
Gathering Blossoms Under Fire
The Journals of Alice Walker
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $26.24
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Aunjanue Ellis
-
Alice Walker
-
Janina Edwards
About this listen
From National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Alice Walker and edited by critic and writer Valerie Boyd, comes an unprecedented compilation of Walker’s fifty years of journals drawing an intimate portrait of her development over five decades as an artist, human rights and women’s activist, and intellectual.
For the first time, the edited journals of Alice Walker are gathered together to reflect the complex, passionate, talented, and acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winner of The Color Purple. She intimately explores her thoughts and feeling as a woman, a writer, an African American, a wife, a daughter, a mother, a lover, a sister, a friend, a citizen of the world.
In an unvarnished and singular voice, she explores an astonishing array of events: marching in Mississippi with other foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr.; her marriage to a Jewish lawyer, defying laws that barred interracial marriage in the 1960s South; an early miscarriage; writing her first novel; the trials and triumphs of the Women’s Movement; erotic encounters and enduring relationships; the ancestral visits that led her to write The Color Purple; winning the Pulizter Prize; being admired and maligned, sometimes in equal measure, for her work and her activism; and burying her mother. A powerful blend of Walker’s personal life with political events, this “revelation, a road map, and a gift to us all” (Tayari Jones, New York Times bestselling author of An American Marriage) offers rare insight into a literary legend.
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens
- Womanist Prose
- By: Alice Walker
- Narrated by: Lynnette R. Freeman
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally published forty years ago, Alice Walker’s first collection of nonfiction is a dazzling compendium that remains both timely and relevant. In these thirty-six essays, Walker contemplates her own work and that of other writers, considers the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s, and writes vividly and courageously about a scarring childhood injury.
By: Alice Walker
-
My Life as My Self
- An Intimate Conversation
- By: Alice Walker
- Narrated by: Alice Walker
- Length: 1 hr and 25 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In My Life as My Self, Alice Walker takes you into her private world and summons the powerful spirits and events that have shaped her life: how she learned to fight oppression through her creativity; her reconnection to ancestral roots and the natural world; and her emergence as a courageous artist, recognized for both her brilliance and her compassion.
-
-
revealing. honest. Loving. it's her truth.
- By shura on 04-08-16
By: Alice Walker
-
Now is the Time to Open Your Heart
- A Novel
- By: Alice Walker
- Narrated by: Alfre Woodard
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Food for the intellect, heart, and soul
- By sweet_elizabeth on 02-12-09
By: Alice Walker
-
The Temple of My Familiar
- A Novel
- By: Alice Walker
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Celie and Shug from The Color Purple subtly shadow the lives of the dozens of astonishing characters in The Temple of My Familiar, all of whom are dealing in some way with the legacy of the African experience in America. From recent African immigrants to a woman who grew up in the mixed-race rainforest communities of South America to Celie’s own granddaughter living in modern-day San Francisco, they must come to terms with the brutal stories of their ancestors in order to confront their own troubled lives.
-
-
Hard to connect with
- By JZ Girl on 02-22-24
By: Alice Walker
-
Looking for Lorraine
- The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry
- By: Imani Perry
- Narrated by: LisaGay Hamilton
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated to one work—until now.
-
-
Radiant
- By Rose Brookins on 03-20-19
By: Imani Perry
-
The Color Purple
- By: Alice Walker
- Narrated by: Samira Wiley
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is left behind without her best friend and confidante, married off to an older suitor, and sentenced to a life alone with a harsh and brutal husband. In an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear, Celie begins writing letters directly to God.
-
-
Wow!
- By elizabeth h correa on 05-19-20
By: Alice Walker
-
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens
- Womanist Prose
- By: Alice Walker
- Narrated by: Lynnette R. Freeman
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally published forty years ago, Alice Walker’s first collection of nonfiction is a dazzling compendium that remains both timely and relevant. In these thirty-six essays, Walker contemplates her own work and that of other writers, considers the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s, and writes vividly and courageously about a scarring childhood injury.
By: Alice Walker
-
My Life as My Self
- An Intimate Conversation
- By: Alice Walker
- Narrated by: Alice Walker
- Length: 1 hr and 25 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In My Life as My Self, Alice Walker takes you into her private world and summons the powerful spirits and events that have shaped her life: how she learned to fight oppression through her creativity; her reconnection to ancestral roots and the natural world; and her emergence as a courageous artist, recognized for both her brilliance and her compassion.
-
-
revealing. honest. Loving. it's her truth.
- By shura on 04-08-16
By: Alice Walker
-
Now is the Time to Open Your Heart
- A Novel
- By: Alice Walker
- Narrated by: Alfre Woodard
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Food for the intellect, heart, and soul
- By sweet_elizabeth on 02-12-09
By: Alice Walker
-
The Temple of My Familiar
- A Novel
- By: Alice Walker
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Celie and Shug from The Color Purple subtly shadow the lives of the dozens of astonishing characters in The Temple of My Familiar, all of whom are dealing in some way with the legacy of the African experience in America. From recent African immigrants to a woman who grew up in the mixed-race rainforest communities of South America to Celie’s own granddaughter living in modern-day San Francisco, they must come to terms with the brutal stories of their ancestors in order to confront their own troubled lives.
-
-
Hard to connect with
- By JZ Girl on 02-22-24
By: Alice Walker
-
Looking for Lorraine
- The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry
- By: Imani Perry
- Narrated by: LisaGay Hamilton
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated to one work—until now.
-
-
Radiant
- By Rose Brookins on 03-20-19
By: Imani Perry
-
The Color Purple
- By: Alice Walker
- Narrated by: Samira Wiley
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is left behind without her best friend and confidante, married off to an older suitor, and sentenced to a life alone with a harsh and brutal husband. In an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear, Celie begins writing letters directly to God.
-
-
Wow!
- By elizabeth h correa on 05-19-20
By: Alice Walker
I enjoyed this tremendously.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Lovely life review
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Priceless
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
educational, raw and deliberate
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
mesmerizing!!!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
So good! Might listen again!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Candid and beautifully written notes on her life
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A must-read for any creative artist!!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
First Journal I read. Was surprised how much it revealed. An enthralling read!
Truly Enjoyed It!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Life Altering
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.