0:00:05 > 0:00:09# ..Keep my sister away from me Makidada... #
0:00:09 > 0:00:12'I started reading it, you know, just to tease myself to say,'
0:00:12 > 0:00:15"Oh, I'll read five pages. If I don't like it I'll put it down."
0:00:15 > 0:00:18And I read the entire book in an hour, and I'm a slow reader.
0:00:18 > 0:00:22And I read it very, very fast. Then I read it again the next day
0:00:22 > 0:00:24and I read it again the day after that,
0:00:24 > 0:00:27so I read it three times in one week.
0:00:27 > 0:00:31It was the first novel to receive the Pulitzer Prize in fiction
0:00:31 > 0:00:34written by a black woman.
0:00:34 > 0:00:38One of the members of the Pulitzer jury said to me,
0:00:38 > 0:00:41"It is a novel that will stand the test of time."
0:00:54 > 0:01:01Alice claimed her space because she needed to be a writer.
0:01:01 > 0:01:04It saved her life in many regards.
0:01:06 > 0:01:11Intrinsic in her writing is that part of her as a citizen -
0:01:11 > 0:01:13a citizen of the world, a woman,
0:01:13 > 0:01:17a woman of the world and an activist.
0:01:17 > 0:01:20The writing came from her life, it's her life's experiences.
0:01:20 > 0:01:22She couldn't control it, you know?
0:01:22 > 0:01:24She described writing The Color Purple as something that
0:01:24 > 0:01:28was what the gods gave her.
0:01:30 > 0:01:33I don't know any other black writer who has experienced
0:01:33 > 0:01:36the venom that she experienced
0:01:36 > 0:01:40from her own community, the community she cared so much about.
0:01:42 > 0:01:47People really had a problem with my disinterest in submission
0:01:47 > 0:01:50and they had a problem with my intellect
0:01:50 > 0:01:53and they had a problem with my choice of lovers,
0:01:53 > 0:01:56and they had a problem with my choice of everything.
0:02:02 > 0:02:07"I am the woman, dark, repaired, healed, listening to you.
0:02:09 > 0:02:12"I would give to the human race only hope.
0:02:12 > 0:02:18"I am the woman offering two flowers, whose roots are twin.
0:02:20 > 0:02:24"Justice and hope, hope and justice.
0:02:24 > 0:02:26"Let us begin."
0:02:38 > 0:02:42"Three dollars cash for a pair of catalogue shoes was what
0:02:42 > 0:02:45"the midwife charged my mother for bringing me.
0:02:47 > 0:02:52"'We wasn't so country then,' says Mom, 'you being the last one,
0:02:52 > 0:02:56"'and we couldn't, like we done when she brought your brother,
0:02:56 > 0:02:59"'send her out to the pen and let her pick out a pig.'"
0:03:11 > 0:03:15My great, great, great, great grandmother walked as a slave
0:03:15 > 0:03:20from Virginia to Eatonton, Georgia, which passes for the Walker
0:03:20 > 0:03:25ancestral home, with two babies on her hips.
0:03:25 > 0:03:32She lived to be 125 years old and my own father knew her as a boy.
0:03:32 > 0:03:38It is in memory of this walk that I choose to keep
0:03:38 > 0:03:43and to embrace my maiden name, Walker.
0:03:51 > 0:03:55We was a family of eight children, a mother and a father,
0:03:55 > 0:04:00and we worked on this plantation and all of us
0:04:00 > 0:04:04worked for what you might would say the wages of one person,
0:04:04 > 0:04:06because all we got out of it was living,
0:04:06 > 0:04:09and that went for all the families around here.
0:04:09 > 0:04:15The more children a family had, the better their chances was of getting
0:04:15 > 0:04:19a house on a plantation to live in, because the plantation owner
0:04:19 > 0:04:21know that he's going to work
0:04:21 > 0:04:25maybe ten or 12 people for the price of one.
0:04:25 > 0:04:28Well, Mama was the best mother I ever seen.
0:04:28 > 0:04:34She was real strong, real woman. Her name was Mary Lou
0:04:34 > 0:04:39and that is one person the white folks couldn't push around.
0:04:39 > 0:04:43She would stand toe to toe with the landowner who was a white man,
0:04:43 > 0:04:46who said to her, "You know, those children of yours,
0:04:46 > 0:04:50"they should be out there in my field. You know, picking my cotton
0:04:50 > 0:04:55"and chopping my whatever and they don't belong in school."
0:04:55 > 0:04:58And she said, "Well, you know what?
0:04:58 > 0:05:01"These children are my children and they're going to be educated."
0:05:01 > 0:05:03I will never forget that.
0:05:21 > 0:05:25We lived in a very small community in the South, very poor housing,
0:05:25 > 0:05:30and part of what was magical about my mother was that she just
0:05:30 > 0:05:33refused to leave them as shacks
0:05:33 > 0:05:36and they became houses, they became homes.
0:05:36 > 0:05:38This is where I slept and where the girls slept
0:05:38 > 0:05:42and that was always the best room in the house.
0:05:42 > 0:05:46She managed to buy rolls of this cheap wallpaper, which managed
0:05:46 > 0:05:47to look really quite nice.
0:05:47 > 0:05:51But then when she got to her own room and my father's room,
0:05:51 > 0:05:53there was no money for wallpaper.
0:05:53 > 0:05:58But someone gave her lots of paper bags and so she, you know, steamed
0:05:58 > 0:06:02them open, ironed them, and she covered her walls with paper bags
0:06:02 > 0:06:05and, to me, it was just part of my mother's magic.
0:06:06 > 0:06:08Mama used to be in the field picking cotton,
0:06:08 > 0:06:12she'd be at the edge sitting on a blanket or something
0:06:12 > 0:06:17with a pencil and paper, scribbling on something, you know.
0:06:17 > 0:06:20She always wanted to learn.
0:06:20 > 0:06:23I remember, you know, different stages writing -
0:06:23 > 0:06:24when various things hurt me
0:06:24 > 0:06:28or when I couldn't deal with reality around me, I would create something.
0:06:36 > 0:06:42"The nature of this flower is to bloom.
0:06:42 > 0:06:48"Rebellious living against the elemental crush.
0:06:48 > 0:06:54"A song of colour blooming for deserving eyes,
0:06:54 > 0:06:58"blooming gloriously for itself."
0:07:01 > 0:07:03I think it was important to me
0:07:03 > 0:07:07to have a place where I could put my poems.
0:07:07 > 0:07:10I felt it was a way to honour certain people who had
0:07:10 > 0:07:15helped me, like my Uncle Frank and my father and my mother.
0:07:17 > 0:07:20They were rather morbid poems as I recall, you know,
0:07:20 > 0:07:23because that seems to have been what was in the air.
0:07:36 > 0:07:38Alice was a salad girl,
0:07:38 > 0:07:42like the cafeteria girl, at this place not far from Eatonton.
0:07:42 > 0:07:47No black people could go, no black kids, except as workers.
0:07:47 > 0:07:49I interviewed a high school boyfriend
0:07:49 > 0:07:52and he told this story about how they were going to their job.
0:07:52 > 0:07:56They were driving there, Alice started complaining about, you know,
0:07:56 > 0:08:01"This is unfair. We are being mistreated, we need to fight."
0:08:01 > 0:08:05And he said, "This is just the way it is. We have to accept it."
0:08:05 > 0:08:09And Alice got out of the car and said, "I will walk to work.
0:08:09 > 0:08:11"We need to fight."
