Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker
memoir · First published 2022
Author guide
Alice Walker Books in Order
Alice Walker is an American novelist, poet, essayist, memoirist, and short-story writer whose work centers Black life, women’s experience, womanism, spirituality, social justice, and the natural world. Her novel The Color Purple won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Award, making her the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer for fiction. Her bibliography spans fiction, poetry, essays, nonfiction, memoir, collaborative works, and illustrated books for children.
fictionpoetryshort storiesessaysmemoirnonfictionchildren's literatureactivism
Catalog record updated .
Alice Walker's Newest Book
Not sure where to begin?
Start with one of these
The Color Purple
Walker’s defining novel and the most widely recognized entry point to her fiction.
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose
A foundational collection of Walker’s essays and her articulation of womanist thought.
Outside the series
Bibliography by category
Novels (7)
- The Third Life of Grange Copeland
novel · 1970
Alice Walker's powerful first novel. Alice Walker's first book recounts the lives of three generations growing up in Georgia, where the author herself grew up. Grange Copeland is a black tenant farmer who is forced to leave his land and…
- Meridian
novel · 1976
Set in the 1960s and 1970s, Meridian centers on Meridian Hill, a student at the fictitious Saxon College, who becomes active in the Civil Rights Movement. She becomes romantically involved with another activist, Truman Held. They have a…
- The Color Purple
novel · 1982
The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. The novel has been the frequent target of censors and appears on the…
- The Temple of My Familiar
novel · 1989
Returning frequently to Suwelo's visits to Mr. Hal and his stories about Fanny, this tale transcends time and examines such contradictions as black vs. white, man vs. woman, sexual freedom vs. sexual slavery, past vs. present, etc.
- Possessing the Secret of Joy
novel · 1992
A NOVEL ABOUT FEMALE CIRCUMCISION AS PRACTICED IN AFRICA, FOR EASTERN AND MIDDLE EASTERN CULTURES.
- By the Light of My Father's Smile
novel · 1998
'Alice Walker in this, the most beautiful, the most compassionate, the most sensuous of novels, has created a masterpiece. It is one of the most life-enhancing novels you could hope to read. Flawless' Mary Louden, THE TIMES 'All your life…
- Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the Horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo, and Palestine/Israel
nonfiction · 2010
In 2006, Alice Walker, working with Women for Women International, visited Rwanda and the eastern Congo to witness the aftermath of the genocide in Kigali. Invited by Code Pink, an antiwar group working to end the Iraq War, Walker…
Nonfiction (3)
- The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult
memoir · 1996
In the early eighties, the peaceful, reclusive life of poet and writer Alice Walker was interrupted by the appearance of three extraordinary gifts: a widely praised best-selling novel (The Color Purple), the Pulitzer Prize, and an offer…
- The Chicken Chronicles: A Memoir
memoir · 2011
On a farm north of San Francisco, celebrated writer Walker diligently cares for a flock of chickens. "The Chicken Chronicles" captures her blossoming relationship with her chickens and is an extraordinary document of personal recovery,…
Short fiction (3)
- In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women
short-story-collection · 1973
- You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down: Stories
short-story-collection · 1981
- The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart
short-story-collection · 2000
"The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart begins with a lyrical, autobiographical story of a marriage set in the violent and volatile Deep South during the early years of the civil rights movement. Walker goes on to imagine stories that…
Essays and speeches (6)
- In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose
essay-collection · 1983
- Living by the Word: Selected Writings, 1973–1987
essay-collection · 1988
- Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism
essay-collection · 1997
In Anything We Love Can Be Saved, Alice Walker writes about her life as an activist, in a book rich in the belief that the world is saveable, if only we will act. Speaking from her heart on a wide range of topics--religion and the spirit,…
- Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit After the Bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon
essay-collection · 2001
Alice Walker writes:"Where do we start? How do we reclaim a proper relationship to the world?It is said that in the Babemba tribe of South Africa, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he is placed in the center of the village,…
- We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness
essay-collection · 2006
A book of spiritual ruminations with a progressive political edge, from the Pulitzer Prize-winner who has devoted her life to befriending the earth. Walker has long been a force for sanity in a chaotic world. Here she draws on her deep…
- The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm's Way
essay-collection · 2013
The National Book Award– and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple explores our modern world with “compassion, courage, and humor” (Booklist). Alice Walker once ached for retirement, but in the turmoil of the Democratic…
Children's books (5)
- To Hell with Dying
children's-picture-book · 1988
The author relates how old Mr. Sweet, though often on the verge of dying, could always be revived by the loving attention that she and her brother gave him.
