The World Has Changed

Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer’s Activism
By the Light of My Father’s Smile: A Novel
The Color Purple
In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose
Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart
Possessing the Secret of Joy
The Temple of My Familiar
The Third Life of Grange Copeland
We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to Alice Walker for the great privilege and pleasure of collaborating with her in bringing
The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker
to publication. From conception to publication, Ms. Walker was generous with her time and open to suggestions, such as they were, from this editor.

Emory University is privileged to serve as the custodian of the Alice Walker archive, which opened to the public in 2009. At Emory, we happily bear the privileges and responsibilities of custodianship of this national treasure. These privileges and responsibilities are shared by many across Emory University, in particular James W. Wagner, President; Earl Lewis, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs; and Rick Luce, Vice Provost for University Libraries.

The World Has Changed
is the first of many books that will emerge from the Walker archive. In preparing this book for publication, I wish to thank my colleagues in the Manuscript, Archive, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) of the Robert W. Woodruff Library, in particular Randall Burkett, Teresa Burke, Naomi L. Nelson, Elizabeth Russey, and Julie Delliquanti, Director of the Schatten Gallery.

I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the contributions of Michael Hall, doctoral student in the Graduate Institute in the Liberal Arts at Emory University, who served as my research assistant in the editing of this volume.

I wish to acknowledge the contributions and colleagueship of Beverly Guy Sheftall, Howard Zinn, Wendy Weil, Priyanka Jacob, and the very able Sarah Fan and Marc Favreau of The New Press.

I also wish to record grateful acknowledgment to those who have given permission to reprint the following conversations and interviews. Every effort has been made to contact all rights holders of reprinted material in
The World Has Changed
. If notified, the publisher of the book will be pleased to rectify an omission in future editions.

Chapter 1 is excerpted from
Interviews with Black Writers
, edited by John O’Brien (New York: Liveright, 1973).

Chapter 2, excerpted from
Black Women Writers at Work
by Claudia Tate (1983), is reprinted with the permission of the Continuum International Publishing Group.

Chapter 3 is reprinted with the permission of the Animals and Society Institute (
www.animalsandsociety.org
), successor organization to
The Animals’ Agenda
magazine and its publisher, The Animal Rights Network, Inc., and also with the permission of Ellen Bring, activist, attorney, and educator.

Chapter 4 is reprinted with the permission of Claudia Dreifus, whose forthcoming book is
Higher Education?
, co-authored with Andrew Hacker.

Chapter 5 is reprinted with the permission of Paula Giddings, whose most recent book is
Ida: A Sword Among Lions
and who is the Elizabeth A. Woodson Professor of Afro-American Studies at Smith College.

Chapter 6, “Giving Birth, Finding Form: Where Our Books Come From” (1993), from Creative Conversations Series, is reprinted with the permission of Sounds True (
www.soundstrue.com
).

Chapter 7 is reprinted with the permission of Jody Hoy.

Chapter 8, “My Life as Myself”: A Conversation with Tami Simon (1995), is reprinted with the permission of Sounds True (
www.soundstrue.com
).

Chapter 9 is reprinted with the permission of Howard Zinn.

Chapter 10, © 1996 by New Dimensions Radio/Media. More than 850 programs with other wisdom leaders are offered on the New Dimensions Web site (
www.newdimensions.org
).

Chapter 11, copyright
Ms.
magazine, 1998.

Chapter 12, “On the Meaning of Suffering and the Mystery of Joy”: Alice Walker and Pema Chödrön in Conversation (1998), is reprinted with the permission of Sounds True (
www.soundstrue.com
).

Chapter 13, from
Southern Cultures
, © 2004 by the Center for the Study of the American South, is reprinted with the permission of University of North Carolina Press.

Chapter 14 is reprinted with the permission of LIVE from the NYPL/ Margo Jefferson.

Chapter 15 is an excerpt from a
Democracy Now!
conversation
aired February 13, 2006, titled “I Am a Renegade, an Outlaw, a Pagan”—Author, Poet and Activist Alice Walker in Her Own Words.

Chapter 16, from
The Fidel Castro Handbook
, is reprinted with the permission of George Galloway.

The interview in chapter 17 was conducted by Marianne Schnall, a writer and interviewer, and originally appeared at the women’s site and nonprofit organization
Feminist.com
(
http://www.feminist.com
). It is reprinted with the permission of Marianne Schnall.

Chapter 18 is reprinted with the permission of Shambhala Sun, 2006.