0:08:11 > 0:08:13And he said that she was always like that,
0:08:13 > 0:08:17that others had accepted it and he said, "Alice never accepted it."
0:08:19 > 0:08:23My mother was earning at that time 17 a week.
0:08:23 > 0:08:25She worked every day.
0:08:25 > 0:08:28Out of that 17, she managed to buy me the typewriter
0:08:28 > 0:08:31and a suitcase and a sewing machine,
0:08:31 > 0:08:35because at that time, it was cheaper to make your own clothing.
0:08:35 > 0:08:40In the face of that kind of love, which is so apparent in the
0:08:40 > 0:08:44sacrifice of her life...
0:08:44 > 0:08:48you know, I knew I had to really do well and...
0:08:55 > 0:08:59There is nothing more powerful in all the world than an idea
0:08:59 > 0:09:02whose time has come.
0:09:02 > 0:09:05The idea whose time has come today
0:09:05 > 0:09:10is the idea of freedom and human dignity.
0:09:10 > 0:09:12I saw him being arrested.
0:09:12 > 0:09:18I'd never seen that kind of acceptance of consequences, a really
0:09:18 > 0:09:24radical determination to change a situation by sacrificing whatever
0:09:24 > 0:09:31you had to, and it went very deeply into my spirit, I recognised it.
0:09:31 > 0:09:35I'd never seen it there, just... It was like finally seeing
0:09:35 > 0:09:37a part of myself that I hadn't seen expressed.
0:09:42 > 0:09:43I got a scholarship.
0:09:43 > 0:09:46I went off to Spelman
0:09:46 > 0:09:52and it was a very sharp break with my life in Eatonton.
0:09:54 > 0:10:00I first met Alice at a freshman dinner.
0:10:00 > 0:10:03I was really struck by her dignity and her presence
0:10:03 > 0:10:09and her maturity, and she was only 17 or 18 years old at that time.
0:10:09 > 0:10:13And she wrote this paper for me on Tolstoy
0:10:13 > 0:10:16and Dostoyevsky, which just astonished me.
0:10:16 > 0:10:20It wasn't just the content of the paper, the ideas,
0:10:20 > 0:10:24the substance of it, but the style.
0:10:24 > 0:10:26She wrote so beautifully.
0:10:26 > 0:10:29I can't say that I knew she would be a great writer,
0:10:29 > 0:10:30of course not,
0:10:30 > 0:10:34but I knew that she was an extraordinary writer at that age.
0:10:36 > 0:10:39It was the height of the Civil Rights movement
0:10:39 > 0:10:40outside the Spelman gates.
0:10:40 > 0:10:43We were encouraged not to get involved
0:10:43 > 0:10:49and it would detract from our studies, it might get us in jail.
0:10:50 > 0:10:53The movement of the time required that all of the students
0:10:53 > 0:10:58actually dismantle segregation, which was a huge thing.
0:10:58 > 0:11:03So I was caught in this impossible situation of needing to
0:11:03 > 0:11:09demonstrate protests, risk arrest and keep my scholarship.
0:11:09 > 0:11:11I couldn't afford to lose the scholarship
0:11:11 > 0:11:14and so Staughton Lynd, who was my history teacher,
0:11:14 > 0:11:17he realised that they'd get rid of me somehow or other,
0:11:17 > 0:11:20and with a little help from him and his mother,
0:11:20 > 0:11:23I ended up at Sarah Lawrence. I just left in the middle of the year.
0:11:23 > 0:11:27That's one of the remarkable things about Alice, she goes her own way.
0:11:27 > 0:11:30I remember at one point she'd quoted Emerson who said,
0:11:30 > 0:11:34"I feel most bad about myself when I have listened to other people
0:11:34 > 0:11:38"and have ignored my own feelings."
0:11:38 > 0:11:40No, she didn't ignore her own feelings.
0:11:43 > 0:11:47The thing is, you never quite understand why the trials
0:11:47 > 0:11:50we have are given to us.
0:11:53 > 0:11:55I was 18, 19
0:11:55 > 0:12:00and I had an abortion that... The alternative to that
0:12:00 > 0:12:05abortion had been suicide and... you know, it was just a fact.
0:12:05 > 0:12:07There was no melodrama,
0:12:07 > 0:12:10it was just I had nowhere to go back to in Georgia.
0:12:10 > 0:12:13My parents would not have understood it.
0:12:15 > 0:12:18As soon as I got stronger, I just had all these poems
0:12:18 > 0:12:21and I just wrote poems, poems, poems, night and day,
0:12:21 > 0:12:27and I wrote the whole book pretty much in a few days.
0:12:29 > 0:12:31The poems had done their work for me,
0:12:31 > 0:12:35they had been the medicine to heal the wounding of the abortion,
0:12:35 > 0:12:38the agony that had preceded the abortion.
0:12:40 > 0:12:44It's like all of the debris of the situation becomes
0:12:44 > 0:12:50a fuel for an emergence of a new awareness, and that totally happened.
0:12:55 > 0:12:59I had gone to the march on Washington in '63
0:12:59 > 0:13:01and Martin Luther King had said,
0:13:01 > 0:13:04basically, stop running away from your own part of the world,
0:13:04 > 0:13:10the South, and in fact, instead of going to the North, go back home.
0:13:10 > 0:13:15So I felt very affirmed in wanting to go back and to...
0:13:15 > 0:13:17to do work in the black community.
0:13:18 > 0:13:23It seemed the least that I could do to go to Mississippi, where the
0:13:23 > 0:13:26share croppers were being thrown off their land
0:13:26 > 0:13:29for trying to register to vote.
0:13:34 > 0:13:40"It is true, I've always loved the daring ones,
0:13:40 > 0:13:46"like the black young man who tried to crash all barriers at once,
0:13:46 > 0:13:51"wanted to swim at a white beach in Alabama, nude."
0:13:54 > 0:14:00We met at Stephen's Kitchen on Farrar Street, which was two steps
0:14:00 > 0:14:06from my offices in Jackson, and during the early summer of 1966,
0:14:06 > 0:14:13I was there having lunch and she walked in wearing an African dress
0:14:13 > 0:14:19and I looked across the room and I was taken by her, yeah.
0:14:19 > 0:14:22I was one of those people who thought that white people
0:14:22 > 0:14:25should not be in our movement, so I wasn't pleased at all to
0:14:25 > 0:14:28walk into this restaurant where people in the movement ate,
0:14:28 > 0:14:33and to see these white people who were a part of the movement.
0:14:33 > 0:14:36And I was especially not so happy to see this very cute Jewish boy,
0:14:36 > 0:14:39I didn't even know he was Jewish,
0:14:39 > 0:14:42but he was really definitely cute
0:14:42 > 0:14:45and so I tried to be as cold as possible.
0:14:47 > 0:14:50But the attraction was mutual.
0:14:50 > 0:14:55So the first time we met we just chatted and the second time we met
0:14:55 > 0:14:59she actually had in her hands a manuscript box, which had
0:14:59 > 0:15:04her then unpublished first collection of poems, Once.
0:15:04 > 0:15:06That's one of my earliest recollections of Alice
0:15:06 > 0:15:09and saying she's a writer and wanting me
0:15:09 > 0:15:14to share what she had written, and I loved every second of that.
0:15:14 > 0:15:18Over time, we started to date and...
0:15:18 > 0:15:21But not really date actually, because it was
0:15:21 > 0:15:26more like we were trying to, you know, desegregate the South
0:15:26 > 0:15:31and part of it entailed going to motels and hotels that had
0:15:31 > 0:15:35not been desegregated, which was almost lethal.
