Alice Walker
Alice Walker is an African-American novelist and poet; born in Eatonton, Ga. Her parents, Minnie Lou Grant and Willie Lee Walker, were both sharecroppers. She was raised in a shack minutes from Flannery O'Conner's house, "Andalusia". Blinded in one eye from an accidental gunshot wound at the young age of eight, Walker fell into somewhat of a depression. She secluded herself from the other children, and as she explains, "I no longer felt like the little girl I was. I felt old, and because I felt I was unpleasant to look at, filled with shame. I retreated into solitude, and read stories and began to write poems."Walker later won a Spelman College scholarship for disabled students. Her involvement in various civil rights demonstrations led to her dismissal. She then won another scholarship at the progressive Sarah Lawrence College. In 1964 she traveled to Uganda, Af
rica where she studied as an exchange student. Upon her return in 1965, she received her B.A. degree. She was then awarded a writing fellowship and was planning to spend it in Senegal, West Africa. Her plans changed, however, after working as a caseworker in the New York City welfare department. She, instead, decided to volunteer her time working at the voter registration drive in Mississippi in the summer of 1966, later claiming that her decision had been based on "the realization that I could never live happily in Africa-or anywhere else-until I could live freely in Mississippi" In 1967, Walker married Mel Leventhal, a white activist civil rights lawyer, and one-year later Walker gave birth to their daughter Rebecca. It was not until she began teaching that her writing carrier began to take off. She started at Jackson State, then Tougaloo, and finally at Wellesley College. S
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 594
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)
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