In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose

Product Details

• Fit out: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
• ISBN13: 9780156028646

Description

In this, her first collection of nonfiction, Alice Walker speaks out as a
black woman, writer, mother, and feminist in thirty-six pieces ranging
from the personal to the political. Among the contents are essays about
other writers, accounts of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the
antinuclear movement of the 1980s, and a vivid memoir of a scarring
childhood injury and her daughter’s healing words.

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Customer Reviews

Essays on Black Women in Literature and Civil Rights
Alice Walker is the author of The Color Purple (Musical Tie-in), one of my favorite novels. In this collection of essays, she writes about black women in literature, civil rights and life in general. The book is wonderfully perceptive and intelligent.

2009-05-18 | Fairbanks Reader (Fairbanks, Alaska) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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A World Of Differnts Meanings
I often disagree with some things a writer chooses to share but those are small things that prove your thinking about what you've read and not just scanned the material. The one that stands out the most after 20 years is the piece on Cuba. Each piece however took me somewhere beyond my own thoughts. It is more than well written, it is thought provoking and at times peaceful.

2008-06-17 (MI) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Alice Walker is allways wonderful
and this is not exception. Her honesty, her heart and her story telling is excellent as ever. May she bless us with many, many more stories.

2008-06-04 (Arizona) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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amazing
Alice Walker is insightful and thorough in her examination of literature. I especially enjoy her piece about Flannery O'Connor.

2007-12-07 | english student (Atlanta, ga) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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A must read for Empowered women!
This book helped me gain my voice. I love it so much -- I have two copies of it and I would still not be willing to loan one out. Alice Walker is a powerful visual writer and a Gift to the Womanist Academy!

2006-08-26 | WisdomLiterature (New England) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness

Product Details

• ISBN13: 9781595582164
• Requisite: NEW
• <a title='Condition Guide' href='/content/Condition_and_S hipping_Guide.htm' target='_blank'>Click here to outlook our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices</a>
• Notes: Maker New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Description

The New York Times-bestselling book of spiritual ruminations with a progressive political edge from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

A New York Times bestseller in hardcover, Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker's We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For was called "stunningly insightful" and "a book that will inspire hope" by Publishers Weekly.

Drawing equally on Walker's spiritual grounding and her progressive political convictions, each chapter concludes with a recommended meditation to teach us patience, compassion, and forgiveness. We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For takes on some of the greatest challenges of our times and in it Walker encourages readers to take faith in the fact that, despite the daunting predicaments we find ourselves in, we are uniquely prepared to create positive change.

The hardcover edition of We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For included a national tour that saw standing-room-only crowds and standing ovations. Walker's clear vision and calm meditative voice—truly "a light in darkness"—has struck a deep chord among a large and devoted readership.

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Customer Reviews

We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For
This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. Since it is a compilation of short stories, it's nice to take with me and read a complete story or two. I have recommended this book to many people. It's right on with the times and in many ways is very revealing about the history and feelings of our black citizens.

2009-04-02 | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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Very talented writer
Alice Walker is a wonderful writer. I heard her reading from this book (on a video made) at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC, a day before the Obama inauguration, and ordered the book from Amazon.com that day.

2009-03-04 | Fredericksburg Lady (Fredericksburg, VA USA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 4

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In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women

Product Details

• Notes:
• Environment: USED - LIKE NEW
• ISBN13: 9780156028639

Description

Admirers of The Color Purple will find in these stories more evidence
of Walker’s power to depict black women—women who vary
greatly in background yet are bound together by what they share in
common.Taken as a whole, their stories form an enlightening,
disturbing view of life in the South.

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Customer Reviews

book that talks to the soul
My son asked me to read a short story by Alice Walker. He was analyzing different writing styles for a writing class. I was pleasantly taken back by the way she uses certain details to communicated to those of us who are not literature major's. I bought several of her books. In reading them I found that she had retained a sense of her Africa culture. Her outlook is hoslitic and circular while most white writers write linear.
The purpose of writing is to communicate and Alice Walker does that. Her writing is not pretentious but humble like the people she writes about. Her writing metaphorically legitimizes being black!