0:15:36 > 0:15:39# Alabama's gotten me so upset
0:15:39 > 0:15:42# Tennessee made me lose my rest
0:15:42 > 0:15:47# And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam... #
0:15:49 > 0:15:53It really did seem at times as if our love made us bullet-proof,
0:15:53 > 0:15:54or perhaps invisible.
0:15:56 > 0:15:58When we walked down the street together,
0:15:58 > 0:16:02the bullets that were the glances of the racist onlookers
0:16:02 > 0:16:07seemed turned back and sent hurtling off into outer space.
0:16:07 > 0:16:13# Hound dogs on my trail Schoolchildren sitting in jail
0:16:13 > 0:16:16# Black cat crossed my path
0:16:16 > 0:16:21# I think every day is gonna be my last... #
0:16:21 > 0:16:23We were prepared to die, you know, it wasn't as
0:16:23 > 0:16:25if other people were not dying.
0:16:25 > 0:16:29They were fire-bombing houses, they were actually beating people.
0:16:29 > 0:16:32You know, there were lots of people who just disappeared.
0:16:32 > 0:16:34When they would drag the rivers,
0:16:34 > 0:16:37they'd find all these bodies they didn't know existed.
0:16:37 > 0:16:39# ..All I want is equality
0:16:39 > 0:16:43# For my sister, my brother My people and me... #
0:16:46 > 0:16:51"Torrents of rain cascaded down the streets, the air was blue with it.
0:16:52 > 0:16:56"Lightning streaked our bodies with silver.
0:16:56 > 0:17:00"Nature supports what is, we felt, as our bodies
0:17:00 > 0:17:03"moved passionately together."
0:17:03 > 0:17:07# ..Lord have mercy on this land of mine
0:17:07 > 0:17:10# We all gonna get it in due time
0:17:10 > 0:17:13# I don't belong here I don't belong there
0:17:13 > 0:17:17# I've even stopped believing in prayer... #
0:17:17 > 0:17:21It's young love being oblivious to everything, you know?
0:17:21 > 0:17:24I think we were taken with each other and
0:17:24 > 0:17:26we blocked out the world.
0:17:26 > 0:17:28He had one more year of law school
0:17:28 > 0:17:33and we were living in the NYU dorm, and so we got married
0:17:33 > 0:17:36knowing that we would go back to Mississippi where it was illegal.
0:17:38 > 0:17:41They had anti-miscegenation law, which meant that you
0:17:41 > 0:17:47couldn't be married to someone of what they called the opposite race.
0:17:48 > 0:17:53My family was shocked and very frightened for me.
0:17:53 > 0:17:55My parents by then were elderly
0:17:55 > 0:18:00and black people who really understood white racism.
0:18:00 > 0:18:06And I introduced my husband to my mother and father
0:18:06 > 0:18:08and they were really polite.
0:18:10 > 0:18:14My father must have been really devastated,
0:18:14 > 0:18:16but you would never have known it.
0:18:16 > 0:18:21He was gracious, he was kind, he was thoughtful.
0:18:21 > 0:18:25And on the other hand, Mel's mother, I think
0:18:25 > 0:18:27she screamed for about three weeks.
0:18:28 > 0:18:34She was really, really, really upset and she sat shiva,
0:18:34 > 0:18:35which meant that he was dead.
0:18:35 > 0:18:39She was hostile to my marriage and I think it was...
0:18:39 > 0:18:47it was a combination of concern and discombobulation by it,
0:18:47 > 0:18:49just being disoriented by it.
0:18:50 > 0:18:55But we were living at a time when we were determined to be ourselves.
0:19:01 > 0:19:06Ironically, Mississippi was great for me as a writer.
0:19:06 > 0:19:11It was so much like going back into the past.
0:19:11 > 0:19:14Being able to see my parents' time,
0:19:14 > 0:19:19my grandparents' time, understand things that
0:19:19 > 0:19:24I could not have understood if I hadn't immersed myself there.
0:19:24 > 0:19:28To stand with the people, to be there with them, to actually feel
0:19:28 > 0:19:33the terrorism that was inflicted on them and on us as we were there.
0:19:35 > 0:19:39It helped me to write out of a deeper awareness
0:19:39 > 0:19:44and a deeper commitment to the struggle of my own people.
0:19:46 > 0:19:49The interesting thing about Alice's work,
0:19:49 > 0:19:53her work, my dear sister, is that she brought what
0:19:53 > 0:19:57I call also that Southern part,
0:19:57 > 0:20:02a Southern landscape that said, it is...it is woman's landscape,
0:20:02 > 0:20:05it is...it is the Native American landscape.
0:20:05 > 0:20:09So what we're seeing then is this voice recording what happened
0:20:09 > 0:20:12to women, recording what happened to men too.
0:20:12 > 0:20:15That when you are oppressed, you always strike out at the one
0:20:15 > 0:20:16right close to you.
0:20:18 > 0:20:21I think the book that really brought me
0:20:21 > 0:20:25into her universe was The Third Life Of Grange Copeland, that was
0:20:25 > 0:20:28a kind of a game changer for me, that particular book. I'd never
0:20:28 > 0:20:33really heard anything like it, or heard a black woman writing in
0:20:33 > 0:20:38that kind of way. That really was looking at issues within the family
0:20:38 > 0:20:41and wasn't just, you know, the white man, the white man, the white man.
0:20:41 > 0:20:42Racism, racism, racism.
0:20:42 > 0:20:45Some people were not ready for that dialogue. They would say,
0:20:45 > 0:20:48"We can't talk about that, because after all we are oppressed."
0:20:48 > 0:20:50And she said, "Yes, we are oppressed,
0:20:50 > 0:20:53"but there are other layers of this oppression that we must talk about
0:20:53 > 0:20:56"and if we don't talk about it we're not going to survive."
0:20:57 > 0:21:02"Journal entry, January 2nd 1969.
0:21:03 > 0:21:08"My bad days were spent in depression, anxiety,
0:21:08 > 0:21:10"rage against the war
0:21:10 > 0:21:15"and the slow rate of racial progress in Mississippi.
0:21:15 > 0:21:20"My good days were spent teaching, writing a simple black history book
0:21:20 > 0:21:24"for use in black day care centres in Jackson,
0:21:24 > 0:21:29"making a quilt - African fabrics, Mississippi pattern -
0:21:29 > 0:21:31"and completing my second book.
0:21:31 > 0:21:36"Three days after I finished the novel, I had my daughter."
0:21:38 > 0:21:40I loved being a mother.
0:21:40 > 0:21:46We were so pleasantly surprised, her father and I,
0:21:46 > 0:21:48at how much we loved it.
0:21:48 > 0:21:51Since we were the first legally married inter-racial couple,
0:21:51 > 0:21:53they couldn't believe their eyes.
0:21:53 > 0:21:57So on the birth certificate I'm listed as black
0:21:57 > 0:22:02and he's listed as white and they had never seen this before,
0:22:02 > 0:22:07because the white fathers previous to this had never
0:22:07 > 0:22:10admitted that they were the fathers of these children.
0:22:10 > 0:22:15Meanwhile, my husband showed up with huge bouquets of roses
0:22:15 > 0:22:19and, you know, was beaming from ear to ear, so there was just no doubt
0:22:19 > 0:22:22that he was the father of this wonderful little baby.
0:22:22 > 0:22:25So they wrote on there, you know,
0:22:25 > 0:22:27"Correct," meaning, "Is this an error?"
