman Ellis remarked in Black Issues Book Review.
Ellis further praised the poems in the collection as “psalms about the human
capacity for great good and … for unimagined brutality.”
Walker’s
seventh novel, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004), is a tale of a
successful Black female novelist, Kate, and her search for new meaning as she
approaches 60. In a long-time relationship with the artist Yolo, Kate decides
to voyage down the Colorado River and then down the Amazon, on trips of
self-discovery. Yolo meanwhile goes on his own quest, to Hawaii, and to the
woman he once loved. Both Kate and Yolo are changed by their experiences. In
Black Issues Book Review, Susan McHenry noted that she “started this novel
skeptically, fearing a New Age ramble,” but found “reading this book a richly
rewarding journey.” And Booklist’s Vanessa Bush praised this “dreamlike novel
[that] incorporates the political and spiritual consciousness and emotional
style for which [Walker] is known and appreciated.”
Writing
career
Walker
wrote the poems that would culminate in her first book of poetry, entitled
Once, while she was a student in East Africa and during her senior year at
Sarah Lawrence College. Walker would slip her poetry under the office door of
her professor and mentor, Muriel Rukeyser, when she was a student at Sarah
Lawrence. Rukeyser then showed the poems to her literary agent. Once was
published four years later by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Following
graduation, Walker briefly worked for the New York City Department of Welfare,
before returning to the South. She took a job working for the Legal Defense
Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in
Jackson, Mississippi. Walker also worked as a consultant in black history to
the Friends of the Children of Mississippi Head Start program. She later
returned to writing as writer-in-residence at Jackson State University
(1968–69) and Tougaloo College (1970–71). In addition to her work at Tougaloo
College, Walker published her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland,
in 1970. The novel explores the life of Grange Copeland, an abusive, irresponsible
sharecropper, husband and father.
In
the fall of 1972, Walker taught a course in Black Women's Writers at the
University of Massachusetts Boston.
In
1973, before becoming editor of Ms. Magazine, Walker and literary scholar
Charlotte D. Hunt discovered an unmarked grave they believed to be that of Zora
Neale Hurston in Ft. Pierce, Florida. Walker had it marked with a gray marker
stating ZORA NEALE HURSTON / A GENIUS OF THE SOUTH / NOVELIST FOLKLORIST /
ANTHROPOLOGIST / 1901–1960. The line "a genius of the south" is from
Jean Toomer's poem Georgia Dusk, which appears in his book Cane. Hurston was
actually born in 1891, not 1901.
Walker's
1975 article "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston", published in Ms.
Magazine and later retitled "Looking for Zora", helped revive
interest in the work of this African-American writer and anthropologist.
In
1976, Walker's second novel, Meridian, was published. Meridian is a novel about
activist workers in the South, during the civil rights movement, with events
that closely parallel some of Walker's own experiences. In 1982, she published
what has become her best-known work, The Color Purple. The novel follows a
young, troubled black woman who is not just fighting her way through a racist
white culture, she is also fighting her way through a patriarchal black
culture. The book became a bestseller and it was subsequently adapted into a
critically acclaimed 1985 movie which was directed by Steven Spielberg,
starring Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg, as well as a 2005 Broadway musical
totalling 910 performances.
Walker
has written several other novels, including The Temple of My Familiar (1989)
and Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) (which featured several characters and
descendants of characters from The Color Purple). She has published a number of
collections of short stories, poetry, and other writings. Her work is focused
on the struggles of black people, particularly women, and their lives in a
racist, sexist, and violent society.
In
2000, Walker released a collection of short fiction, based on her own life,
called The Way Forward Is With a Broken Heart, exploring love and race
relations. In this book, Walker details her interracial relationship with
Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, a civil rights attorney who was also working in Mississippi.[23]
The couple married on March 17, 1967, in New York City, since interracial
marriage was then illegal in the South, and divorced in 1976. They had a
daughter, Rebecca, together in 1969. Rebecca Walker, Alice Walker's only child,
is an American novelist, editor, artist, and activist. The Third Wave
Foundation, an activist fund, was co-founded by Rebecca and Shannon
Liss-Riordan. Her godmother is Alice Walker's mentor and co-founder of Ms.
Magazine, Gloria Steinem.
In
2007, Walker donated her papers, consisting of 122 boxes of manuscripts and
archive material, to Emory University's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book
Library. In addition to drafts of novels such as The Color Purple, unpublished
poems and manuscripts, and correspondence with editors, the collection includes
extensive correspondence with family members, friends and colleagues, early
treatment of the film script for The Color Purple, syllabi from courses she
taught, and fan mail. The collection also contains a scrapbook of poetry compiled
when Walker was 15, entitled "Poems of a Childhood Poetess".
