In this exquisite book, Alice Walker’s first new collection of poetry since 1991, are poems that reaffirm her as “one of the best American writers of today” (The Washington Post). The forces of nature and the strength of the human spirit inspire the poems in Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth. Alice Walker opens us to feeling and understanding, with poems that cover a broad spectrum of emotions. With profound artistry, Walker searches for, discovers, and declares the fundamental beauty of existence, as she explores what it means to experience life fully, to learn from it, and to grow both as an individual and as part of a greater spiritual community. About Walker’s Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful, America said, “In the tradition of Whitman, Walker sings, celebrates and agonizes over the ordinary vicissitudes that link and separate all of humankind,” and the same can be said about this astonishing new collection, Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth.

African-American authors have consistently explored the political dimensions of literature and its ability to affect social change. African-American literature has also provided an essential framework for shaping cultural identity and solidarity. From the early slave narratives to the folklore and dialect verse of the Harlem Renaissance to the modern novels of today

In this innovative approach to southern literary cultures, Thadious Davis analyzes how black southern writers use their spatial location to articulate the vexed connections between society and environment, particularly under segregation and its legacies. Basing her analysis on texts by Ernest Gaines, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, Natasha Trethewey, Olympia Vernon, Brenda Marie Osbey, Sybil Kein, and others, Davis reveals how these writers reconstitute racial exclusion as creative black space, rather than a site of trauma and resistance. Utilizing the social and political separation epitomized by segregation to forge a spatial and racial vantage point, Davis argues, allows these writers to imagine and represent their own subject matter and aesthetic concerns. Focusing particularly on Louisiana and Mississippi, Davis deploys new geographical discourses of space to expand analyses of black writers' relationship to the South and to consider the informing aspects of spatial narratives on their literary production. She argues that African American writers not only are central to the production of southern literature and new southern studies, but also are crucial to understanding the shift from modernism to postmodernism in southern letters. A paradigm-shifting work, Southscapes restores African American writers to their rightful place in the regional imagination, while calling for a more inclusive conception of region.

In this illuminating book, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist and acclaimed poet Alice Walker reveals her remarkable philosophy of life. Curiously, this labor of love started with the author’s signature: Faced with the daunting task of providing autographs for multiple copies of one of her poetry collections, Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth, Walker turned an act of repetition into an act of inspiration. For each autograph became something more than a name: a thoughtful reflection, an impromptu sketch, a heartfelt poem. The result is this spontaneous burst of the unexpected. A Poem Traveled Down My Arm is a lovely collection of insights and drawings—by turns charming and humorous, provocative and profound—that represent the wisdom of one of today’s most beloved writers. The essence of Walker’s independent spirit emanates from words and images that are simple but deep in meaning. An empowering approach to life...the inspiration to live completely in the moment...the chance to nurture one’s creativity and peace of mind—all these beautiful elements are evoked by this unusual and original book.

Understanding Alice Walker serves both as an introduction to the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner's large body of work and as a critical analysis of her multifaceted canon. Thadious M. Davis begins with Walker's biography and her formative experiences in the South and then presents ways of accessing and reading Walker's complex, interconnected, and sociopolitically invested career in writing fiction, poetry, critical essays, and meditations. Although best known for her novel The Color Purple and her landmark essays In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose, Walker began her career with Once: Poems, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, and In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women. She has remained committed not merely to writing in multiple genres but also to conveying narratives of the hope and transformation possible within the human condition and as visualized through the lens of race and gender. Davis traces Walker's literary voice as it emerges from the civil rights and feminist movements to encourage an individual and collective search for justice and joy and then evolves into forceful advocacy for world peace, spiritual liberation, and environmental conservancy. Her writing, a rich amalgamation of the cutting-edge and popular, the new-age and difficult, continues to be paradigm shifting and among the most important produced in the last half of the twentieth century and among the most consistently prophetic in the first part of the twenty-first century.

Walker brings a woman's wisdom to bear on love, life's unavoidable tragedies, blacks' struggle for equality and justice, and a world committing eco-suicide.

This biography explores Alice Walker's life experiences and her lifework in context of her philosophical thought, and celebrates the author's creative genius and heroism. Born in Eatonton, GA, in 1944, a daughter of sharecroppers, Alice Walker has lived a remarkable and courageous life, and she continues to do so as an elder. Taking inspiration from her great-great-great-great grandmother who lived enslaved in the American South and died at age 125, Walker's activism stems from a philosophy that embraces all life and expresses itself through courageous truth-telling, a resolute stand for freedom, and radical love. Alice Walker: A Woman for Our Times offers a full examination of the intellectual underpinnings of Walker's life and her oeuvre from a philosophical standpoint. This philosophical biography draws a portrait of the author that reveals the nuances of her character, clarifies the relationship between her life experiences and her lifework, and the philosophical thought that underlies both. This work will be essential reading to those interested in Black studies, women's studies, the Civil Rights and Black Arts movements, peace studies, the American South, philosophy, psychology, sociology, spirituality and New Age literature, and ecology and eco-feminism.

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.

Drawing on papers, letters, journals, and extensive interviews with Walker, her family, friends, and colleagues, and with leading American cultural figures including Gloria Steinem, Quincy Jones, and Oprah Winfrey, White assesses one of the most influential writers of modern time.

Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'The Color Purple', is one of America's major and most prolific writers. She is also among its most controversial. How has Walker's work developed over the last forty years? Why has it often provoked extreme reactions? Does Walker's cultural, political and spiritual activism enhance or distort her fiction? Where does she belong in the evolving tradition of African American literature? 'Alice Walker, second edition': * examines the full range of Walker's prose writings: her novels, short stories, essays, activist writings, speeches and memoirs * has been thoroughly revised in the light of the latest scholarship and critical developments * brings coverage of Walker's work right up to date with a new chapter on 'Now is the Time to Open Your Heart' (2004), and discussion of her recent non-fictional writing, including 'Overcoming Speechlessness' (2010) * traces Walker's lineage back to nineteenth-century visionary black women preachers and activists * assesses Walkers prose oeuvre both in terms of its literary and its activist merits and shortcomings. Ideal for students and scholars alike, this established text remains an essential guide to the work of a key US author as it explains her unique place in contemporary American letters.