"Womanism is to feminist as purple is to lavender." (Walker, 1983). Walker has likewise been instrumental in rediscovering and advancing other black women authors, over a wide span of time, most remarkably Zora Neale Hurston, whose work she altered and deciphered.
Alice Walker was born February 9, 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia. Walker is the youngest of eight to Minnie Lou Grant Walker and Willie Lee Walker; intelligent, active and venerated by all, she in every way enjoyed a happy early childhood. In spite of poverty, discrimination in the face of Jim Crow laws and dangers from the Ku Klux Klan, the Walkers made sure that their children attended school. Her father worked as a tenant farmer on a white-owned farm. Overcoming the Klan, he was the first black man in their country to vote. Her mother worked in the cotton fields and later as a house keeper. Walker recollects her as the wellspring of her own solid feeling of