An Interview with Alice Walker
By Esther Iverem SeeingBlack.com Editor and Film Critic
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A writer must always live with his or her own words—especially if they wind up on the big screen. And there is no better example of this idea than Alice Walker and her 1982 novel, "The Color Purple." In 1994, Walker dedicated an entire new volume, "The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult," to chronicling her complex journey as "The Color Purple" was made into a film. And now, more than 20 years after the novel's release, she is back on the trail talking about it again, as well as the firestorm that greeted the 1985 film directed by Steve Spielberg. Why? Because an enhanced "The Color Purple" DVD recently hit the shelves. "The DVD, I think, is really special because you have some additions to the film itself that I think will really help people see how much commitment went into creation of the film," Walker said in recent interview with SeeingBlack.com and other journalists. "I think that "The Color Purple," there were a lot of questions early on about how it was made. And a lot of those questions now out on special- will be answered. And I think that it will be lovely for people to just see what a family we edition DVD, faced created on the set." widespread criticism when it debuted in When it was published in 1982, "The Color Purple" raised a stir in the Black community 1985. because of its depiction of a brutal and soul-less Black man who abused his young wife Celie in the rural South. At the time, the book's portrayals of Black men, described as "often negative" by Mel Watkins in the New York Times Book Review, were seen by many in the Black community to be a part of a general trend in fiction by Black women. Books by authors including Terri McMillan, Gloria Naylor, Toni Morrison and Walker, all with contracts at major publishing houses, included less-than-shining examples of Black manhood. Who can forget trifling Franklin in McMillan's "Disappearing Acts"? Or the buzzard Luther Nedeed in Naylor's "Linden Hills"? When Walker won both the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for "The Color Purple," many took it as validation of a Black feminist voice, while others said that the awards only proved that Black women writers were being rewarded for bashing Black men. "I got tired a long time ago of White men publishing books by Black women about how screwed up Black men are," wrote Courtland Milloy, in his column for The Washington Post. In "The Same River twice," Walker acknowledged such critics and quoted them. And now, even while promoting the DVD, she still says "The Same River Twice" closed the chapter on that part of her life. "I looked at all of that controversy and criticism, and I put it to rest," Walker said. "But, you know, criticism comes, it goes. And, you know, you're lucky if, after they get through with you, you're left standing. And I'm very much left standing." Since the book and film, Black film has undergone a renaissance and now there are a greater variety of images of both Black men and women on the screen. Walker says that she enjoys the work of many in this "new wave" of filmmakers, including Spike Lee and Robert Townsend, and is working with one of the producers of last year's critical hit, "Frida," on a film version of her book, "By the Light of My Father's Smile." "I think that the book did help to bring in greater freedom for people to express how they view life," she said . "And, I'm very happy about that. Because you really can't, you know, be a good artist if you can't say what you really feel. And people may be offended, but that's how you feel, and that is your right, and that is your gift as well. "…From the writer's point of view I think that [The Color Purple] has had a really good impact, especially on literature. And I think also on film. Even if you don't like it, you have to see the incredible acting and just amazing beauty of the people. I mean, I think that you would just have to feel that you want to have more of these people on screen. I know that's how I feel." Walker said that in the Color Purple, as in other works, she worked for and in honor of her ancestors. "I always felt their help. I always felt supported. I have never felt alone in that sense, you know? I mean, even when I was
alone with all the people doing whatever they do, I always felt my ancestors. And, over time, I guess, it just got really clear that they are the most honest and reliable critics and appreciators of one's work. "…And when things like that are right, the synchronicity, you always feel your way to be the right way. I mean I felt like I was really on course, and that if I went off of it, they would let me know. "…How many of those ancestors had to do whatever they had to do to make it possible for me to get educated, to actually end up sitting at a desk writing about them? I mean [when I was writing the book], I was just crying and laughing, and just really feeling love. You know, just love for them, their love for me. "Love is big. Love can hold anger, love can even hold hatred. I mean, you know, it's