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Alice
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to thrive in the literary world and the word “writeress” has
been excluded or erased from some dictionaries. How can
we break the glass ceiling as authoresses and have our voic-
es heard more?
AW: You can start by not tacking that “ess” onto the end
of everything, because you’re either a poet or you’re not,
and either a writer or not. You don’t have to accept some-
one else’s idea that you need to have a tail that shows that
you’re wearing a dress. [LOL] You are what you are. If
you’re an actor, you’re an actor. You don’t have to be an
actress. As far as a glass ceiling, I feel that all you can do is
give it your absolute best with whatever gifts the universe
has given you. And if you make it in some way that other
people can recognize, that’s fine. But even if you don’t
quote-unquote make it, you’re fine, if you’ve given it your
whole heart and soul. You’re totally in sync with your pur-
pose and with the universe. And that’s fine.
KW: I was struck by something you said in Beauty in
Truth: “The pain we inflict on children is the pain we later
endure as a society.”
AW: Boy, is that scary, when you consider what we’re
doing to children all over the planet. They’re the ones who
are truly being terrorized by all the madness adults are per-
petrating.
KW: Generational warfare. In the U.S., we even have it
here between the prison industrial complex and the inden-
tured servitude of the young via college loans they can
never repay.
AW: They’re supposed to be slaves. And those that aren’t
just slaves, can become drug addicts. And the drug addicts
that are caught get put into the prison system to make a
profit for the people who own the prisons. It’s all worked
out.
KW: Novelist and short story writer Suzan Greenberg
was wondering whether you had any idea that your short
story "Everyday Use" would be so widely anthologized?
AW: I did not, and I’m puzzled that it is, because it’s not
the story that I would’ve picked to be anthologized so wide-
ly. I think it’s chosen partly because it reinforces some peo-
ple’s notions of the Deep South, Southerners and black
people. That story has its own power, but it also permits a
kind of distance, as if it happened in the far past. I think
that’s why people use it opposed to more gritty stories like
“Advancing Luna“ or “Laurel,” which come out of the
struggle in the South in the Sixties but are very modern in
terms of their sense of white and black people grappling
with issues of interracial rape and interracial love. I think
it’s hard for people to read those stories as dispassionately.
The point about the color
purple is just that to really see
a color is so remarkable!
Anything that you can see that
is beautiful is a gift. Blue…
green… black… yellow… All
these colors are amazing.
KW: Editor/Legist Patricia Turnier says: You have been a
successful authoress for decades. Only about a dozen
female laureates have won the literature Nobel Prize since
its inception. Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin had to adopt
the pseudonym George Sand to become a French novelist
and memoirist. Historically, it has been difficult for women
Alice Walker
KW: Patricia also says, you learned to read at a very
young age. You were in the first grade when you were four
years-old. Illiteracy is still an ongoing issue around the
world. Do you think that exposing a child as early as possi-
ble to education can be a determinant in decreasing the level
of illiteracy on a global scale?
AW: I know from having had a child, and from having
been a child myself, that children will copy you. So, the
best way to get them to read, is to read. The best way to get
them to do anything is to do it yourself, and they will
absolutely copy you. That way, you don’t have to worry
about what’s supposedly age appropriate, a child will pick
something up when the child is ready.
KW: It was heartbreaking in Beauty in Truth to hear you
talk about being estranged from your daughter. It was very
touching.
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Page 8 The Seattle Skanner
January 29, 2014