CHRONOLOGY

1944	Walker is born at home on February 9 in Putnam County, Georgia, to Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Lou (Tallulah) Grant Walker, both sharecroppers. The last child of eight children, she is given the name of Alice Malsenior Walker. The Walkers pay the midwife three dollars for her services.
1948	At four years of age Walker enters the first grade of East Putnam Consolidated, a primary and middle school established in 1948 through the leadership of Willie Lee Walker, her father.
1952	In a game of cowboys and Indians with her brothers Bobby and Curtis, Walker is accidentally shot in her right eye by Curtis with a BB gun. She loses the sight in her eye, over which disfiguring scar tissue forms.
1957	Walker enrolls in Butler-Baker High School, the only school open to African Americans in Eatonton, the county seat of Putnam County, Georgia.
1958	With the support of her brother Bill, the scar tissue is removed from Walker’s right eye by Dr. Morriss M. Henry of Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital.
1961	Walker graduates from Butler-Baker High School as valedictorian of her class and enrolls at Spelman College. She de parts from Eatonton on a segregated Greyhound bus with “three magic gifts” from her mother, Minnie Lou Grant Walker: a typewriter, a sewing machine, and a suitcase. While
at Spelman, Walker becomes involved in the civil rights movement by participating in events sponsored by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and other civil rights organizations. She becomes a student of the historian Howard Zinn, a member of the faculty at Spelman College.
1962	Walker travels abroad for the first time as a delegate to the World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki, Finland. Coretta Scott King is one of her sponsors.
1963	Walker attends the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. She withdraws from Spelman College in December.
1964	In January Walker transfers to Sarah Lawrence College with the assistance of Staughton Lynd, a faculty member in the department of history at Spelman College. She continues to be active in the civil rights movement through voter registration campaigns. Walker travels to Kenya under the auspices of the Experiment in International Living. While at Sarah Lawrence, she becomes a student of the philosopher Helen Lynd and the poets Jane Cooper and Muriel Rukeyser.
1965	Walker discovers that she is pregnant and, with the aid of classmates at Sarah Lawrence, has an illegal abortion.
1966	Walker earns her BA degree from Sarah Lawrence College. She writes an honors thesis on Albert Camus entitled “Albert Camus: The Development of His Philosophical Position as Reflected in His Novels and Plays” under the direction of Helen Lynd, her don, or adviser. After graduation she moves to New York City and accepts an appointment as a caseworker at the Department of Welfare. Walker is appointed a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Scholar and is awarded the Merrill Writing Fellowship. She accepts an appointment with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in Jackson, Mississippi, un der the supervision of Marian Wright Edelman. Walker meets Melvyn R. Leventhal, a civil rights lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
1967	Walker marries Melvyn Leventhal in a civil ceremony in New York City. She is awarded a writing residency at the MacDowell Colony. “The Civil Rights Movement: What Good Was It?” is published in the American Scholar . The essay wins the journal’s first prize of $300. Walker meets the poet Langston Hughes. “To Hell with Dying,” her first short story, is published in The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers , edited by Hughes.
1968	Once , a volume of poems, is published. Walker becomes writer- in-residence at Jackson State University, where she meets the poet Margaret Walker.
1969	Walker and Mel Leventhal become the parents of a daughter, their only child.
1970	The Third Life of Grange Copeland , a novel, is published. Walker becomes a guest lecturer at Tougaloo College and discovers the work of Zora Neale Hurston.
1971	Walker is awarded a Radcliffe Institute fellowship from Harvard University.
1972	Walker accepts an appointment as a lecturer in the English Department at Wellesley College and the University of Massachusetts at Boston.
1973	In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women , a collection of short stories, is published. Revolutionary Petunias , a volume of poems, is published. Walker is awarded the Lillian Smith award for Revolutionary Petunias . Walker’s father, Willie Lee Walker, dies. She places a marker on the grave of Zora Neale Hurston in Fort Pierce, Florida. Walker is a lecturer at Smith College, where she teaches the first course in the nation on black women writers. She delivers a talk, “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” at Radcliffe College.
1974	Walker leaves Mississippi and moves to New York City, where she becomes an editor at Ms. She publishes Langston Hughes:
American Poet . Walker is awarded the National Institute of Arts and Letters award for In Love and Trouble . Revolutionary Petunias is nominated for a National Book Award along with Audre Lorde’s From a Land Where Other People Live (1973) and Adrienne Rich’s Diving into the Wreck (1973). Walker, Lorde, and Rich agree not to compete with one another. The National Book Award is awarded to Rich. Walker, Lorde, and Rich agree to donate the prize money of $1,000 to the Sisterhood of Black Single Mothers, an advocacy organization in New York City. Walker publishes “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” in Ms.
1976	Walker and Leventhal divorce. Meridian , a novel, is published.
1977	Walker is awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
1978	Walker leaves New York City and moves to San Francisco, California. She and Robert L. Allen, senior editor of the Black Scholar , establish a life together in Boonville, California, where she begins writing The Color Purple . Walker makes the first of four visits to Cuba during which she delivers humanitarian aid to the people of Cuba.