0:22:29 > 0:22:35I spent one full year completely devoted to Rebecca and after
0:22:35 > 0:22:39that year, I started sending her to day care for half a day.
0:22:39 > 0:22:40Between nine and 12,
0:22:40 > 0:22:45I had to do a certain amount of writing on this book and I did it.
0:22:45 > 0:22:49So she actually gave me an opportunity to be more
0:22:49 > 0:22:53organised and then everything else worked around that.
0:22:53 > 0:22:57We were very much in love and we had a wonderful family.
0:22:57 > 0:23:00And we were careful. A lot of things we didn't do
0:23:00 > 0:23:03because they were just not safe to do.
0:23:05 > 0:23:09We used to get cards, little cards from the Ku Klux Klan
0:23:09 > 0:23:12which said, "The eyes of the Klan are on you."
0:23:12 > 0:23:18We did have a gun and I would have used it, because I know that
0:23:18 > 0:23:22I would not have accepted anyone mistreating my child.
0:23:23 > 0:23:27You know, it would be instinctual, I just couldn't do it,
0:23:27 > 0:23:33even though, you know, I am non-violent by nature.
0:23:35 > 0:23:39Alice felt caged in Mississippi, which is not untrue.
0:23:39 > 0:23:41She felt that her writing should never blossom,
0:23:41 > 0:23:45develop to the extent that she needed to.
0:23:45 > 0:23:49We were under more pressure than anyone should be under, really,
0:23:49 > 0:23:52from just being in love and being married
0:23:52 > 0:23:57and also trying to change an entire society.
0:23:57 > 0:23:59I mean, racism was everywhere.
0:23:59 > 0:24:00So at some point she said,
0:24:00 > 0:24:04"Mel, it's the marriage or Mississippi. You know, you make
0:24:04 > 0:24:08"your choice, I gotta get out of here," and I did not want to leave.
0:24:09 > 0:24:13I decided that Alice was very important to me
0:24:13 > 0:24:16and my marriage was important to me.
0:24:16 > 0:24:17So we moved, we moved to New York.
0:24:21 > 0:24:23I got to know her when she came
0:24:23 > 0:24:26to New York with Mel
0:24:26 > 0:24:32and became a more present contributing editor at Ms Magazine.
0:24:36 > 0:24:38The 1970s and '80s saw
0:24:38 > 0:24:43really a great resurgence in a movement
0:24:43 > 0:24:45towards women's liberation.
0:24:45 > 0:24:48Coming out of that political movement,
0:24:48 > 0:24:52African American women really started participating in the arts.
0:24:55 > 0:24:58She contributed immensely to the magazine.
0:24:58 > 0:25:01We never would have known enough to publish Bessie Head
0:25:01 > 0:25:05and all these wonderful authors in addition to Alice,
0:25:05 > 0:25:09but she didn't like to come to editorial meetings.
0:25:10 > 0:25:14African American women were beginning to write much more frequently.
0:25:14 > 0:25:18They, with their African sisters and other Third World women, were
0:25:18 > 0:25:21writing much more consciously as women.
0:25:21 > 0:25:25And June Jordan and I decided that we would have a
0:25:25 > 0:25:28gathering of women called The Sisterhood.
0:25:28 > 0:25:32What I wanted was for all of us to feel that we were sisters
0:25:32 > 0:25:38and that we were up against a very well-known machine that has been
0:25:38 > 0:25:43in the habit, historically, of just crushing us and killing our voices.
0:25:44 > 0:25:48It had always been about the effects of white racism on black men.
0:25:48 > 0:25:51No-one had really looked at the... you know,
0:25:51 > 0:25:55the domino effect of that white racism. When the black men
0:25:55 > 0:25:58were affected, so were the black women and the black children
0:25:58 > 0:26:02and that was a story that black men were hesitant about being told.
0:26:02 > 0:26:05- WOMEN SING:- # The revolution has come
0:26:05 > 0:26:09# Time to pick up the gun... #
0:26:09 > 0:26:11The black nationalist pushback was
0:26:11 > 0:26:16so intense that, at moment, these women were being called traitors.
0:26:16 > 0:26:20There were moments in conferences that Alice was the topic.
0:26:20 > 0:26:25I remember doing a paper and I talked about Alice and Toni.
0:26:25 > 0:26:28In the middle of reading that paper, one of the critics,
0:26:28 > 0:26:32male critics, shouted me down, because I'd mentioned their names.
0:26:32 > 0:26:34I'm very serious. I can still hear it now.
0:26:34 > 0:26:36Black male critics,
0:26:36 > 0:26:39they did not want to hear about these women writers.
0:26:39 > 0:26:43I used to go to all of her readings and I stopped going.
0:26:45 > 0:26:48Whites were told that we really weren't welcome.
0:26:48 > 0:26:52Mel was told white people can't be in the movement any more.
0:26:52 > 0:26:55"You have done your service, you all have got to go now."
0:26:55 > 0:26:59Alice, who was then emerging as a great writer, as an important
0:26:59 > 0:27:04spokesperson, started to feel the pressure and I just sensed
0:27:04 > 0:27:07at some point that it would be easier for her if I were not there.
0:27:09 > 0:27:15"They say you are not for me and I try in my resolved
0:27:15 > 0:27:19"but barely turning brain, to know they do not matter,
0:27:19 > 0:27:21"these relics of past disasters
0:27:21 > 0:27:24"in march against the rebellion of our time."
0:27:26 > 0:27:29The divorce was very simple. It was done with respect and love
0:27:29 > 0:27:31and we just moved...
0:27:31 > 0:27:34but I think it was very hard on Rebecca.
0:27:34 > 0:27:38I think it was very confusing for her. Our divorce, which
0:27:38 > 0:27:43happened around the time she was going on nine, was devastating.
0:27:43 > 0:27:48She was extremely wounded because she loved us both and we loved her.
0:27:49 > 0:27:53She had said to me, "My parents' love ended.
0:27:53 > 0:27:56"What did that mean for me as the emblem,
0:27:56 > 0:28:00"as this blend of the black and white together?"
0:28:00 > 0:28:05I think that she felt on some level that she had been abandoned.
0:28:07 > 0:28:12"Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise,
0:28:13 > 0:28:16"Become a stranger to need of pity,
0:28:16 > 0:28:19"or if compassion be freely given out,
0:28:19 > 0:28:21"take only enough,
0:28:21 > 0:28:24"stop short of the urge to plead."
0:28:25 > 0:28:30The single motherhood writer activity
0:28:30 > 0:28:33was quite stressful.
0:28:33 > 0:28:37I was doing lectures and readings to make money
0:28:37 > 0:28:42and it meant travelling for very modest sums.
0:28:42 > 0:28:44I have been in every state,
0:28:44 > 0:28:48sometimes many times with many different books,
0:28:48 > 0:28:52so I had to leave Rebecca with the family downstairs.
0:28:53 > 0:28:57Alice has had to make sacrifices to do this work.
0:28:57 > 0:29:00She has had to make a path for herself
0:29:00 > 0:29:02without necessarily
0:29:02 > 0:29:05knowing where that's going go, without being sure of where
0:29:05 > 0:29:08she was going to find the resources to do it.
0:29:08 > 0:29:11I remember when she moved to San Francisco, she was making
0:29:11 > 0:29:14a little budget. You know, we were talking about this budget and
0:29:14 > 0:29:17how she would be able to survive and if it meant difficulty
0:29:17 > 0:29:21in living, OK. She understood that that would be necessary.
0:29:21 > 0:29:24That commitment necessarily meant that in time
0:29:24 > 0:29:28she had to withdraw from other connections, other relationships.
