Alice Walker's works are more relevant today than ever. With war, climate change, economic crisis, failures in public education, racism, sexism, and homophobia still part of current events, Walker represents not only a creative writer but an activist engaged in the causes threaded throughout her writing. With her words Walker has created lyrical spaces in which disparate personalities and cultures join to make something new; where the past is a key to the future, and where women and men question themselves.

On Alice Walker / --Biography of Alice Walker / -- Alice Walker : critical reception / -- Critical lens : five critics on Alice Walker / -- Cultural and historical context / -- Pushing gender scripts and color lines in Alice Walker's The color purple and Sapphire's push / -- "But where was the man in me" Alice Walker's The third life of Grange Copeland / -- Meridian and We are the ones we have been waiting for : Alice Walker's evolving vision of the spiritual warrior / -- Looking for God : Alice Walker's The color purple and Gloria Naylor's Mama Day / -- Walker's womanist agenda / -- Spiritual colonialism / -- The myopic eye in Alice Walker's "The flowers" / -- Sexuality and the healing of the self: The color purple, Possessing the secret of joy, and By the light of my father's smile / -- Living spaces for learning in Alice Walker's The temple of my familiar / -- Participant, witness, activist: Alice Walker's novels in historical context / -- Possessing the secret of metaphor: Alice Walker's poetics of self-recovery / -- Euterpe's daughter: ecological/political/sociological poetics of Alice Walker / -- Alice Walker's essays, speeches, and conversations / Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper. On Alice Walker -- Biography of Alice Walker -- Alice Walker : critical reception -- Critical lens : five critics on Alice Walker -- Cultural and historical context -- Pushing gender scripts and color lines in Alice Walker's The color purple and Sapphire's push -- "But where was the man in me" Alice Walker's The third life of Grange Copeland -- Meridian and We are the ones we have been waiting for : Alice Walker's evolving vision of the spiritual warrior -- Looking for God : Alice Walker's The color purple and Gloria Naylor's Mama Day -- Walker's womanist agenda -- Spiritual colonialism -- The myopic eye in Alice Walker's "The flowers" -- Sexuality and the healing of the self: The color purple, Possessing the secret of joy, and By the light of my father's smile -- Living spaces for learning in Alice Walker's The temple of my familiar -- Participant, witness, activist: Alice Walker's novels in historical context -- Possessing the secret of metaphor: Alice Walker's poetics of self-recovery -- Euterpe's daughter: ecological/political/sociological poetics of Alice Walker -- Alice Walker's essays, speeches, and conversations.