Kelsey Cowan
February 17, 2013
Literature
Dr. Wheeler
Black History Month Alice Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia on February 9, 1944. She has become one of the most admired African American writers of today. She also was a civil rights activist and a women’s right activist. She was inspirational and could teach you how to live. She once said, “Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.” Alice walker was the youngest child of eight. Her father was a sharecropper and her mother was a maid, she grew up very poor. Alice walker suffered from an injury when she was eight years old. She was shot in the right eye with a BB pellet. This had happened when she was playing with her two brothers. Her eye began to have scar tissue making her seem disfigured. She was very self-conscience of herself after the incident. During her time the south was racially divided. She attended a racially segregated school and graduated valedictorian of her high school. She then went on to go to college. She could not do this alone she had to get the help of scholarships, much like most of us do today. She was then able to attend Spelman College in Atlanta. Soon after she switched to Sarah Lawrence College in New York City. While she was attending SLC she did a study abroad program in Africa, she was able to learn more about her own heritage. She graduated from college in 1965 and in that same year published her first short story. After Alice graduated from college she went on to be a social worker, a teacher, and a lecturer. She participated in the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in the 1960s. As she fought for equality her experiences inspired her to write her first collection of poetry published in 1960 called Once. In 1967, she married to Melvyn Leventhal and had one child named Rebecca Walker. It wasn’t long after when in 1976 she and he divorced. She then showed her true talents of becoming a novelist through her first piece Third Life of Grange Copland published in 1970.