all—it's all love. It's about the intention of what you want it to do. It's about what you're trying to give. And often when you're trying to give something, you know, it has a lot of pain in it. But the pain too is a part of the love." She offered special support for women of color who need to forgive: "Well, you know what? Actually, some pain is so severe that there's nothing else you can do. I mean, forgiveness is the only remedy. I mean, unless you want to just worry it to the grave. Because ultimately, it hurts you, you know. The person that you are going on over, often they don't even remember. So there you are with your heart all hard and not forgiving. And, you know, wishing they'd fall over dead or something. And they don't even know. So the best thing is to really work on yourself and opening your own heart and just letting all that stuff go. And it is possible. It sometimes takes a lot of time and a lot of sitting. You know, just sitting with yourself and trying to work with your own heart. And this is one of those areas where Buddhism is very, very good. Finally, Walker affirmed her sense of activism as a writer and this sense of activism circles its way back to her voice in works such as "The Color Purple." "Oh I, you know, talk at rallies, I march, I write. In fact, 11 days after 9/11, when the President was talking about retaliating by bombing people in Afghanistan, I made an address in which I talked about how we really do not want to be bombing children and women and people and donkeys and whatever else people have over there. You know? We don't want to be bombing the earth itself. It's wrong. "I mean, when we're attacked and we suffer, what that's supposed to teach us is not that we want to attack other people to make them suffer. What it's supposed to teach us is that we don't want that to happen. You know? War is so obsolete. "…We are a family," she said. "And we have all the different representations of humanity in the family. And, within this family, there has to be total freedom. There has to be the freedom to be yourself. You have to be free to express your views." Esther Iverem's reviews also appear on BET.com and Africana.com. February 28, 2002
http://www.seeingblack.com/2003/x022803/walker.shtml 2/2/06
Letter from Alice Walker to President Clinton
Alice Walker
March 13, 1996 President Bill Clinton The White House Washington, D.C. Dear President Clinton: Thank you very much for the invitation to the White House while I was in Washington in January. I am sorry circumstances made it impossible for us to meet. I was looking forward to experiencing the symbolic seat of North American government in a new way. In the past, I have only picketed the White House, and as a student walking up and down the street outside it. I used to wonder what might be inside. It seemed to be made of cardb oard, and appeared empty and oppressive, remote from the concerns of a few black students-and their courageous white teacher-from the deep South. The first protest I joined that picketed the White House was a Hands Off Cuba rally in 1962. I was eighteen. It was very cold, snow and sleet everywhere. Our hands and feet and heads were freezing as we trudged in circles, shouting slogans to keep our minds off our misery and to encourage each other. Amazingly, someone from the
President's office sent hot coffee out to us. The compassionate gesture humanized the president and the White House for me, and made it possible for me to feel a connection that I would not otherwise have felt. When President Kennedy was assassinated, and my whole school wept, it was of those warming sips of coffee that I thought. I love Cuba and its people, including Fidel. The bill you have signed to further tighten the blockade hurts me deeply. I travel to Cuba whenever I can to take medicine and the small, perhaps insignificant comfort of my presence, to those whose courage and tenderness have inspired me practically my entire life. I have seen how the embargo hurts everyone in Cuba, but especially Cuban children, infants in particular. I spend some nights in utter sleeplessness worrying about them. Someone has said that when you give birth to a childand perhaps I read this in Hillary's book, which I recently bought-you are really making a commitment to the agony of having your heart walking around outside your body. That is how I feel about Cuba: I am quite unable to think of it as separate from myself. I have taken seriously the beliefs and values I learned from my Georgia parents, the most sincere and humble Christians I have ever known: Do unto others....Love thy neighbor...All of it. I feel the suffering of each child in Cuba as if it were my own. The bill you have signed if wrong. Even if you despise Fidel and even if the Cubans should not have shot down the planes violating their air space. (Did you, by the way, see Oliver Stone's "Earth and Sky," about the U.S. bombing and general destruction of Vietnam over years and years? There was a major case of violating airspace!) The bill is wrong, the embargo is wrong, because it punishes people, some of them unborn, for being who they are. Cubans cannot help being