NCW Libraries

Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love...

A decades-spanning tale of love and resilience and of one woman's journey to freedom. Celie faces many hardships in her life, but ultimately finds remarkable strength and hope in the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood.

The heart-wrenching story of a young black girl in the early 20th century who is forced into a brutal marriage and separated from her sister.

In Walker's follow-up to The Color Purple, webs of characters are drawn toward critical confrontations with history   In The Temple of My Familiar, Celie and Shug from The Color Purple subtly shadow the lives of dozens of characters, all dealing in some way with the legacy of the African experience in America. From recent African immigrants, to a woman who grew up in the mixed-race rainforest communities of South America, to Celie's own granddaughter...

In Alice Walker's second story collection, women stand their ground in the midst of crisis   This collection builds on Alice Walker's earlier work, the much-praised In Love & Trouble. But unlike her first collection of stories, the women in these tenderly wrought tales face their problems head on, proving powerful and self-possessed even when degraded by others-sometimes by those closest to them. But even as the female protagonists face exploitation,...

The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker includes compelling conversations between acclaimed writer Walker and other significant literary and cultural figures, including Gloria Steinem, Howard Zinn, Pema Chodron, Claudia Tate, Margo Jefferson, William Ferris, Paula Giddings, and Amy Goodman. Each conversation represents a different stage in Walker's artistic and spiritual development; taken together, they offer an unprecedented angle...

From author Alice Walker and edited by critic and writer Valerie Boyd, comes an unprecedented compilation of Walker's fifty years of journals drawing an intimate portrait of her development over five decades as an artist, human rights and women's activist, and intellectual. For the first time, the edited journals of Alice Walker are gathered together to reflect the complex, passionate, talented, and acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winner of The Color Purple....