0:29:30 > 0:29:34"You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy."
0:29:37 > 0:29:41"Dear God, I am 14 years old.
0:29:41 > 0:29:45"I am, I have always been a good girl.
0:29:45 > 0:29:50"Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me."
0:29:50 > 0:29:52I tried writing it in New York
0:29:52 > 0:29:56and the characters hated New York, so did I.
0:29:56 > 0:29:59And we decided we would move to San Francisco
0:29:59 > 0:30:02because of the beauty and the space and then they didn't
0:30:02 > 0:30:07like earthquakes. Neither did I. SHE CHUCKLES
0:30:07 > 0:30:08So we came to Boonville,
0:30:08 > 0:30:12found a little cottage that was 300 a month
0:30:12 > 0:30:16and Robert, my partner at the time, and I rented it
0:30:16 > 0:30:19and we wrote, I wrote, he was writing something too.
0:30:21 > 0:30:26I was carrying sometimes up to 12 people in my mind
0:30:26 > 0:30:30and they're all talking, and they were all thinking
0:30:30 > 0:30:33and they were all planning their next adventure.
0:30:33 > 0:30:36I had never read an epistolary novel, which is
0:30:36 > 0:30:38a novel written as a series of letters
0:30:38 > 0:30:40by a black woman.
0:30:40 > 0:30:43And I think what Alice Walker was able to do with that form,
0:30:43 > 0:30:48to highlight literacy as a form of freedom, was truly magnificent.
0:30:53 > 0:30:56"Dear God,
0:30:56 > 0:30:59"Harpo asked his daddy why he beat me.
0:30:59 > 0:31:04"Mr say, 'Cos she my wife, plus she's stubborn.
0:31:04 > 0:31:07"'All women good for...' He don't finish.
0:31:07 > 0:31:11"He just tuck his chin over the paper like he do.
0:31:11 > 0:31:12"Remind me of Pa."
0:31:15 > 0:31:18It came from spending a lot of time with my grandparents
0:31:18 > 0:31:20when I was eight.
0:31:20 > 0:31:24Both grandfathers had been horrible. They were batterers,
0:31:24 > 0:31:27they did terrible things to their children, to their wives,
0:31:27 > 0:31:29they always had other women.
0:31:29 > 0:31:35Alice Walker was able to take the kind of spiritual core
0:31:35 > 0:31:40of African-American women and the gritty, hard reality
0:31:40 > 0:31:44for African-American women, and bring them
0:31:44 > 0:31:49together in a fictional piece that expressed hopefulness,
0:31:49 > 0:31:52and I'd never really seen that before.
0:31:57 > 0:32:01The popularity of The Color Purple, which maybe was,
0:32:01 > 0:32:03because of the way it was written, more populist
0:32:03 > 0:32:11than many other books, did go a long way towards making clear
0:32:11 > 0:32:15that this was universal and a great American novel.
0:32:15 > 0:32:16A great world novel.
0:32:24 > 0:32:27I want to read a section from The Color Purple.
0:32:30 > 0:32:33This is... this is known as the God section.
0:32:33 > 0:32:35MUTED APPLAUSE
0:32:38 > 0:32:41"Dear Nettie,
0:32:41 > 0:32:44"I don't write to God no more, I write to you.
0:32:44 > 0:32:46"'What happen to God?' asked Shug.
0:32:46 > 0:32:49"'Who that?' I say. She look at me serious.
0:32:50 > 0:32:54"'Big a devil as you is,' I say, 'you not worry about no God surely?'
0:32:54 > 0:32:58"She said, 'Wait a moment, hold on just a minute here.
0:32:58 > 0:33:00"'Just cos I don't harass it like some peoples us know,
0:33:00 > 0:33:02"'don't mean I ain't got religion.'
0:33:02 > 0:33:05"'Well, what God do for me?' I asked.
0:33:05 > 0:33:08"She says, 'Celie,' like she shock.
0:33:08 > 0:33:12"'He gave you life, good health and a good woman that loved you to death.'
0:33:12 > 0:33:14"'Yeah,' I said,
0:33:14 > 0:33:16"'And he give me a lynched daddy, a crazy mama,
0:33:16 > 0:33:17"'a low-down dog of a step-pa
0:33:17 > 0:33:20"'and a sister I probably won't ever hear or see again.
0:33:20 > 0:33:24"'Anyhow,' I say, 'the God I been praying and writing to is a man
0:33:24 > 0:33:28"'and act just like all the other mens I know.
0:33:28 > 0:33:30"'Trifling, forgetful and low-down.'"
0:33:39 > 0:33:42When she won the Pulitzer Prize,
0:33:42 > 0:33:45that kind of ensconced her in the literary community in a certain
0:33:45 > 0:33:49kind of way that she might not have been before that was unquestionable.
0:33:49 > 0:33:51The literary value,
0:33:51 > 0:33:55the social value and then, at the same time, the explosive content
0:33:55 > 0:33:59was just really kind of rocking... rocking people's worlds.
0:33:59 > 0:34:03I remember when Alice Walker appeared on the cover
0:34:03 > 0:34:08of the New York Times Magazine and I don't recall a black woman
0:34:08 > 0:34:12ever having appeared before, so it was...it was major.
0:34:12 > 0:34:14Because when one black woman makes it, it means another can.
0:34:17 > 0:34:19# ..Makidada
0:34:19 > 0:34:24# Keep my sister away from me Makidada...#
0:34:24 > 0:34:27Did you know if it ever became a movie you would want to be
0:34:27 > 0:34:28part of that movie?
0:34:28 > 0:34:30Oh, yes, I wrote to Alice Walker.
0:34:30 > 0:34:34I sent her my resume and all the reviews of my shows, and said,
0:34:34 > 0:34:37"You don't know me, but I just read your book. I think it's amazing.
0:34:37 > 0:34:41"First, because it forces people to read, because you can't skim
0:34:41 > 0:34:45"this book. You have to read it in order to understand the language."
0:34:45 > 0:34:49And that, "If ever they were to make a film, I would play anything -
0:34:49 > 0:34:50"dirt on the floor, a Venetian blind,"
0:34:50 > 0:34:52literally, this is what I wrote.
0:34:52 > 0:34:57That relationship between the four totally different women,
0:34:57 > 0:34:59that's what appealed to me, you know.
0:34:59 > 0:35:04I mean, the violence was unnerving and so forth,
0:35:04 > 0:35:08it really was, but it was part of the package, you know.
0:35:08 > 0:35:09Alice is something else.
0:35:09 > 0:35:12She's got the chops, we call them in the music, you know.
0:35:12 > 0:35:15She's got the ability to really make it very clear
0:35:15 > 0:35:17what she's thinking and feeling.
0:35:17 > 0:35:19She knows how to get your attention.
0:35:19 > 0:35:23It was the separation of family which I could relate to
0:35:23 > 0:35:27because I'm a child of a divorce, and it wasn't even the global
0:35:27 > 0:35:29separation between the sisters, it was just the fact that they
0:35:29 > 0:35:33had no access to each other, except through letters.
0:35:33 > 0:35:35I remember when I first asked Steven about...
0:35:35 > 0:35:37We were talking about directing the film and he says,
0:35:37 > 0:35:40"Don't you think a black director should do this?"
0:35:40 > 0:35:45I said, "Did you have to go to Mars to do ET?" And he said, "OK."