who they are. Given their long struggle for freedom, particularly from Spain and the United States, they cannot help taking understandable pride in who they are. They have chosen a way of life different from ours, and I must say that from my limited exposure to that different way of life, it has brought them, fundamentally, a deep inner certainty about the meaning of existence (to develop one's self and to help others) and an equally deep psychic peace. One endearing quality I've found in the Cubans I have met is that they can listen with as much heart as they speak. I believe you and Fidel must speak to each other. Face to face. He is not the monster he has been portrayed; and in all the study you have done of Cuba surely is apparent to you that he has reason for being the leader he is. Nor am I saying he is without flaw. We are all substantially flawed, wounded, angry, hurt, here on Earth. But this human condition, so painful to us, and in some ways shameful- because we feel we are weak when the reality of ourselves is exposed - is made much more bearable when it is shared, face to face, in words that have expressive human eyes behind them. Beyond any other reason for talking with Fidel, I think you would enjoy it. In 1962 I also went to Russia. I was determined to impress upon all the Russians I met that I was not their enemy, and that I opposed the idea my government had, at that time, of possibly killing all of them. I have never regretted offering smiles to the children of Russia, instead of agreeing with a paranoid government to throw bombs. The world, I believe, is easier to change than we think. And harder. Because the change begins with each one of us saying to ourselves, and meaning it: I will not harm anyone or anything in this moment. Until, like recovering alcoholics, we can look back on an hour, a day, a week, a year, of comparative harmlessness. Is Jesse Helms, who speaks of Cuban Liberty, as he urges our country to harm Cuba's citizens, the same Jesse Helms who caused my grandparents, my parents and my own generation profound suffering as we struggled against our enslavement under racist laws in the South? And can it be that you have joined your name to his in signing this bill? Although this is fact, it still strikes me as unbelievable. Inconceivable. I cannot think his is a name you will rejoice in later years to have associated with your own. I regret this action, sincerely, for your sake. The country has lost its way, such as it was. Primarily, because it is now understood by all, that resources and space itself are limited, and the days of infinite expansion and exploitation, sometimes referred to as "growth," are over. Greed has been a primary motivating factor from the beginning. And so the dream of the revengeful and the greedy is to re-take Cuba, never mind the cries of children who can no longer have milk to drink, or of adults whose ration card permits them one egg a week. Would you want Chelsea to have no milk, to have one egg a week? You are a large man, how would you yourself survive? My heart goes out to your - I voted for you for President, even though I personally want compassionate feminine leadership in the world, at least for the next hundred years or so: uncompassionate woman-hating and childforgetful masculine leadership has pretty much destroyed us - because I know the same forces that have demonized Fidel for so long are after you and especially Hillary. I wonder if you can see this? Or if you really feel secure and confident of the future, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Republicans and with Helms? Sometimes, when I don't know what to do, I imagine a little child standing beside my desk, or sometimes a small baby, kicking on my desk. There are Cuban children - as dear as any on earth, as dear as Chelsea, or my daughter, Rebecca - standing beside your desk all the time now. How could this not be so? They are standing beside the desks of those in Congress, in the Senate. They are standing in our grossly overstuffed supermarkets and spying on us in Weightwatchers. One cannot justify starving them to death because their leader is a person of whom some people, themselves imperfect, human, disapprove.
America at the moment is like a badly wounded parent, the aging, spent and scared offspring of all the dysfunctional families of the multitudes of tribes who settled here. It is the medicine of compassionate understanding that must be administered now, immediately, on a daily basis, indiscriminately. Not the poison of old patterns of punishment and despair. Harmlessness now! must be our peace cry. I often disagree with you - your treatment of black women, of Lani Guinier and the wonderful Jocelyn Elders in particular, has caused me to feel a regrettable distance - still, I care about you, Hillary and Chelsea, and wish you only good. I certainly would not deprive you of food in protest of anything you have done! Similarly, I will always love and respect the Cuban people, and help them whenever I can. Their way of caring for all humanity has made them my family. Whenever you hurt them, or help them, please think of me. Sincerely, Alice Walker