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Pulitzer Prize-winning Author Alice Walker Discusses Growing Up, Marriage, and her New Novel

Writer Alice Walker. She's best known for the novel The Color Purple, a seminal account of the life of poor, rural blacks in the south as experienced by the women. The novel revolves around letters that Celie, the principal character, addresses to God after her father has impregnated her for the second time. The Color Purple won the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and was later adapted for the screen by Steven Spielberg. Walker has written four novels, two collections of short stories (including You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down), four volumes of poetry, two collections of essay (In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens), two children's books, and a biography of Langston Hughes. Her latest novel, which Walker describes as a "romance of the last 500,000 years," is titled The Temple of My Familiar. (originally broadcast 5/1/89).

22:12

Other segments from the episode on April 13, 1990

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, April 13, 1990: Interview with Alice Walker; Commentary on Celia Cruz and La Lupe; Interview with John Wesley Harding; Review of Geoff Hoyle's one-man shoe "Feast of Fools…

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