2006-01-17 | Frank Delgado 'average guy (portland, OR) | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 5

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Something I'll read over and over again...loved it
A collection of short stories that I first read for a Black Literature class when I was in college in the '70....and here recently, shared it with my book club as our book of the month. Ms. Walker's writing style makes you feel you are right there with the character. While each story presents different experiences of African-American women, women of all nationalities will be able to relate to the stories and the emotions. It's a fast paced book that is heart-warming, amusing, sad,....every emotion is touched.

1999-02-05 (Maryland USA) | Helpful Votes: 22 | Rating: 5

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Walker learned at the knee of Hurston....
Clearly no ground-breaking storyteller in the mold of Joyce, Ellison, or Hemingway, Walker IS, however, a very entertaining and resourceful author who is able to make up with charm what she lacks in originality and clarity of aesthetic vision. These stories, however, lean too hard against the trunk of Hurston's Eatonville folksy charm to make an indelible impression, and the sordidness which is featured in the narrative remains ill-conceived and dangerously ill-informed. For Walker's simple best, pick up a copy of her "The Color Purple", which remains landmark in its singularity of ambition and revisionistic approach to an otherwise- tired narrative form.

1998-04-08 (Orlando, Florida (US)) | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 4

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Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart: A Novel (Walker, Alice)

Description

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple, Possessing the Secret of Joy, and The Temple of My Familiar now gives us a beautiful new novel that is at once a deeply moving personal story and a powerful spiritual journey.

In Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart, Alice Walker has created a work that ranks among her ?nest achievements: the story of a woman’s spiritual adventure that becomes a passage through time, a quest for self, and a collision with love.

Kate has always been a wanderer. A well-published author, married many times, she has lived a life rich with explorations of the natural world and the human soul. Now, at fifty-seven, she leaves her lover, Yolo, to embark on a new excursion, one that begins on the Colorado River, proceeds through the past, and flows, inexorably, into the future. As Yolo begins his own parallel voyage, Kate encounters celibates and lovers, shamans and snakes, memories of family disaster and marital discord, and emerges at a place where nothing remains but love.

Told with the accessible style and deep feeling that are its author’s hallmarks, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart is Alice Walker’s most surprising achievement.

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Customer Reviews

Reponse to Mamala
Honestly, I haven't read this particular Walker work, though I just ordered it. But I had to laugh -- and respond -- to Mamala's statement that Walker "insists on seeing everything through the lens of a person of color" and that while beautiful in The Color Purple (in which the primary antagonists and oppressors are black men, themselves, of course, deeply damaged by racism) it's somehow less warm and fuzzy in this work. How dare Alice Walker insist on writing through the eyes of a black person! How dare John Updike insist on writing always through the eyes of a suburban white American well-to-do man! (Even when trying, and failing miserably, to write about a teenaged Muslim). Mamala, your words are self-evident. Stick to Ann Coulter

2006-08-24 | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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top three??
Despite enjoying previous works by this author, I actually stayed awake last night contemplating whether this novel was in my top three worst novels of all time. Why? It is meandering, cliched, downright offensive in terms of stereotypes and the main characters Kate and Yolo generally bear no resemblance to real people. To compound the problem, the other characters who play supporting roles are hollow shells used merely to make didactic points about oppression and abuse. Being black is depicted in terms of such simplistic stereotypes as "being more tolerant than anyone else", being native American is "being in touch with the land" and being white has nothing positive to say for it at all.
For example, the author seems unaware that if Kate actually lived in Africa as I do, her sexuality would be enough to get her thrown into jail by virtually every African government of the day and would result in her being an outcast by local communities. That's the level of tolerance here in the Motherland.
My point ultimately is that this novel is ahistorical, ill-informed and in terms of simple entertainment value - particularly tedious if you have any interest in wit, irony, insightfulness or relevance. Don't waste your money.

2006-01-17 (Kenya) | Helpful Votes: 18 | Rating: 1

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Very hard to get through
I'm a fan of Alice Walker (read the Color Purple too many times to count) but this book was very hard to get through. If you are not familiar with the language that she uses it will take you a long time to get trough. I usually read a book in about three days, this one took me all on August.

