Gathering Blossoms Under Fire

The Journals of Alice Walker

By: Alice Walker, Valerie Boyd - editor

Narrated by: Aunjanue Ellis, Walker, Janina Edwards

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.

Lovely life review

I literally want to hear it all again. Mrs.Walker has definitely lived and loved.

Priceless

I loved how her journals took me on a deep reflective journey through her life. With each story I softened, became more compassionate and more willing to look at myself with love and respect and more willing to see the importance of writing. Thank you Ms. Walker. I feel blessed.

I enjoyed this tremendously.

What an intimate window into a life. I’ve never experienced this in a book. To hear Alice Walker’s evolution through her own thoughts and words— wonderful! And the narration is excellent.

Her vulnerability

How wonderful to be welcomed into the personal world by of one of most beloved authors.

educational, raw and deliberate

Loved it for sure. Such detailed accounts of feelings, sights and deep thinking. This magnificent piece made me want to read and know Alice Walker even more.