- Finding the Green Stone
children's-book · 1991
After saying unkind things to family and friends, Johnny loses both his green stone and his interest in life, and he recovers them only when he discovers love in his heart.
- There Is a Flower at the Tip of My Nose Smelling Me
children's-picture-book · 2006
There is a road At the bottom Of my Foot Walking me. In a beautifully poetic and gently provocative text, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker invites readers young and old to see the world -- and our place in it -- through new…
- Why War Is Never a Good Idea
children's-picture-book · 2007
Simple, rhythmic text explores the wanton destructiveness of War, which has grown old but not wise, as it demolishes nice people and beautiful things with no consideration for the consequence
- Sweet People Are Everywhere
children's-picture-book · 2021
Poetry (9)
- Once
poetry-collection · 1968
Alice Walker's first collection of poetry, which addresses such topics as civil rights, the South, love, and Africa as viewed by an African American woman.
- Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems
poetry-collection · 1973
These poems are about revolutionaries and lovers-about how, both in revolution and in love, loss of trust and compassion robs us of hope. They are also about (and for) those few embattled souls who remain painfully committed to beauty and…
- Good Night, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning
poetry-collection · 1979
- Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems 1965–1990 Complete
poetry-collection · 1991
Walker{u2019}s complete poems, including new and previously unpublished verse, collected for the first time-with author{u2019}s notes that provide historical perspective on spiritual and political issues of the last three decades.
- Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth
poetry-collection · 2003
In this exquisite book, Alice Walker's first new collection of poetry since 1991, are poems that reaffirm her as "one of the best American writers of today" (The Washington Post). The forces of nature and the strength of the human spirit…
- A Poem Traveled Down My Arm: Poems and Drawings
poetry-collection · 2003
In this illuminating book, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and acclaimed poet Alice Walker reveals her remarkable philosophy of life. Curiously, this labor of love started with the author's signature: Faced with the daunting task of…
- Hard Times Require Furious Dancing: New Poems
poetry-collection · 2010
- The World Will Follow Joy: Turning Madness into Flowers
poetry-collection · 2013
- Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart
poetry-collection · 2018
"Alice Walker, author of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple--"an American novel of permanent importance" (San Francisco Chronicle)--crafts a bilingual collection that is both playfully imaginative and…
Collaborations (2)
- Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women
coauthored-nonfiction · 1993
- Dreads: Sacred Rites of the Natural Hair Revolution
collaborative-nonfiction · 1999
Presents portraits of dread-heads from every walk of life and includes a brief history of this hairstyle
Other (1)
Frequently asked questions about Alice Walker
Who is Alice Walker, and where was she born?
Alice Walker is an African American novelist, poet, essayist, short-story writer, and activist. She was born in Eatonton, Georgia, on February 9, 1944, the eighth and youngest child of sharecroppers Minnie Tallulah Grant and Willie Lee Walker.
How did the civil rights movement shape Alice Walker’s life and writing?
Walker became involved in civil rights as a student and later registered Black voters in Georgia and worked on organizing and welfare-rights campaigns in Mississippi. These experiences informed writing rooted in Southern Black life and civil-rights activism.
Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.org (opens in a new tab)gender.stanford.edu (opens in a new tab)
What does Alice Walker mean by womanism?
Walker coined “womanist” as a framework centered on Black women’s experiences, creativity, strength, and survival while embracing the well-being of the wider human community. She developed the concept in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose.
Sources: bmrc.lib.uchicago.edu (opens in a new tab)georgiaencyclopedia.org (opens in a new tab)
What awards did Alice Walker win?
Among her major honors, The Color Purple won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1983 National Book Award for Fiction. Walker was the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Sources: pulitzer.org (opens in a new tab)nationalbook.org (opens in a new tab)loc.gov (opens in a new tab)
Which writers influenced Alice Walker, and what is her literary legacy?
Her literary influences include Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, Gwendolyn Brooks, Bessie Head, and Flannery O’Connor. Walker also helped bring Hurston’s work back into print and became a major figure in the rise of African American women’s literature after the 1970s.