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"The Temple of My Familiar"

(Reviewed by Judi Clark APR 26, 1998)

This novel is a masterpiece. I have read Temple of My Familiar at least three times and if I wasn't in the middle of working on these pages, I could be drawn right back into the book again. It is nearly impossible to give a summary. She weaves a hundred stories spanning 500,000 years as it tells the story of men and women in Europe, Africa, and America --- their spiritual lives and their attempts to comprehend their worlds. At the center of the plot is an aging women and a young American rock musician who fall passionately in love.

This novel has the magical realist elements that I enjoy in the Latin American novels, but whereas most novels weave together generations of family, Walker retells the tale of the many lives. All I can say is be ready to suspend any belief system you may currently hold because Lissie's about tell you some incredible tales. 

• Amazon readers rating: from 46 reviews

Read an excerpt from The Temple of My Familiar at Luminarium

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"The Color Purple"

(Reviewed by Judi Clark APR 9, 1999)

The Color Purple will always remain for me one of the most astonishing pieces of fiction.  It is story of Celie's self discovery and her sister Nettie who is the only one she trusts. Nettie is the one that teaches Celie to read and write after Celie is forced to leave school because she's pregnant with their father's child. In return, Celie protects Nettie from their father. But that's just the beginning of the story. Celie marries and it is then that she meets Blues singer Shrug Avery. Shrug is Celie's husband's lover whose come to stay while she recovers from sickness. Ironically, Avery Shrug becomes Celie's second teacher by showing Celie her own strengths and even teaching her about sexuality.

What really makes this book powerful is not simply the story, it is the way it is told.  I'll never forget opening this book up and reading Celie's own writing. The style is so simple that at first I couldn't believe this is what my friends were raving about. But this is exactly why The Color Purple was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and The National Book Award in 1983 and remains one of the strongest novels I have ever read.

• Amazon readers rating: from 420 reviews

Read an excerpt from The Color Purple at Luminarium

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Bibliography: (with links to Amazon.com)

• The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970)
• In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973)
• Meridian (1976)
• You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down:Stories (1981)
• The Color Purple (1982)
• The Temple of My Familiar (1989)
• Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992)
• The Complete Stories (1994)
• By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998)
• The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart (October 2000)
• Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (March 2005)

Nonfiction:

• In Search of Our Mother's Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983)
• Living by the Word (1989)
• Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Binding of Women (1993)
• The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult (1996)
• Anything We Love Can Be Saved (April 1997)
• Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit After the Bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (January 2001)
• Langston Hughes, American Poet (January 2002)
• We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness (November 2006)

Poetry:

• Once: Poems (1968)
• Revolutionary Petunias & Other Poems (1973)
• Good Night, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning (1979)
• Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful (1988)
• Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems 1965-1990 (1991)
• Absolute Trust in the Goodess of the Earth (2003)
• A Poem Traveled Down My Arm (2003)

Children's Books:

• To Hell with Dying (1988)
• Finding the Green Stone (1991)
• There is a Flower at the Tip of My Nose Smelling Me (May 2006)

Related:

• Alice Walker: Critical Perspective by Henry L Gates (1993)
• Critical Essays on Alice Walker by Ikenna Dieke (1999)
• Alice Walker: Freedom Writer (2000)
• Alice Walker: A Life by Evelyn C. White (2004)

E-Book Study Guide:

• Study Guide for THE COLOR PURPLE (July 2002)

Movies from books:

• The Color Purple (1985)

 

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Book Marks:

• Anniina's Alice Walker page.  (Wow!  I could spend the rest of the day at this site!)
• Voices from the Gap on Alice Walker
• CNN Interview with Alice Walker
• BookPage on The Same River Twice
• Metroactive review of The Same River Twice
• Reading guide and excerpt for By the Light of My Father's Smile
• Reading guide and excerpt for The Way Forward
• CNN.com review of The Way Forward
• BookPage review of The Way Forward

 

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About the Author:

Alice Walker, born in 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia is the 8th and last child of Willie Lee and Minnie Lou Grant Walker who were sharecroppers. When she was eight, she was blinded in one eye by her brother's BB gun, which made her withdrawn from others. She graduated as valedictorian from high school and went onto Spelman college for black women in Atlanta, Georgia on a scholarship. She finished her degree at Sarah Lawrence College in NY in 1965, travelling to Africa during her junior year. She married a white civil rights lawyer in 1967 and a year later gave birth to Rebecca. Until the mid 1970s she lived in Tougaloo Mississippi where she was active in the Civil Rights Movement. In the 1990s she is still involved in the women's movement, anti-apartheid, the anti-nuclear movement and stands against female genital mutilation.  Alice Walker received the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for The Color Purple. She has received numerous other awards and honors.