2005-09-13 (Atlanta, GA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 1

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Way too new agey and pompous!
I love Alice Walker's philosophies, but I really found myself loathing the protagonist of this book. Kate was very self-satisfied and arrogant, I thought. I definitely preferred her lover's story/journey to Kate's. The new age aspect to it was a turnoff and though I do embrace some 'new age' practices, I just thought it was too much. Also, the book meandered too much, going from character to character without cohesion. All in all, I found myself forced to get through this since I just couldn't stand Kate. I would not suggest this book to others.

2005-08-09 | vegan reader | Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 2

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Open Your Mind to "Open Your Heart"
I frequently found myself remembering how I felt years back reading Walker's "Temple of My Familiar" -- a compelling plotline that encourages the reader to learn about new places and peoples while questioning his/her own beliefs. That being said, "Open Your Heart" may be more treasured by readers who have already opened up to broad spiritual concepts (ex. the feminine divine) as opposed to traditional formalized & Western religion. For those readers, I would also highly recommend "Dance of the Dissident Daughter" by Sue Monk Kidd. As for me, I got "Open Your Heart" from the library & plan to buy my own copy to re-read again & again as I predict I will get more from it each time. I don't see Walker attempting to promote any "philosophy" except a willingness to accept those who find God outside of church or temple walls.

2005-06-09 | prlady1 (Cleveland OH) | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 5

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Meridian

Product Details

• Form: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
• ISBN13: 9780156028349

Description

Meridian Hill is a young woman at an Atlanta college attempting to find her place in the revolution for racial and social equality. She discovers the limits beyond which she will not go for the cause, but despite her decision not to follow the path of some of her peers, she makes significant sacrifices in order to further her beliefs. Working in a campaign to register African American voters, Meridian cares broadly and deeply for the people she visits, and, while her coworkers quit and move to comfortable homes, she continues to work in the deep South despite a paralyzing illness. Meridian's nonviolent methods, though seemingly less radical than the methods of others, prove to be an effective means of furthering her beliefs.

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Customer Reviews

Probably not the best introduction to Walker.
I have procrastinated about reviewing this book, largely because I feel as though I did not really understand it. There are some books that you just know from the get go have to be read more than once before you start to get the picture. I think that Meridian is one of those books. So take this as a series of preliminary notes to a review, if you will.

In a way, it was a pleasant surprise. I sometimes have the feeling from Walker's prose that she is a little too literal-- more message than character driven. Meridian is precisely the opposite. Extremely strong characters, with a plot that feels more like an impression of a time than a clear story. Although and then again, there is a story. Something about the madness of a bereaved mother. Something about civil rights work in the 1960s South. Something about friendships between black and white and how that translates into romantic relationships. Part of why I would probably need a second read has to do with how far this is past my personal experience.

Reading the reviews online, it seems that this book is inflicted on unwilling teenagers across the US. Too bad, since I think it is one of the most difficult of Walker's books to read. Something like The Color Purple is much more accessible.

It may be that this book is too disjointed, relies too much on the shared experience of the potential readers. It may also be that I simply need to read it again, and then it will become more clear. There is a lot of good stuff here, and I'd still call it worth the time to read despite feeling that I missed much (most?) of the book.

2009-07-31 | frumiousb (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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incandescent story and writing, but disjoint and unsatisfying structure
"Meridian" is set in post civil rights black America but reaches back deeply at least two generations, and sometimes as far back as 1800's slavery. Ms. Walker's language is incandescent, her story incendiary, her characters thoughtful and deeply provoking. Like when I read James Baldwin for the first time, I was moved to racial rage many times, and I learned so much about how it was (is) for people of colour, and for those who loved them. I especially loved the writing, clear and sparkling, and the treatises on women and child bearing and relationships and race were point blank and heart breaking, displaying a kind of progressiveness far beyond most women I know.

