|
Books by Alice
Walker
Why War Is Never a Good Idea /
The Third Life of Grange Copeland /
Meridian /
The Temple of My Familiar
/
The Color Purple
By The Light of My Father's Smile /
Revolutionary Petunias & Other Poems / In
Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose
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Alice Walker to Place her Archive at Emory University
Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winner
and internationally known Georgia-born novelist and
poet, will place her archive with Emory University,
Provost Earl Lewis announced today.
"The acquisition of the Alice Walker
Archive is a major addition to Emory's collection," said
Lewis. "Scholars and students from around the world will
find in these papers Alice Walker: her commitment to
social activism, literary genesis, personal growth and
development, spirituality and self. We are delighted
that she has entrusted us to share this aspect of her
with the world."
Walker has written most frequently
about the struggle for survival among Southern blacks,
particularly black women. She also has given literary
voice to the struggle for human rights, environmental
issues, social movements and spirituality, as well as
the quest for inner and world peace. Often considered
controversial for her portrayals of racial, gender and
sexual issues, Walker is widely recognized for her
thoughtful weaving of realism with love for humanity and
human potential.
"I chose Emory to receive my archive
because I myself feel at ease and comfortable at Emory,"
said Walker. "I can imagine in years to come that my
papers, my journals and letters will find themselves
always in the company of people who care about many of
the things I do: culture, community, spirituality,
scholarship and the blessings of ancestors who want each
of us to find joy and happiness in this life by doing
the very best we can to be worthy of it."
Walker, who has visited Emory almost
every other year since 1998 for readings or to interact
with colleagues, said that when she first began
considering where to place her archive, Emory was not on
her list. "However, having visited several libraries at
different universities, I realized the importance to me
of a lively, diverse, committed-to-human-growth
atmosphere, that when I visited Emory, I found."
The completeness of Walker's archive
makes it truly exceptional, says Rudolph Byrd, professor
of American studies and a founding member of the
Alice Walker Literary Society, an international
organization of Walker scholars and enthusiasts.
"The archive contains journals that
she has been keeping since she was 14 or 15 years old,"
said Byrd, who also is a friend and colleague of
Walker's. "There also are drafts of many of her early
works of fiction, as well as the back and forth between
Alice and the editors for each book.
"Her papers give you a sense of the
process for creating fiction, and for creating poetry,"
Byrd said. "Everything that she's ever written, she has
a record of; it's very exciting."
"The Alice Walker Archive will
provide a major bridge in the university's collections
on African-American literature, history and culture,"
said Steve Enniss, director of Emory's
Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library. "Walker
is one of Georgia's most beloved writers, and it is
particularly gratifying that she has chosen to return
her archive to the state where she was born, to the city
where she attended college as an undergraduate, and to
Emory which has, in the intervening years, become a
major research center in literary studies."
Emory's African-American literary
collections include significant collections related to
the Harlem Renaissance novelists and poets Langston
Hughes and James Weldon Johnson, and the papers of the
Georgia-born novelist John Oliver Killens. The Camille
Billops and James V. Hatch collection of
African-American performing arts materials includes
hundreds of playscripts including works by Zora Neale
Hurston and August Wilson, among many others.
Walker's literary archive at Emory
joins a world-class repository of some of the finest
collections of modern literature; 20th century American,
British and Irish poetry; and an extensive collection on
the American South. The collection includes the recently
acquired archive of Salman Rushdie, Nobel laureate
Seamus Heaney's papers, British poet laureate Ted
Hughes' papers, and the 75,000-volume Danowski Poetry
Library.
In 1983 Walker became the first
African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for
Fiction, which honored her novel
The Color Purple. The book depicts oppressive
early 20th century life in the South for a young
African-American woman named Celie.
Other honors bestowed upon Walker and
her writing include the 1983 National Book Award, also
for
The Color Purple the 1973 Lillian Smith Award
from the National Endowment for the Arts for
Revolutionary Petunias & Other Poems; the
Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts &
Letters; and Radcliff Institute, Merrill and Guggenheim
fellowships.
Faculty, students and visiting
scholars from around the world who study Walker's
archives at Emory will be within a 90-minute drive to
her home in Eatonton, Ga., and within 20 minutes of
Spelman College, which she attended for two years.
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The Emory University Libraries in
Atlanta and Oxford, Ga., are dedicated to fostering
courageous inquiry among students and scholars at Emory
University and around the world. The nine libraries'
holdings include more than 3.1 million print and
electronic volumes, 40,000-plus electronic journals, and
internationally renowned special collections. Visit the
libraries online (www.web.library.emory.edu/).
Emory University (www.emory.edu)
is one of the nation's leading private research
universities and a member of the Association of American
Universities. Known for its demanding academics,
outstanding undergraduate college of arts and sciences,
highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art
research facilities, Emory is ranked as one of the
country's top 20 national universities by U.S. News &
World Report. In addition to its nine schools, the
university encompasses The Carter Center, Yerkes
National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare,
the state's largest and most comprehensive health care
system.
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|
My
parents met and fell in love in
Mississippi during the civil rights
movement. Dad [Mel Leventhal], was the
brilliant lawyer son of a Jewish family
who had fled the Holocaust. Mum was the
impoverished eighth child of
sharecroppers from Georgia. When they
married in 1967, inter-racial weddings
were still illegal in some states. My
early childhood was very happy although
my parents were terribly busy,
encouraging me to grow up fast. I was
only one when I was sent off to nursery
school. I'm told they even made me walk
down the street to the school.When I was
eight, my parents divorced. From then on
I was shuttled between two worlds—my
father's very conservative, traditional,
wealthy, white suburban community in New
York, and my mother's avant garde
multi-racial community in California.
I
spent two years with each parent—a
bizarre way of doing things. Ironically,
my mother regards herself as a hugely
maternal woman. Believing that women are
suppressed, she has campaigned for their
rights around the world and set up
organisations to aid women abandoned in
Africa—offering herself up as a mother
figure. But, while she has taken care of
daughters all over the world and is
hugely revered for her public work and
service, my childhood tells a very
different story. I came very low down in
her priorities—after work, political
integrity, self-fulfilment, friendships,
spiritual life, fame and travel. My
mother would always do what she
wanted—for example taking off to Greece
for two months in the summer, leaving me
with relatives when I was a teenager. Is
that independent, or just plain selfish?
—How
my mother’s fanatical views tore us
apart
by Rebecca Walker |
 |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 22 December 2007 |