In
2013, Alice Walker published two new books, one of them entitled The Cushion in
the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in
Harm's Way. The other was a book of poems entitled The World Will Follow Joy
Turning Madness into Flowers (New Poems).
Activism
Civil
rights
Walker
met Martin Luther King Jr. when she was a student at Spelman College in the
early 1960s. She credits King for her decision to return to the American South
as an activist in the Civil Rights Movement. She took part in the 1963 March on
Washington with hundreds of thousands of people. Later, she volunteered to
register black voters in Georgia and Mississippi.
On
March 8, 2003, International Women's Day, on the eve of the Iraq War, Walker
was arrested with 26 others, including fellow authors Maxine Hong Kingston and
Terry Tempest Williams, at a protest outside the White House, for crossing a
police line during an anti-war rally. Walker wrote about the experience in her
essay "We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For".
Womanism
Walker's
specific brand of feminism included advocacy on behalf of women of color. In
1983, Walker coined the term womanist in her collection In Search of Our
Mothers' Gardens, to mean "a black feminist or feminist of color".
The term was made to unite women of color and the feminist movement at
"the intersection of race, class, and gender oppression". Walker
states that "'Womanism' gives us a word of our own". because it is a
discourse of Black women and the issues they confront in society. Womanism as a
movement came into fruition in 1985 at the American Academy of Religion and the
Society of Biblical Literature to address Black women's concerns from their own
intellectual, physical, and spiritual perspectives."
Israeli–Palestinian
conflict
Walker
is a judge member of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, and she also supports
the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.
In
January 2009, Walker was one of over fifty signatories of a letter protesting
against the Toronto International Film Festival's "City to City"
spotlight on Israeli filmmakers, and condemning Israel as an "apartheid
regime". Two months later, Walker and sixty other female activists from
the anti-war group Code Pink traveled to Gaza in response to the Gaza War.
Their purpose was to deliver aid, meet with NGOs and residents, and persuade
Israel and Egypt to open their borders with Gaza. She planned to visit Gaza
again in December 2009 to participate in the Gaza Freedom March. On June 23,
2011, she announced plans to participate in an aid flotilla to Gaza that
attempted to break Israel's naval blockade.
In
May 2013, Walker posted an open letter to singer Alicia Keys, asking her to
cancel a planned concert in Tel Aviv. "I believe we are mutually
respectful of each other's path and work," Walker wrote. "It would
grieve me to know you are putting yourself in danger (soul danger) by
performing in an apartheid country that is being boycotted by many global
conscious artists." Keys rejected the plea. Walker has refused to allow
The Color Purple to be translated and published in Hebrew, saying that she
finds that "Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the
Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied
Territories" and noting that she had refused to allow Steven Spielberg's
film adaptation of her novel to be shown in South Africa until the system of
apartheid was dismantled.
Support
for Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange
In
June 2013, Walker and others appeared in a video expressing their support for
Chelsea Manning, an American soldier who was imprisoned for releasing
classified information. In recent years she has spoken out repeatedly in
support of Julian Assange.
Animal
Advocacy
Walker
has expressed that animal advocacy is one of her central concerns. Her fiction
has increasingly embraced animal ethics over the past four decades, as she
works to include animals as both active participants in her novels and as
symbols for what she has called "consciousness." Her earliest fiction
represents nonhuman animals inasmuch as they are part of human life - namely as
farmed animals, food sources, and absent referents for animalized epithets
directed at humans, and her fiction increasingly incorporates the animal
experience. She has advocated for greater consciousness in human beings and
their relationships with animals, stating, "Encouraging others to love
nature, to respect other human beings and animals, to adore this earth, is part
of my work in this world."
Pacifism
Walker
has been a longtime sponsor of the Women's International League for Peace and
Freedom. In early 2015, she wrote: "So I think of any movement for peace
and justice as something that is about stabilizing our inner spirit so that we
can go on and bring into the world a vision that is much more humane than the
one we have dominant today."
Transgender
rights
In
2023 Walker publicly defended J.K. Rowling from criticisms of her views
regarding trans people and shared that her own views matched Rowling's. Walker
was criticized on social media for taking this position with many referring to
her as a TERF.
Accusations
of antisemitism and praise for David Icke
Since
2012, Walker has expressed appreciation for the works of the British conspiracy
theorist David Icke. On BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, she said that Icke's
book Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More, which contains
anti-semitic conspiracy theories, would be the book she would take to a desert
island. The book promotes the theory that the Earth is ruled by shapeshifting
reptilian humanoids and "Rothschild Zionists". Jonathan Kay of the
National Post described this book (and Icke's other books) as "hateful,
hallucinogenic nonsense". Kay wrote that Walker's public praise for Icke's
book was "stunningly offensive" and that by taking it seriously, she
was disqualifying herself "from the mainstream marketplace of ideas".
