Pulitzer Prize Author Hails from Eatonton
Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Color Purple, Alice Walker, was born and raised in neighboring Putnam County near Eatonton. Her family members were sharecroppers and maids. She was the eighth child in the Walker family.
Growing up in the segregated South, she experienced racism and a culture of limiting educational opportunities for blacks and the poor of the community. Nevertheless, her mother enrolled her in the first grade at the age of four years old.
Her literary career began when she was only eight years old and began to piece together the stories that she heard from her grandfather and relatives, making them her own.
In 1952, Walker’s brother accidentally shot her in the eye with a BB gun resulting in blindness in one eye. Because her family did not own an automobile, it was a week before she was able to get medical attention and by then she was blind in that eye.
Scar tissue formed on the blinded eye and she said she began to see the world in a different way and the world also saw her in a different way. Despite people staring at her eye, she overcame her disability to succeed in school. Seeing the world differently, she was able to see relationships and people different than others.
Her mother was determined that Alice would have a college education and she worked as a maid to earn enough to pay her tuition to Spelman College where she excelled in her studies and was awarded a scholarship finishing her degree at Sarah Lawrence College, graduating in 1965.
Walker became an activist for human and civil rights after college and she continues to this day to champion the rights of all. Her many poems and books reflect her passionate feelings.
In 1982 her novel, The Color Purple was published. The novel was written in epistolary style mostly using letters written between the two sisters, Celie and Netti.
In the beginning, Celie who was forced into a loveless marriage wrote her letters to God trying desperately to understand the life she has to accept. Celie never gives up and continues to write her sister, Netti, even though she never receives any letters back or so she thought. Celie does not let her oppression keep her from being heard through her letters.
Stephen Spielberg directed the film version of The Color Purple. The film was nominated for 11 Oscars. Producers spent $15 million to make the movie and it earned nearly $100 million.
You can view the house where Alice Walker was raised. It is located at 621 Wards Chapel Road, Eatonton. Today, it is the Southern Manor Farm House General Store and is open Wednesday-Friday and Sunday from 1-5 p.m. and on Saturday from 9-5 p.m. There is a room in the store dedicated to Walker.
For more information go to www.southernmanorfarms.com. or call 706-473-0860.
