Books About Alice Walker

1. Critical Essays on Alice Walker

edited by Ikenna Dieke (1999): Scholarly study of Walker's work continues to grow, and this collection assesses her impact and the cultural influences on her writing as an African American woman.

2. Alice Walker

edited by Harold Bloom (1999): A series of essays on Walker and her novels -- essential to a serious study of Alice Walker and her work.

3. The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult

by Alice Walker (1997): Walker tells her own story of her own experiences, both motivating the writing of The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar, and as a result of their writing and the making of the film version of The Color Purple.

4. Womanist and Feminist Aesthetics: A Comparative Review

by Tuzyline Jita Allan (1996): Alice Walker helped popularize the idea of "womanist" as contrasted to "feminist" -- this book explores that difference as applied to the arts and aesthetics.

5. The Voices of African American Women

Subtitle: "The Use of Narrative and Authorial Voice in the Works of Harriet Jacobs, Zora Neale Hurston, and Alice Walker." Yvonne Johnson (1999): Focusing on Walker's The Color Purple, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Johnson looks at the way the spirit of African American women has been expressed in their writings.

6. Sturdy Black Bridges: Visions of Black Women in Literature

edited by Roseann P. Bell et al (1979): Two early essays on Alice Walker can be found in this volume.

7. Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers

edited by Barbara Christian (1985): At least three essays discuss Alice Walker's writing, including a look at themes of violence and lesbianism.

8. Alice Walker: Critical Perspectives Past and Present

edited by Henry Louis Gates and K. A. Appiah (1993): A collection of essays and reviews of Alice Walker's writing, plus interviews with Walker.