Despite all this amazingness, I found the book to be disjoint and unsatisfying. I don't mind non-chronological narratives, nor shifting perspectives, but the way it was done here felt incomplete to me. It was like character sketches or vignettes mashed together, not like a novel. By the end, I had a sense of the strange ill beautiful principled hero, Meridian, but not in a way that built tension or developed plot or underscored historicity. "Meridian" is yet a quick read, but "The Colour Purple" is a cut (or more) above.

2009-07-27 (New York City) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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Meridian - womanism?
This is probably the single worst book I've ever read. I had to read it for a class so I couldn't quit.

Meridian, the main character in the novel, is very naive and stupid for a person with an IQ of 140. According to Alice Walker, Meridian not only had to study very hard for her classes but also didn't know why she was having sex with her first boyfriend. She didn't understand that she could get pregnant. She didn't understand that her new boyfriend, Truman (when she was about 18 years old) wasn't wearing a condom (no, she wasn't drunk). She couldn't convince a doctor to look at her head when she was blind instead of her vagina.

At one point Meridian watches a guy have sex with a married woman. Meridian gets wet. The author denounces the act of sex and the man who has sex yet somehow praises Meridian who is watching the act secretly from the married woman. Then the author says that she is not even interested in it and the only reason she is there is because there is nothing better to do on a Wednesday afternoon.

All the negative descriptions of the characters in the book are highly biased and unrealistic.

Most male black characters are not admirable while the girls are.

The philanthropists who sent her to school are not appreciated while random homeless girl that can't even talk is appreciated.

Too many sex scenes that contribute nothing to the novel.

2008-10-06 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 1

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Not an easy read, but courageous, heartfelt and very real.
Alice Walker's second novel, 'Meridian' (published 1976), is huge in scope but well-orchestrated and written, and she compresses a 25-year span into just 242 pages.

'Meridian' is tricky to get into. It's not at all that clear what's what & who's who to begin with & it would be easy to put the book down without going quite far enough to hold your interest. Persevere though, and you are rewarded with snippets of Meridian's story - her struggle into adulthood, to self-awareness, public-awareness, and ultimately her struggles for civil rights.

Meridian, as a young 17-year-old - married, divorced, one baby son, all of which happened almost without her even realising - kind of unintentionally stumbles upon some civil rights activists in her home town in the deep South... and from there, as she awakens into a world she has been sheltered from during her childhood, her involvement gets deeper and deeper. Reading just a little about the author's own life, you can see it's impossible to separate book and author here, as a number of parallels with Alice Walker's life in the 60s and 70s run through the novel.

Parts of the story are revealed in a non-chronological way, with themes running through that tie all the threads together - about losing children, inter-racial stuggles both in friendship and marriage and outside of it, the tensions between love and friendship, violence and peace, and of course the very human struggle for human rights. There are a few more themes to contemplate besides these.

It's a powerful and enlightening novel. Personally, I couldn't get on with the ending. I don't want to give anything away, but it doesn't really do justice to the Meridian we've followed haphazardly throughout a 25 year span - not quite a satisfying conclusion to an otherwise fascinating read.

2008-02-28 (UK) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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I have to agree with Reviewer no. 10, Jess D., and Jade Patten
"Sad valor" in someone's eyes? A character who "doesn't know exactly what constitutes begging"? Come on. And those are just two examples of Walker's writing getting in the way of my enjoying the story. The only parts I liked were when they tried to recruit people to vote; that's where the heart of the story was for me, and that was only a few pages' worth.

2006-09-19 | Um-Yahav (Israel) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 2

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Possessing the Secret of Joy: A Novel

Product Details

• Notes: Identify New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Mould: NEW
• ISBN13: 9781595583642

Description

The stunning New York Times bestseller, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple, reissued in a handsome new edition.

From the author the New York Times Book Review calls "a lavishly gifted writer," this is the searing story of Tashi, a tribal African woman first glimpsed in The Color Purple whose fateful decision to submit to the tsunga's knife and be genitally mutilated leads to a trauma that informs her life and fatefully alters her existence.

