New Releases by Alice Walker

'' I am the woman offering two flowers whose roots are twin. Justice and Hope Hope and Justice Let us begin'' Alice Walker has been writing poetry since the summer of 1965, when she travelled to East Africa and began the collection ONCE while sitting beneath a tree facing Mount Kenya. Encompassing the collections ONCE, REVOLUTIONARY PETUNIAS & OTHER POEMS, GOOD NIGHT WILLIE LEE I''LL SEE YOU IN THE MORNING, and HORSES MAKE A LANDSCAPE LOOK MORE BEAUTIFUL as well as other poems, this is a wonderful, surprising, entertaining collection that offers a historical perspective on the evolution of both the poetry itself and the political and spiritual inspiration behind it.

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.

For many years, Alice Walker has been known for her outspoken positions against racism, sexism, and colonialism. Now, she takes her crusade into the midst of her fiction, as her protagonist (greatly resembling herself) sheds the burdens and blessings of her past to come to terms with an actuality heightened by the transcendental images of magical realism. To be purified, she must go down two rivers. First, there''s the Colorado, where she takes an all-female white-water rafting trip which makes her decide to pursue celibacy. Then, there''s the Amazon, where she purges her past using yage, a hallucinogenic herb which brings her closer to the World-Grandmother-Spirit. At last, she reaches a place of love and wholeness.

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.

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.

Presents the text of Alice Walker''s story "Everyday Use"; contains background essays that provide insight into the story; and features a selection of critical response. Includes a chronology and an interview with the author.

A collection of short stories by the author of HER BLUE BODY EVERYTHING WE KNOW; EARTHLING POEMS 1965-1990, COMPLETE and THE COLOR PURPLE.

"In her best-selling 1992 novel, Possessing the Secret of Joy, Alice Walker opened a painful door: she brought the issue of female genital mutilation, a practice that affects one hundred million of the world''s women, to the attention of the reading public. For many readers, this first encounter with a subject previously unfamiliar to them was shocking and unforgettable." "Alice Walker decided early in the process of writing her novel that she had not yet done enough to help stop this age-old practice. She resolved to make a documentary film that would further educate people about the harmful, sometimes deadly process of removing the clitoris - and often the remaining outer genitalia - as a means of maintaining tradition and ensuring a woman''s "cleanliness" and fidelity. To make the film, Alice Walker teamed up with Indian-British filmmaker Pratibha Parmar, whose credits include several widely acclaimed documentaries focusing on issues of race, gender, and sexuality. This book chronicles their odyssey together." "Warrior Marks describes a unique filmmaking journey, from Alice Walker''s first letter to Pratibha Parmar proposing the idea of the film to the many journal entries and observations each of them made along the way. From California to England to Senegal, The Gambia, and Burkina Faso, Warrior Marks follows Walker and Parmar as they interview people who are concerned with and affected by the practice of female genital mutilation. The text includes transcripts of their interviews, three new poems by Alice Walker, and over fifty photographs offering a vivid and poignant portrayal of the people and places they visited." "For its insights into the collaborative creative process, as well as its perceptions about the politics of filmmaking and the politics of feminism, Warrior Marks is an extraordinary volume. It is also the adventure of two remarkable women who together fulfilled a dream."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Set in the period between the world wars, this novel tells of two sisters, their trials, and their survival.

A provocative novel about an African tribal woman''s battle with madness after the trauma of a childhood genital mutilation. --Publisher.

For the adult new reader, selections from the novel of African-American lives.

In this story Alice Walker teaches that our love for family and friiends brings us the most powerful peace and happiness of all.

The author relates how old Mr. Sweet, though often on the verge of dying, could always be revived by the loving attention that she and her brother gave him.

From the days she banged her rattle in the crib, Violet has been looking for friends to share her love of music.

A biography of the American poet whose works articulated the despair of blacks over social and economic conditions.

These poems are about revolutionaries and lovers-about how, both in revolution and in love, loss of trust and compassion robs us of hope. They are also about (and for) those few embattled souls who remain painfully committed to beauty and to love even while facing the firing squad. "Quick, direct, witty, pungent" (DeWitt Beall, Chicago Daily News).

The time has come, Lillian Smith wrote in 1962, for women to risk the "great and daring creative act" of discovering and articulating their own identity. Three years later, Southern women of a younger generation, fortified by the skills and self-respect earned in the black civil-rights movement, issued the first manifesto of a new feminism. Their words landed with explosive force, setting off cultural reverberations which have shaken the lives of men and women alike. A little more than a decade after that, this issue of Southern Exposure began to take form. Its creation has taken us back into history and deep into the meaning of our own lives. As we set out to understand the situation of Southern women, we found ourselves "in search of our mothers'' gardens." We found ourselves naming an experience we share across the generations. "So many of the stories that I write," Alice Walker discovered, "are my mother''s stories." To speak in our own voices, we had first to give expression to a "promise song" that has been there all along.