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Alice in Walkerland!
A
lice Walker has been
defined as one of the key
international writers of the
20th Century. She made history as
the first African-American woman
to win a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
as well as the National Book
Award in 1983 for her novel The
Color Purple — one of the few lit-
erary books to capture the popular
imagination and leave a perma-
nent imprint. The award-winning
novel served as the inspiration for
Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film and
was adapted for the stage, opening
at New York City’s Broadway
Theatre in 2005, and
capturing a Tony
Award for best leading
actress in a musical in
2006.
An internationally
celebrated author, poet
and activist, Alice’s
books include seven
novels, four collections
of short stories, four
children’s books, and
volumes of essays and
poetry. She has written
many other best sellers,
too, among them, Pos-
sessing the Secret of Joy (1992),
which detailed the devastating
effects of female genital mutila-
tion and led to the 1993 documen-
tary
Warrior
Marks,
a
collaboration with the British-
C ELEBRITY
I NTERVIEW
by Kam
Williams
Indian filmmaker Pratibha Parmar,
with Walker as executive produc-
er.
In 2001, Alice was inducted into
In 2010, she presented the
keynote address at The 11th Annu-
al Steve Biko Lecture at the Uni-
versity of Cape Town in South
Africa, and was awarded the
Lennon/Ono Grant for Peace, in
Reykjavik, Iceland. Alice donated
the financial award to an orphan-
age for the children of AIDS vic-
tims in Kenya.
She has served as a jurist for two
sessions of the Russell Tribunal on
Palestine, and writes a regular
blog on her website: www.alice-
walkersgardens.com. Here, she
talks about her career and about
the
documentary
“Alice Walker: Beauty
in Truth” which pre-
mieres on PBS on Fri-
day, February 7th at 9
p.m. ET/PT (check
local listings)
So, the best way to get
children to read, is to read.
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.
the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame
and, in 2006, she was honored as
one of the inaugural inductees into
the California Hall of Fame. In
2007, her archives were opened to
the public at Emory University.
Page 8 The Portland Skanner January 29, 2014
Kam Williams: Hi
Alice. I’m so honored
to have this opportuni-
ty to interview you.
Alice Walker: Oh,
I’m so glad to be talk-
ing with you, too, Kam.
KW: The only time I came close
to meeting you before now was
back in the Eighties one summer,
when I was invited to a party out
in the Hamptons that you were
rumored to be attending.
Alice Walker
AW: Oh, I did have a few
friends near there, one in Mon-
tauk, another on Fire Island. But
oh, that was a long time ago.
KW: I’ll be mixing in my ques-
tions with some from readers.
Harriet Pakula-Teweles asks: how
do you feel about having the
biopic coming out about you?
AW: Well, it’s very interesting
because I almost never do any-
thing for Black History Month,
because I feel it’s just another way
to separate us. It’s amusing to me
that it would be coming out as a
Black History presentation on
PBS. But on the level of the film,
I like it. And I love the producer
[Shaheen Haq] and the filmmaker
[Pratibha Parmar]. I think they
were incredibly devoted. They did
it on a hope and a prayer, and at
one point had to rely on crowd-
sourcing because of the huge
expenses.
See WALKER page 6