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Alice Walker is a renowned American author and activist. She won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her novel The Color Purple. Her other bestselling novels include We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, Possessing the Secret of Joy and The Temple of My Familiar. She is also the author of several collections of short stories, essays, poetry, and some children's books. Her books have been translated into more than two dozen languages. She began writing at the early age of eight, publishing her first story in 1965 at the age of 21. She travels extensively for her activism, standing up for economically, spiritually and politically oppressed people. She worked as a social worker and teacher, and was actively involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Born in Eatonton, Georgia in 1944, Walker now lives in Northern California.
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Alice Walker: On Finding Your Bliss
Interview by Evelyn C. White
(This conversation is reprinted from a interview originally printed in Ms. Magazine in September/October 1999.)
"You look like you're dressed for summer," says Alice Walker,
skeptically, to a shorts-clad visitor who arrives at her majestic, 40-acre
retreat in northern California. For Walker, who grew up in the blistering heat
of rural Georgia, the mid-60s isn't anywhere close to her idea of warm. Indeed,
bundled up in a black and gray striped shirt, crimson V-neck sweater, black
pants and boots, Walker looks as if she's ready to curl up in front of a roaring
fire. A friend from Hawaii, tanned and bright-eyed, is similarly attired except
that her pants are a dazzling green; a green that mirrors the rolling,
tree-blanketed vista that extends for miles outside the window of Walker's
luxuriant kitchen--which is where she and I settle after her friend excuses
herself.
Sipping cups of ginseng tea, we sit at a gleaming wooden table that is
adorned with a vase of peach-colored lilies. The petals of the flowers are fully
open, making them appear as if they're flirting with a tall, leafy banana tree
in an adjacent corner. "I'm ...
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