0:35:45 > 0:35:48The project just seemed to be something that I wanted to,
0:35:48 > 0:35:52to seek the permission from Alice,
0:35:52 > 0:35:55cos I had to actually make a little trip up to her house in
0:35:55 > 0:36:00Northern California, and she had to have a chance to vet me so to speak.
0:36:00 > 0:36:04I didn't want to lose this and Alice is so honest.
0:36:04 > 0:36:07And, by the way, if she didn't want me
0:36:07 > 0:36:10to direct the movie, she would have said it in a lovely, endearing way.
0:36:10 > 0:36:12She never would have hurt my feelings,
0:36:12 > 0:36:15but I would not have been the director of the picture
0:36:15 > 0:36:17if she said, "I'd like to go for somebody tougher than Steven.
0:36:17 > 0:36:20"Get me Scorsese," you know? I would have understood that.
0:36:20 > 0:36:22For the baby? Yes, indeed. Here it is.
0:36:22 > 0:36:27'It was so fabulous because they made the movie as if they were making
0:36:27 > 0:36:33'the set and, you know, the gowns and everything out of my imagination.'
0:36:36 > 0:36:38The Color Purple was picketed by black men and women
0:36:38 > 0:36:41when it opened in Los Angeles.
0:36:41 > 0:36:44It has become the focus of a growing controversy.
0:36:44 > 0:36:49We're concerned with how the black family is depicted in this film.
0:36:49 > 0:36:53The novel itself is a novel of incest, of rape, homosexuality,
0:36:53 > 0:36:57physical and psychological abuse of black women by black men.
0:36:57 > 0:36:59What don't you like about The Color Purple?
0:36:59 > 0:37:02Well, I don't like the same thing about The Color Purple that
0:37:02 > 0:37:05I didn't like about The Birth Of A Nation.
0:37:05 > 0:37:09Black people, black family is depicted inaccurately,
0:37:09 > 0:37:11the history is not accurate.
0:37:11 > 0:37:16The toxic response to The Color Purple,
0:37:16 > 0:37:18mainly on the part of African-Americans,
0:37:18 > 0:37:22particularly African-American men, was extraordinary and unpredictable.
0:37:22 > 0:37:26The response was connected to the fact that deep down inside,
0:37:26 > 0:37:29black people knew that Alice had actually told the truth.
0:37:29 > 0:37:34She had written a novel that talks about the pain that black people
0:37:34 > 0:37:39exact upon each other, that you couldn't blame the white man,
0:37:39 > 0:37:41and that was a criticism, that there was no
0:37:41 > 0:37:45white person to blame for black behaviour,
0:37:45 > 0:37:47and so this riled people enormously.
0:37:49 > 0:37:52Why?!
0:37:52 > 0:37:55The movie has sparked heated debate in black communities across
0:37:55 > 0:37:59the nation. This was a meeting of New York area black journalists.
0:37:59 > 0:38:02The Color Purple is not an attack upon black men.
0:38:02 > 0:38:05It is a challenge to the entire black nation.
0:38:06 > 0:38:09It's one woman's story.
0:38:09 > 0:38:11It was not meant to be the history of every black man
0:38:11 > 0:38:15or woman in this country and I wish people would just shut up about it.
0:38:15 > 0:38:20Here is just one negative vote on your otherwise magnificently
0:38:20 > 0:38:23- received film, The Color Purple. - APPLAUSE
0:38:23 > 0:38:27The applause is coming from... Excuse me, just one second. Sir...
0:38:27 > 0:38:31'The violence was very long-term,'
0:38:31 > 0:38:34the verbal assaults, the verbal violence
0:38:34 > 0:38:41and, you know, people making threats and being really...
0:38:44 > 0:38:47..very...
0:38:47 > 0:38:50you know...sad.
0:38:50 > 0:38:53I think that this movie is a political manifesto.
0:38:53 > 0:38:54She's said that men are evil
0:38:54 > 0:38:58and, in the New York Times Magazine section, especially black men.
0:38:58 > 0:39:01She has said that lesbianism is wonderful.
0:39:01 > 0:39:04That's right, there's never been any...
0:39:04 > 0:39:07any same-sex relationships before in the world.
0:39:07 > 0:39:11Give me a break, please, please!
0:39:11 > 0:39:14All over the planet, you know, it's like a joke, you know.
0:39:14 > 0:39:16So if you see it again, what's, what's...
0:39:16 > 0:39:18I don't know what the big deal is, you know?
0:39:18 > 0:39:25Until then, there wasn't really a major novel which included
0:39:25 > 0:39:30the romantic and sexual love between two women as a nat...
0:39:30 > 0:39:32part of the natural order of things.
0:39:32 > 0:39:33Phew!
0:39:33 > 0:39:40This song I'm about to sing is called Miss Celie The Blues.
0:39:43 > 0:39:47When I was thinking about Celie's healing,
0:39:47 > 0:39:51I looked around at all the men that she could have had
0:39:51 > 0:39:55a relationship with and, honestly, there was not one that would
0:39:55 > 0:40:00have been a healing relationship for her, because they couldn't see her.
0:40:00 > 0:40:05All of those incredibly beautiful qualities that she had,
0:40:05 > 0:40:10not a man that I could see in the story could affirm.
0:40:10 > 0:40:15It would have just been absurd, you wouldn't have believed it.
0:40:18 > 0:40:23'Shug, on the other hand, could see these qualities and affirm them
0:40:23 > 0:40:26'and care about Celie,'
0:40:26 > 0:40:30so it was very natural that that is how it would happen.
0:40:30 > 0:40:33If you literally look at the film, it's really truly
0:40:33 > 0:40:35a film about liberation.
0:40:35 > 0:40:40The whole idea that Celie's liberation and, vice versa,
0:40:40 > 0:40:44Mr's liberation are intrinsically connected.
0:40:46 > 0:40:49You know, that's the beauty of the film.
0:40:49 > 0:40:52It was both a blessing and a curse that it was such
0:40:52 > 0:40:56an extraordinary novel, but then it also probably produced
0:40:56 > 0:41:01the biggest amount of trauma in Alice's adult life.
0:41:01 > 0:41:03It was really quite painful,
0:41:03 > 0:41:06especially the first five years or so,
0:41:06 > 0:41:09because I didn't have any defenders.
0:41:09 > 0:41:14It took many women and men a long time to find their voices
0:41:14 > 0:41:18and to say, "Well, you know, this happened to me,
0:41:18 > 0:41:22or, "I know this happened," or, "Look at the neighbourhood," or whatever.
0:41:22 > 0:41:27And I was especially saddened because my partner was deeply
0:41:27 > 0:41:31conflicted about just how to speak on this issue.
0:41:36 > 0:41:40I suffered, but at the same time I started a publishing company,
0:41:40 > 0:41:44Wild Trees Press, and I started publishing other writers
0:41:44 > 0:41:46and that was quite wonderful.
0:41:46 > 0:41:48I did a lot of other things
0:41:48 > 0:41:52and I wrote, you know, The Temple Of My Familiar, which was such an
0:41:52 > 0:41:55amazing experience that, actually, it was like
0:41:55 > 0:41:57climbing into a whole other universe
0:41:57 > 0:42:02and closing the door behind me. It just lifted me above so much
0:42:02 > 0:42:07of the problem of the criticism and the anger and the hostility.
0:42:07 > 0:42:10While people were tearing me to bits in town hall meetings
0:42:10 > 0:42:18and things, I was in this entirely other realm, which was so splendid.
0:42:32 > 0:42:36Alice has written about an early incident that has been
0:42:36 > 0:42:38critical to her life.