Possessing the Secret of Joy, out of print for a number of years, was the first novel to deal with this controversial topic and managed to do so in a manner that Cosmopolitan called "masterful, honorable, and unforgettable storytelling." The New Press is proud to bring the book back into print with a new preface by the author addressing the book's initial reception and the changed attitudes toward female genital mutilation that have come about in part because of this book.

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Customer Reviews

Depressing and Confusing
Most people will likely call this a great piece of literature, but it wasn't that great for me. I found it confusing and depressing. There were moments when I understood what was happening, and then moments where I found myself saying, "I just don't get this." Then there were the passages that were so graphic that I really wanted to put the book down, but I trudged along. It was just too deep for me. Not to take anything away from the author, but I did not like this book.

2009-10-13 (Maryland) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 2

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Strong Message, Weak Narrative
First off, I am a great fan of Alice Walker's writing. I devoured The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar. Here, however, it seems that the narrative was far too thin to support the weight of such an immediate message. The novel is quite short (I was able to finish it reading sparingly over the course of about 3 days), and a genuine connection with the characters never truly resonates. In fact, the rather weak development of character seems altogether uncommon for an Alice Walker novel.

While Possessing the Secret of Joy was written almost 18 years ago, unfortunately the message is still relevant (and on a spiritual level, perhaps Alice Walker's works always will be). The novel's philosophy on the origination of the ritual practice of female circumcision, tinged with elements of both naturalism and Walker's own womanism, is intriguing and asks the reader to depart modern philosophy and imagine how such a cruel procedure could have originated.

While I do not consider this one of Alice Walker's stronger works, it is still designed with that elegant and rich material that makes this author's writing so magical. And even with its flaws, who would not be be moved when, in the novel's closing lines, Tashi's friends and family reveal to her that there is indeed a secret to joy, and it is a choice we all must make?

2008-11-28 (USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 3

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too long to ship
I needed this book for a class discussion in about 3 weeks, they said I woould get it in about a week, it actually took 2 weeks to get it and by then I went ahead and bought it somewhere else.

2008-11-10 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 2

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Control
This is the first book I've ever read by Alice Walker, and I discovered it quite by accident; I picked it up randomly at a friend's house and was hooked almost from the first page. Although this book clearly has a political agenda (exposing the wretched practice of female genital mutilation), character development, story and imagination are never sacrificed just to get a point across. The main character, Tashi, is a complex, multi-layered woman whose personality is so magnetic that even her husband's mistress and their love child become infatuated with her. The novel also utilizes a non-linear storytelling format that I've seen in recent years in a lot of films, where the viewpoints of various characters throughout various points in time reveal the story piece by piece like a puzzle. While the novel explores a brutally misogynistic practice, it all feels like more of an indictment of control than of men. In fact, most of the male characters in the novel are kind, whereas the story's most obvious villain is a matriarchal wolf in sheep's clothing.

2008-06-23 (Cincinnati, OH United States) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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A Harrowing Journey
Possessing the Secret of Joy is a difficult book to read, but worth it if you want to be more informed about the horrors that afflict women in many parts of the world, including our own country. The central character, Tashi/Evelyn (she has an American and an African name) underwent female circumcision as an adult because she wanted to belong to her African tribe and be elligible to marry. The horrors resulting from that decision affect the rest of her life--both physically by making it almost impossible to birth her only child and emotionally as is marked by her bouts of insanity.

The story is told through several people's perspective including Tashi's husband, her best friend, her son, her husband's lover (Lisette) and their son. The contrast between Tashi, who's sexuality is erased through her culture's insistence on female mutilation, and Lisette, who's sexuality is celebrated and barely containable, is marked. The fact that Tashi's mutilation affects everyone in her life is significant and powerful. While trying to overcome something she doesn't understand, she is able to affect those around her through her suffering and attempts to make something of her life.

Walker was amazing to take on such a difficult topic...I don't know how she managed to write the pain Tashi must have felt without becoming seriously depressed herself. It was a difficult book to read, I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to write. My only complaint about the book is that at times, the narrative voice slips into a historical/preachy voice that doesn't sound like any of the narrators and made me want to skip forward even though the content of that section was important.

2007-03-22 (Hattiesburg, MS) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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