Alice Walker

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Alice Walker is one of this century's most prolific African-American writers. A research paper on Alice Walker presents her genius as a result of her rich heritage and stunning ability to transform her experiences into art and literature. The short story Everyday Use is a classic example of Walker's life being imitated in her art. Her themes of heritage and the search for identity have always been a major part of her writing and her life. Write a research paper on how Alice Walker's life influenced her work.

Born to Minnie Tallulah and Willie Lee Walker, Alice was the product of two hard working sharecroppers from Eatonton, Georgia. Walker's search for identity began instantaneously with her conception. "I was the last child and my mother didn't really want eight children, and she didn't really bite her tongue about saying that." Walker remembers her mother much like the mother in Everyday Use. She was a patient woman who held her temper, along withholding onto her values and her past.

Walker's parents could never afford to own their home and the house they lived in was rotting away. This was a source of great resentment within Alice Walker. It is indicative of Walker's literature that it reflects the deep, emotional turmoil that she explores in her own life. Therefore, the humble home that the mother and her daughter Maggie lived in was symbolic of the home in which Walker grew up. The daughter Dee, upon returning home from college for the weekend, takes pictures of the home in utter amazement that her family still lives there. Though deeply ashamed of the home, Dee sees it as a cultural icon of days gone by for African-Americans. Walker takes the symbolism of the poverty of the entire scene between the mother and her daughter, Dee, to a much deeper level. Their struggle of resisting each other's worlds becomes one of a search for cultural memory, history, what it means to identify with one's heritage and how to cherish the past and still move forward without the oppression. One of the saddest expressions of the story is the mother's realization of her daughters evolution away from the true essence of her culture. Walker demonstrates how oppression can be found even among those of the same culture.