0:42:38 > 0:42:39At the age of eight,
0:42:39 > 0:42:44her brother playing cowboys and Indians
0:42:44 > 0:42:47took aim at her and shot.
0:42:47 > 0:42:48She was blinded.
0:42:49 > 0:42:52I was the Indian because, as a girl, I didn't get a gun
0:42:52 > 0:42:56and he was shooting at me but he hit me in the eye.
0:42:59 > 0:43:02"There's a tree growing from underneath the porch that
0:43:02 > 0:43:05"climbs past the railing to the roof.
0:43:05 > 0:43:08"I watch as its trunk, its branches
0:43:08 > 0:43:14"and then its leaves are blotted out by the rising blood.
0:43:15 > 0:43:18"It is the last thing my right eye sees."
0:43:20 > 0:43:22There was a lot of scar tissue
0:43:22 > 0:43:26and that wasn't removed from the time I was eight until I was 14.
0:43:26 > 0:43:29And at school, there was a great deal of taunting.
0:43:31 > 0:43:33The greatest comfort was from nature.
0:43:35 > 0:43:40The foundation for that, fortunately, was laid already by my mother.
0:43:40 > 0:43:46Her faith in nature, in its ability to regenerate and to give
0:43:46 > 0:43:51and to be for ever interesting and for ever alive,
0:43:51 > 0:43:55was something that I must have imbibed with her milk.
0:43:56 > 0:44:00And we lived always in nature, we never lived anywhere but
0:44:00 > 0:44:05way, way, way in the country, where trees were much more familiar to us
0:44:05 > 0:44:06than people.
0:44:11 > 0:44:15"In search of our mother's gardens,
0:44:15 > 0:44:18"honouring the creativity of the black woman."
0:44:20 > 0:44:24"I notice that it is only when my mother was working in the flowers
0:44:24 > 0:44:28"that she is radiant, almost to the point of being invisible,
0:44:28 > 0:44:31"except as creator, hand and eye."
0:44:32 > 0:44:36"She is involved with something her soul must have.
0:44:36 > 0:44:37"She is ordering the universe
0:44:37 > 0:44:40"and the image of a personal concept of beauty."
0:44:43 > 0:44:45"Because of her creativity with her flowers,
0:44:45 > 0:44:52"even my memories of poverty are seen through a screen of blooms."
0:44:52 > 0:44:54In In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens,
0:44:54 > 0:44:57she's really talking about black women's effort to make
0:44:57 > 0:45:02beauty in a world that denied that they had anything to do with beauty,
0:45:02 > 0:45:05and she talked about the beauty of her mother's gardens.
0:45:05 > 0:45:09It's a place, as I think somebody profoundly said once,
0:45:09 > 0:45:11"No tree ever called me nigger."
0:45:11 > 0:45:14That book could be re-titled The Lost Lives Of Black Women.
0:45:14 > 0:45:16You know, the millions of black women
0:45:16 > 0:45:21who never ever got to be and do what they fully wanted to do.
0:45:23 > 0:45:26"What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist
0:45:26 > 0:45:31"in her grandmother's time? In our great-grandmother's day?
0:45:31 > 0:45:35"It is a question with an answer cruel enough to stop the blood."
0:45:38 > 0:45:42When she read that, she opened up the memory slots to
0:45:42 > 0:45:48a lot of women to go back and research and remember and re-imagine
0:45:48 > 0:45:53and recall and celebrate and say simply, "Hey, look at those women."
0:45:59 > 0:46:03I think that is very clear from Faulkner forward that there
0:46:03 > 0:46:06is a genre of Southern literature to which I would say
0:46:06 > 0:46:08Alice Walker absolutely belongs.
0:46:08 > 0:46:10But few of those novels I think took
0:46:10 > 0:46:14black women as the main characters of the story.
0:46:14 > 0:46:17She certainly has done much to centre black women, especially
0:46:17 > 0:46:21in the contemporary period, Southern voices and Southern stories.
0:46:29 > 0:46:35It's been very exciting to see Alice's success.
0:46:37 > 0:46:41And the fact this farm girl from this little town in Georgia
0:46:41 > 0:46:46should now have her work published and her poems published,
0:46:46 > 0:46:48her essays published and her novels published,
0:46:48 > 0:46:50and have one of her novels win
0:46:50 > 0:46:53the Pulitzer Prize and The National Book Award.
0:46:57 > 0:47:02Through this climb to fame you might say, she never lost an ounce
0:47:02 > 0:47:05of her social consciousness,
0:47:05 > 0:47:08her political integrity, her militancy.
0:47:08 > 0:47:11Alice Walker is a literary force to be reckoned with.
0:47:11 > 0:47:14Her latest novel, Possessing The Secret Of Joy, dealt with the
0:47:14 > 0:47:18difficult subject of female genital mutilation as a rite of passage.
0:47:18 > 0:47:22Tell me what it is about this that so grabbed you?
0:47:22 > 0:47:26I think it's because of the screaming of children, of little children
0:47:26 > 0:47:29and the feeling I have that the pain that we inflict on children
0:47:29 > 0:47:33is the pain that we later endure as a society wherever we are.
0:47:33 > 0:47:36Possessing The Secret Of Joy and specifically talking about
0:47:36 > 0:47:40female genital mutilation or female circumcision as a practice that
0:47:40 > 0:47:42shut down women's sexuality -
0:47:42 > 0:47:45it just like busted the room open, right?
0:47:45 > 0:47:47So even for people who disagree, or who agreed with her,
0:47:47 > 0:47:50or who were grateful for her, or who were offended by what she did,
0:47:50 > 0:47:52there was a way that something that had been
0:47:52 > 0:47:56so small was now like all over the place.
0:47:56 > 0:48:01It was Alice Walker's fame after The Color Purple that allowed her
0:48:01 > 0:48:05to really bring that issue to many, many people for whom...that they
0:48:05 > 0:48:08would have no other access to really thinking about that.
0:48:10 > 0:48:14This was one of the first books by an African-American woman
0:48:14 > 0:48:17that wasn't looking at Africa
0:48:17 > 0:48:19through a lens of nostalgia
0:48:19 > 0:48:23and that was deeply criticising the sexism
0:48:23 > 0:48:26and really not letting Africans off the hook.
0:48:26 > 0:48:28They went after her for that.
0:48:30 > 0:48:31What is our responsibility?
0:48:31 > 0:48:33Do we have a responsibility to stop the torture
0:48:33 > 0:48:37of children we say we love or not? I mean, do we love African children?
0:48:37 > 0:48:39Are we like the midwife who said that
0:48:39 > 0:48:43when she's cutting the child and the child screams, she doesn't hear it?
0:48:43 > 0:48:46You know, I mean, are we expected to be deaf?
0:48:52 > 0:48:55They were telling her, "You cannot write about this."
0:48:55 > 0:48:59Now, they hadn't written about it in any meaningful way.
0:48:59 > 0:49:01They hadn't exposed it in any meaningful way.
0:49:01 > 0:49:05But yet she has the heart to get out there and really
0:49:05 > 0:49:09write about this and then they're telling her, "Shut up! Shut up!"
0:49:09 > 0:49:12You know what I mean? "We're the ones who should talk about this."
0:49:12 > 0:49:14And I totally disagree with that.
0:49:16 > 0:49:20People ask me, "Why are you putting yourself on the firing line?"
0:49:20 > 0:49:23And to me it's just on the line of life.
0:49:23 > 0:49:28It is something in me that just says you cannot let certain
0:49:28 > 0:49:33things happen, certain people suffer without adding to the conversation.