In 2013, the Anti-Defamation League called anti-Zionist essays in Walker's book
The Cushion in the Road "replete with fervently anti-Jewish ideas"
and it also stated that Walker was "unabashedly infected with
anti-Semitism".
On
her blog in 2017, Walker published a poem which she titled "It Is Our
(Frightful) Duty to Study The Talmud", recommending that the reader should
start with YouTube to learn about the allegedly shocking aspects of the Talmud,
describing it as "poison". The poem contained antisemitic tropes and
arguments. In it, she also "describes her reaction when a Jewish
friend", later stated to be her ex-husband, accused her "of appearing
to be antisemitic".
In
2018, an interviewer from The New York Times Book Review asked Walker
"What books are on your nightstand?" She listed Icke's And the Truth
Shall Set You Free, a book promoting an antisemitic conspiracy theory which
draws on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and questions the Holocaust.
Walker said: "In Icke's books there is the whole of existence, on this
planet and several others, to think about. A curious person's dream come true."
The publication of the interview in the "By the Book" weekly column
generated significant criticism of Walker and the New York Times Book Review.
The Review was criticized for publishing the interview as well as for failing
to contextualize And the Truth Shall Set You Free as an antisemitic work.
Walker defended her admiration for Icke and his book, saying: "I do not
believe he is anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish". Walker argued that any
"attempt to smear David Icke, and by association, me, is really an effort
to dampen the effect of our speaking out in support of the people of
Palestine". Following the controversy Roxane Gay argued that "Alice
Walker has been anti-Semitic for years". The NYT released a statement that
the contents of the interview "do not imply an endorsement by Times
editors".
In
2019, Ayanna Pressley disavowed antisemitism after an uproar ensued following
her tweeting of an Alice Walker quote. She tweeted "I fully condemn and
denounce anti-Semitism, prejudice and bigotry in all their forms – and the
hateful actions they embolden" and said she had been unaware of Walker's
statements on the issue.
In
2020, after learning about Walker's support of anti-Semitism, the host of the
New York Times podcast Sugar Calling described herself as "mortified"
for having hosted Walker on her show and she also said: "If I'd known, I
wouldn't have asked Alice Walker to be on the show."
In
April 2022, Gayle King of CBS News was criticized for interviewing Walker
without challenging her anti-Semitic writings. After the interview, King
released a statement, saying: "These are not only legitimate questions,
they are mandatory questions. I certainly would have asked her about the
criticisms, if I had been aware of them before the interview with Ms. Walker."
In
2022, Walker was disinvited from the Bay Area Book Festival due to what the
organizers referred to as her "endorsement of anti-Semitic conspiracy
theorist David Icke". An invitation for Walker to speak at San Diego
Community College District was upheld despite opposition from community groups
with the organizers citing their belief in free speech. Walker dismissed the
criticism as "a ploy to shut down my webpage blog:
alicewalkersgarden.com."
Selected
works
Novels
and short story collections
The
Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) , In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black
Women (1973, includes "Everyday Use") , Meridian (1976) , The Color
Purple (1982) , You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down: Stories (1982) , To Hell With
Dying (1988) , The Temple of My Familiar (1989) , Finding the Green Stone
(1991) , Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) , The Complete Stories (1994) , By
the Light of My Father's Smile (1998) , The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart
(2000) , Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004)
Poetry
collections
Once
(1968) , Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems (1973) , Good Night, Willie
Lee, I'll See You in the Morning (1979) , Horses Make a Landscape Look More
Beautiful (1985) , Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems (1991) , Absolute
Trust in the Goodness of the Earth (2003) , A Poem Traveled Down My Arm: Poems
And Drawings (2003) , Collected Poems (2005) , The World Will Follow Joy (2013)
, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing: New Poems (2010) , Taking the Arrow Out
of the Heart (2018)
Non-fiction
books
In
Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983) , Living by the Word
(1988) , Warrior Marks (1993) , The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult
(1996) , Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism (1997) , Sent By
Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit After the Bombing of the World
Trade Center and Pentagon (2001) , We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For
(2006) , Pema Chödrön and Alice Walker in Conversation , Overcoming
Speechlessness (2010) , Chicken Chronicles, A Memoir (2011) , The cushion in
the road – Meditation and wandering as the whole world awakens to be in harm's
way (2013)
Essays
"Beauty:
When the Other Dancer is the Self" (1983)
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