1979	Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning , a volume of poems, is published. Walker also publishes I Love Myself When I Am Laughing . . . and Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader .
1981	You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down , a collection of short stories, is published.
1982	The Color Purple , a novel, is published. Walker is appointed distinguished writer in Afro-American studies at the University of California at Berkeley. She also accepts an appointment as the Fannie Hurst Professor of Literature at Brandeis University.
1983	Walker is awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Color Purple. In Search of Our Mothers’
Gardens: Womanist Prose , a collection of essays, is published. Walker visits Nicaragua in order to attend the Managua Book Fair.
1984	Walker establishes Wild Trees Press. Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful , a volume of poems, is published.
1985	Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of The Color Purple is released. With music by Quincy Jones, and starring Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, and Oprah Winfrey, the film will be nominated for eleven Academy Awards in the following year.
1986	Walker attends the premiere of The Color Purple in Eatonton, Georgia, with family members including her mother, Minnie Lou (Tallulah) Grant Walker, and Ruth Walker, a sister, who establishes the Color Purple Scholarship Fund and the Color Purple Trail in Eatonton. Awarded O. Henry Prize for her short story “Kindred Spirits.”
1988	“To Hell with Dying,” a short story, is published as a book of children’s literature. Living by the Word: Selected Writings, 1973–1987 , a collection of essays, is published. Walker closes Wild Trees Press.
1989	The Temple of My Familiar , a novel, is published.
1991	Finding the Green Stone , a book of children’s literature, is published. Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems 1965–1990 is also published.
1992	Possessing the Secret of Joy , a novel, is published.
1993	Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Binding of Women is published as a companion volume to the documentary Warrior Marks , directed by Pratibha Parmar and produced by Walker. Minnie Lou Grant Walker, her mother, dies.
1994	Alice Walker: The Complete Stories is published. Walker changes her name to Alice Tallulah-Kate Walker in honor of her maternal great-grandmother, Tallulah Calloway, and her paternal grandmother, Kate Nelson.
1996	The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult , a collection of nonfiction, is published. Alice Walker Banned , a collection of fiction and nonfiction, is published.
1997	Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer’s Activism , a collection of essays, is published. Walker attends the chartering of the Alice Walker Literary Society, a collaborative project between Spelman College and Emory University, and is named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association.
1998	By the Light of My Father’s Smile , a novel, is published.
2000	The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart , a collection of short stories, is published.
2001	Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit After the Attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon , an essay, is published.
2002	James (Jimmy) Walker, brother, dies.
2003	Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth and A Poem Traveled Down My Arm , two volumes of poetry, are published.
2004	Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart , a novel, is published. Scott Sanders’s musical stage adaptation of The Color Purple premieres at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta, Georgia. Walker begins discussions with Emory University regarding the custodianship of her archive.
2005	The musical The Color Purple premieres at the Broadway Theatre in New York City.
2006	We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness: Meditations , a collection of essays and talks, is published. Walker also publishes There Is a Flower at the Tip of My Nose Smelling Me , a book for children of all ages. The musical The Color Purple wins a Tony Award. Walker is inducted into the California Hall of Fame.
2007	Why War Is Never a Good Idea , a children’s book, is published. Emory University becomes the custodian of the Alice Walker archive. The twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of The Color Purple is published.
2008	Walker delivers a reading at Emory University to commemorate its custodianship of her archive. She endorses the candidacy of Barack H. Obama for president of the United States. Walker launches alicewalkersgarden.com , her official Web site. Ruth Walker Hood, a sister, dies.
2009	Walker travels to the Middle East with CODEPINK to deliver humanitarian aid to the women of Gaza. The opening of “A Keeping of Records: The Art and Life of Alice Walker,” an exhibition and symposium, takes place at Emory University. Both events commemorate the opening of the Walker archive to researchers and to the public. Walker attends these events and de livers a talk at Emory’s Glenn Memorial Auditorium entitled “Reflections on Turning the Wheel: Living a Life of Freedom and Choice.” On this occasion she receives the Phoenix Award from the office of Atlanta mayor Shirley Clarke Franklin. Also on this occasion, the city council of Atlanta and the government of DeKalb County declare April 24, 2009, “Alice Walker Day.” Walker publishes Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters ‘the Horror’ in Rwanda, Eastern Congo, and Palestine/ Israel. Walker is awarded the James Weldon Johnson Medal for Literature by the James Weldon Johnson Institute of Emory University.
2010	Walker publishes The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker .

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