User:EEdwards22/Sandbox

My sandbox.

Early Life
Alice Malsenior Walker was born on February 9, 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia, the youngest of the eight children of Willie Lee and Millie Tallulah (Grant) Walker. Her father, who was, in her words, "wonderful at math [but] a terrible farmer," earned only $300 a year from sharecropping and dairy farming, while her mother, who helped him in the fields, supplemented the family income by working as a maid. World Authors 1995-2000. 2003. Retrieved 10 Apr. 2009, from Biography Reference Bank database.

Living under Jim Crow Laws, Walker's mother had struggles with landlords who expected the children of black sharecroppers to work the fields as soon as possible. A white plantation owner once asserted to her that blacks had “no need for education.” Mrs. Walker’s response to him was ‘You might have some black children somewhere, but they don’t live in this house. Don’t you ever come around here again talking about how my children don’t need to learn how to read and write.” At the age of 4, Mrs. Walker enrolled Alice into the first grade, a year ahead of schedule.

Growing up with an oral tradition, listening to stories from her grandfather (the model for the character for Mr. in "The Color Purple", [Walker] was writing--very privately--since she was 8. "With my family, I had to hide things," she said. "And I had to keep a lot in my mind." Mel, Gussow. "Once Again, Alice Walker Is Ready to Embrace Her Freedom to Change." New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York. N.Y.:Dec 26, 2000. pg E.1.

In 1952 Walker was accidentally wounded in the eye by a shot from a BB gun fired by one of her brothers. Because they had no access to a car, the Walkers were unable to take their daughter to a hospital for immediate treatment, and when they finally brought her to a doctor a week later, she was permanently blind in that eye. A disfiguring layer of scar tissue formed over it, rendering the previously outgoing child self-conscious and painfully shy. Stared at and sometimes taunted, she felt like an outcast and turned for solace to reading and to poetry writing. Although when she was 14 the scar tissue was removed--and she subsequently became valedictorian and was voted most-popular girl, as well as queen of her senior class--she came to realize that her traumatic injury had some value: it allowed her to begin "really to see people and things, really to notice relationships and to learn to be patient enough to care about how they turned out," as she has said. World Authors 1995-2000. 2003. Retrieved 10 Apr. 2009, from Biography Reference Bank database: <http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com.jerome.stjohns.edu:81/.

Personal Life
Quote on divorce According to: Mel, Gussow. "Once Again, Alice Walker Is Ready to Embrace Her Freedom to Change." New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York. N.Y.:Dec 26, 2000. pg E.1

"What's really hard is that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with him anymore. After 20 years, there is a sense we both have of loss, because there's nobody else that we can talk to about certain things that happened during the time we were together," as an interracial couple living in the segregated South, as parents and as activist for civil rights.

Awards
According to Marquis Who's Who: http://search.marquiswhoswho.com.jerome.stjohns.edu:81/executable/SearchResults.aspx?db=E

Named to Hall of Fame, California Museum Hist., Women & Arts, 2006; recipient O. Henry award, 1986, Nora Astorga Leadership award, 1989, Fred Cody award for lifetime achievement, Bay Area Book Reviewers Association, 1990, Freedom to Write award, PEN Center USA, 1990, Lillian Smith award, National Endowment Arts, Rosenthal award, National Institute Arts & Letters, Front Page award for best magazine criticism, Newswoman's Club New York, Radcliffe Institute fellowship, Merrill fellowship, Guggenheim fellowship