Alice Walker is an American novelist, short-story writer, poet,
essayist, and activist. Her most famous novel, The Color Purple, was
awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1983. Alice
Walker's creative vision is rooted in the economic hardship, racial
terrorism, and folk wisdom of African American life and culture,
particularly in the rural South. Her writing explores multidimensional
kinships among women, among men and women, among humans and animals,
and embraces the redemptive power of social, spiritual and political revolution.
Welcome to the official website for Alice Walker
Dear Friends,
A few years ago, when I turned Sixty, I visited the country of South Korea. There, I heard for the first time that turning Sixty is an extremely auspicious occasion: one becomes “eggy”, which means one becomes like a baby, or child, again. And, returning to a child-like state, one must use the remainder of one’s life as an exploration of joy. The odd thing was, this is exactly how I had been feeling. That I did not need to make any more working trips, as I had to South Korea, selling books and lecturing about war and peace. I did not need to purchase or own any more of anything than I already had. I did not need to look further than my door for the miracles of life that I so cherish. That in fact, whatever or whoever was to come into my life would find me, not on the road looking for it or them, but in my own house.
That illumination occurred four years ago; it has taken these years to unburden my life of many of the things I used to worry about: my papers, my bills, my persona, the writer’s life. The process of clearing is on-going, as I now enter a period, perhaps the last phase of my life, which will be fundamentally dedicated to Wandering and Meditation. I feel in my bones the connection to the Ancients who have, through the ages, spontaneously shed as much as possible of their worldly concerns and have taken to the road, the hillside, the kitchen or hammock, or to meditating alone or with others as they move slowly about the earth, identifying only the present moment as home.
What has been interesting though is that, like them, I find my love of Life, of the planet, of the exquisite perfection of Nature, and of humans, only increasing, as I grow older, making it impossible to turn my back completely on the life I have created up to this point. In fact, this realization has occurred spontaneously as I have found myself drawn into the coming elections. North America may well soon have a president who might be able to help us heal some of the damage we all have done to the planet, in our ignorance, heretofore, of our total dependence on it. And so, having wandered and meditated more in the last year than I have in decades, writing, my mentor and long embraced companion, has offered itself, once again, to me.
Hence, this website, Alice Walker's Garden, and this message. I have never had a website; someone else has even aquired all the domains associated with my name. It never felt necessary that I should have a website or a blog. This that you see before you is offered as a work in progress because the pieces you will be able to read here are in some way connected to where we are as a country, politically, and where we are as earthlings, physically and spiritually. It is being created by a friend who wishes to help me share some of my present journeys, and to provide a place for new seeds to sprout that I might like to share with you.
It is with infinite hope that I offer these thoughts from the internal road. Hope that we will choose a leader who is capable of following us: a thoughtful person who can listen as well as dictate. Someone in whose presence we feel only confidence, never fear. I also want to share with you thoughts about other things, like gay marriage, orphaned children, and the impact of war. I especially want to share with you my recipe for Anxiety Soup, which you will need to sustain you through the next weeks, at least.