0:49:34 > 0:49:39And if you need to be there standing with the people, then go.
0:49:39 > 0:49:42It's just a very natural part of who I am.
0:49:52 > 0:49:53I need exactly what I have here.
0:49:55 > 0:50:02I need space and quiet and peace and trees and grass and water...
0:50:03 > 0:50:08..silence, the occasional visitor.
0:50:10 > 0:50:14I love cuddling, so it's very nice to have a sweetheart.
0:50:14 > 0:50:16I love being able to send her or him home
0:50:16 > 0:50:19when you know they need to go home.
0:50:22 > 0:50:25"I have learned not to worry about love
0:50:25 > 0:50:29"but to honour its coming with all my heart.
0:50:29 > 0:50:34"To examine the dark histories of the blood with headless heed and swirl.
0:50:34 > 0:50:39"To know the rush of feeling, swift and flowing as water.
0:50:39 > 0:50:45"The new face I turn up to you, no-one else on earth has ever seen."
0:50:47 > 0:50:50Well, I love women and I thought that
0:50:50 > 0:50:54if I fell in love with someone or if I felt attracted to someone,
0:50:54 > 0:50:58that as a curious person, someone whose curiosity is very strong,
0:50:58 > 0:51:02I would, of course, relate to them, you know, and I would be with them.
0:51:02 > 0:51:09So when that happened, it happened and I went off into adventures
0:51:09 > 0:51:13with women and loves with women and good times with women
0:51:13 > 0:51:18and growth with women and it was all marvellous, even the heartache.
0:51:21 > 0:51:24When I was in a relationship with Tracy Chapman,
0:51:24 > 0:51:27I felt no pressure from anybody.
0:51:27 > 0:51:32I was very much involved in my relationship with her.
0:51:32 > 0:51:35And the same was true with my relationship with Jean Weisinger
0:51:35 > 0:51:39and Zelie Duvauchelle, whom I adored, you know, while we were together.
0:51:45 > 0:51:49The fact that Alice Walker and Tracy Chapman were able to be open
0:51:49 > 0:51:51in the way that they were, to be photographed together,
0:51:51 > 0:51:57have a certain kind of national visibility, did a lot to diversify
0:51:57 > 0:52:01the picture of what a, quote unquote, "lesbian couple" could be.
0:52:01 > 0:52:04I loved seeing her with Tracy Chapman,
0:52:04 > 0:52:06but she has her own life
0:52:06 > 0:52:11and seeing her with someone else or a man or whatever,
0:52:11 > 0:52:18means to me that she has figured out a way to be happy in her life.
0:52:18 > 0:52:22She keeps coming out of the door with someone on her arm
0:52:22 > 0:52:26and that's fabulous, and not apologising.
0:52:26 > 0:52:30How can you be in one place your whole time?
0:52:30 > 0:52:33I... For me that doesn't work.
0:52:41 > 0:52:46The next visitor is Alice Walker. We all know about her,
0:52:46 > 0:52:49but now Alice's strong voice fighting against racism, sexism
0:52:49 > 0:52:52and human rights issues ring loud and clear.
0:52:52 > 0:52:55Alice, I salute your wisdom,
0:52:55 > 0:52:58strength and persistence. We need you.
0:52:58 > 0:53:00APPLAUSE
0:53:03 > 0:53:09She has a really profound sensitivity to human misery and injustice
0:53:09 > 0:53:12that she then feels compelled to speak about
0:53:12 > 0:53:14and write about and march about.
0:53:18 > 0:53:24You go in the book from Rwanda to Eastern Congo,
0:53:24 > 0:53:28- to Palestine, Israel.- Um-hm. - It was your first trip?
0:53:28 > 0:53:29To Palestine, yes.
0:53:30 > 0:53:34It's easy to make the connection between the freedom rights
0:53:34 > 0:53:37of 50 years ago to the South that helped to
0:53:37 > 0:53:38bring down apartheid USA,
0:53:38 > 0:53:42and what is happening there in Palestine
0:53:42 > 0:53:45with the wall and with the abuse of the Palestinian people,
0:53:45 > 0:53:49it's very similar. I mean, it's more intense in Palestine.
0:53:49 > 0:53:53My name is Alice Walker and I am with the US boat to Gaza.
0:53:53 > 0:53:58This is a fine tradition of going to people who need us
0:53:58 > 0:54:00wherever they exist on the planet.
0:54:00 > 0:54:03This is our responsibility.
0:54:03 > 0:54:05She has never decided that she's going to take the easy route
0:54:05 > 0:54:07and just not get on a flotilla
0:54:07 > 0:54:11to Palestine, right? You know, because it would be easier
0:54:11 > 0:54:14for there not to be her name recognition there.
0:54:14 > 0:54:16She's not trying to make it easier for anyone else.
0:54:16 > 0:54:19She also doesn't make it easier for herself.
0:54:19 > 0:54:27Well, I think Alice is the quintessential writer, activist,
0:54:27 > 0:54:33and all of Alice's writings urge us to think differently and to think
0:54:33 > 0:54:39critically often about those things we most take for granted.
0:54:39 > 0:54:42I think that is what can change the world.
0:54:42 > 0:54:46That's the beauty of Alice,
0:54:46 > 0:54:49is that she's not only an absolutely extraordinary writer,
0:54:49 > 0:54:52it's a woman that certainly is right there
0:54:52 > 0:54:55connected to every single movement that
0:54:55 > 0:54:58happened over the last 40 years.
0:54:58 > 0:55:01You can take every single great writer there is,
0:55:01 > 0:55:05comes out of some movement and pushing forward and pushing
0:55:05 > 0:55:09the envelope forward, and their writing is a manifestation to that.
0:55:09 > 0:55:12Their work as an artist is a manifestation to that.
0:55:12 > 0:55:15Who they would have been had they not been a part of the movement,
0:55:15 > 0:55:16we don't know.
0:55:16 > 0:55:22Well, I think the black presence that Alice wrote about has brought
0:55:22 > 0:55:28African-Americans into the vision of the country.
0:55:28 > 0:55:33Brought them in without stereotypes or without romanticising,
0:55:33 > 0:55:38brought African-Americans into the sensibility of Americans
0:55:38 > 0:55:40as full human beings.
0:55:40 > 0:55:44And doing that is an enormous contribution to
0:55:44 > 0:55:50understanding between the whites and blacks.
0:55:50 > 0:55:54It's through her work that I know her. That's what makes
0:55:54 > 0:55:59her more than just a rebel or a revolutionary, she's an artist.
0:56:01 > 0:56:03Dickens railed against child labour,
0:56:03 > 0:56:05that's not the issue so much anymore,
0:56:05 > 0:56:09but the books are still valid, the books are still vital
0:56:09 > 0:56:15and I think after many of the issues that Alice Walker's written about
0:56:15 > 0:56:18are hopefully addressed by society in coming years.
0:56:18 > 0:56:23The work still has a beauty and a lyricism that will resonate
0:56:23 > 0:56:26with people for... for I think centuries to come.
0:56:42 > 0:56:46I left formal religion when I was 13 in favour of the forest.
0:56:48 > 0:56:54I would spend Sunday revelling in the glory of nature, you know,
0:56:54 > 0:56:59the trees and the flowers and the sun and the wind and the rain storms.
0:57:04 > 0:57:07You know, this is the only heaven I care for.
0:57:07 > 0:57:09I mean, if there's another one, you know, go,
0:57:09 > 0:57:11but just leave me here.
0:58:16 > 0:58:18Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd