Alice Walker

On May 11, 2005, ELAINE ALICE WALKER WOODRUFF, age 96, died at Glenside Nursing Home in Westfield, NJ following pneumonia. Elaine was born February 4, 1909, in Greenville, MI to Craig and Mildred Walker. She graduated from Greenville High School in 1927. She attended Johns Hopkins University's Summer Program after high school women were prohibited during the school year. She continued with her education at Central Michigan State College until her father died suddenly and her studies were cut short by the Depression.

On May 11, 2005, ELAINE ALICE WALKER WOODRUFF, age 96, died at Glenside Nursing Home in Westfield, NJ following pneumonia. Elaine was born February 4, 1909, in Greenville, MI to Craig and Mildred Walker. She graduated from Greenville High School in 1927. She attended Johns Hopkins University's Summer Program after high school women were prohibited during the school year. She continued with her education at Central Michigan State College until her father died suddenly and her studies were cut short by the Depression.

"Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism," by Alice Walker. Random House. 225 pages $23Here she comes again, as provocative and annoying and charming as ever: Alice Walker, the author of the American Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning ""The Color Purple."Her new collection of essays, speeches and poems is ostensibly a call to arms, challenging readers to probe the depths of their souls for the strength to stand for what is right.Guaranteed, you may not agree with the causes she advocates; you may think bizarre her frequent references to the ""Universe" she has come to respect as she has reinvented her religious convictions; you may blush at the prickly subjects she tackles (for me, she broke new ground with an essay comparing the breasts of Aunt Jemima and Marilyn Monroe)

The sharecroppers' daughter scrawled words into the dirt with a stick. Later, she graduated to a spiral notebook and, eventually, a laptop. Now, more than a half-century after she began, the writer Alice Walker has yet to stem the flow of words that document the world in its beauty and injustice. Walker, the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, came to the Enoch Pratt Free Library yesterday to accept the eighth annual Lifetime Literary Achievement Award.

Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart, by Alice Walker. Random House. 240 pages. $24.95. On the first day of her trip down the Colorado River, Kate Talkingtree -- the protagonist of Alice Walker's 10th novel -- asks: "Who would she be at the end of this journey?" The question sets the stage for a work touted by Random House as one woman's "spiritual adventure, quest for self and collision with love." Instead, with its disjointed narrative, distant characters and internal musings, Now is the Time reads more like psychic self-help.

POSSESSING THE SECRET OF JOY.Alice Walker.Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.270 pages. $19.95. Young Tashi, a tribal African girl, mourns for her sister, Dura. She can't understand why Dura died, or why speaking of her has become unacceptable.She knows her sister's death is connected to the ritual Dura had seemed so excited about. Before the ceremony, villagers showered Dura with beads, bracelets and brightly colored cloth.Joy surrounded Dura and the Olinka custom of transforming girls into women.

The sharecroppers' daughter scrawled words into the dirt with a stick. Later, she graduated to a spiral notebook and, eventually, a laptop. Now, more than a half-century after she began, the writer Alice Walker has yet to stem the flow of words that document the world in its beauty and injustice. Walker, the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, came to the Enoch Pratt Free Library yesterday to accept the eighth annual Lifetime Literary Achievement Award.

On March 18, 2003, MARGARET (Peggy) MARIE ECKERL, beloved wife of the late Edward J. Eckerl, devoted mother of Alice Walker and her husband Larry Sr., dear sister of Lorraine (nee Mitchell) Standiford and her husband Melvin, cherished grandmother of Larry Walker, Jr. & his wife Barbara, Charles Walker and his wife Kathleen and Andrea (nee Walker) Lutz and her husband Kris, loving great-grandmother of eight. She is also survived by many nieces and nephews. A Funeral Service will be held 11 AM Monday at the family owned Evans Chapel of Memories-Parkville.

Alice Walker(1944 -)Born in Eatonton, Ga., Walker moved to Mississippi after completing college and became active in the civil rights movement. She began teaching and writing short stories, essays and poems. Walker's works center on the experiences of American blacks and culture. She is considered one of the most important writers of the 20th century. Between 1984 and 1988, she co-founded Wild Trees Press and went on to write "The Temple of My Familiar" and "Possessing the Secret Joy."Walker is best known for her novel "The Color Purple," a depiction of a black woman's struggle for her sexual and racial freedom.

An interview with Levern McElveen of The Freedom Readers book club. What is the makeup of your group? We're all friends. There are two other men in addition to myself. We have about nine members right now ... The average age, I would say, is probably around 40. What book are members reading this month? We're reading Van Whitfield's Guys in Suits. It's a story of four male friends bonding, and the catch-all is one of the friends comes down with prostate cancer, and the book then goes off into how the other friends handle that.

Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart, by Alice Walker. Random House. 240 pages. $24.95. On the first day of her trip down the Colorado River, Kate Talkingtree -- the protagonist of Alice Walker's 10th novel -- asks: "Who would she be at the end of this journey?" The question sets the stage for a work touted by Random House as one woman's "spiritual adventure, quest for self and collision with love." Instead, with its disjointed narrative, distant characters and internal musings, Now is the Time reads more like psychic self-help.

On March 18, 2003, MARGARET (Peggy) MARIE ECKERL, beloved wife of the late Edward J. Eckerl, devoted mother of Alice Walker and her husband Larry Sr., dear sister of Lorraine (nee Mitchell) Standiford and her husband Melvin, cherished grandmother of Larry Walker, Jr. & his wife Barbara, Charles Walker and his wife Kathleen and Andrea (nee Walker) Lutz and her husband Kris, loving great-grandmother of eight. She is also survived by many nieces and nephews. A Funeral Service will be held 11 AM Monday at the family owned Evans Chapel of Memories-Parkville.

An interview with Levern McElveen of The Freedom Readers book club. What is the makeup of your group? We're all friends. There are two other men in addition to myself. We have about nine members right now ... The average age, I would say, is probably around 40. What book are members reading this month? We're reading Van Whitfield's Guys in Suits. It's a story of four male friends bonding, and the catch-all is one of the friends comes down with prostate cancer, and the book then goes off into how the other friends handle that.

Alice Walker(1944 -)Born in Eatonton, Ga., Walker moved to Mississippi after completing college and became active in the civil rights movement. She began teaching and writing short stories, essays and poems. Walker's works center on the experiences of American blacks and culture. She is considered one of the most important writers of the 20th century. Between 1984 and 1988, she co-founded Wild Trees Press and went on to write "The Temple of My Familiar" and "Possessing the Secret Joy."Walker is best known for her novel "The Color Purple," a depiction of a black woman's struggle for her sexual and racial freedom.

"Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism," by Alice Walker. Random House. 225 pages $23Here she comes again, as provocative and annoying and charming as ever: Alice Walker, the author of the American Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning ""The Color Purple."Her new collection of essays, speeches and poems is ostensibly a call to arms, challenging readers to probe the depths of their souls for the strength to stand for what is right.Guaranteed, you may not agree with the causes she advocates; you may think bizarre her frequent references to the ""Universe" she has come to respect as she has reinvented her religious convictions; you may blush at the prickly subjects she tackles (for me, she broke new ground with an essay comparing the breasts of Aunt Jemima and Marilyn Monroe)

Time was when a student didn't graduate from college without studying Plato's "Republic," Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Milton's "Paradise Lost." The texts were read lovingly with sharp attention to detail, to beauty, to allusion.That time is long past.Now, argues Yale University professor Harold Bloom, few students receive a bachelor's degree without reading the novels of Alice Walker. Shakespeare, if studied at all, is examined for evidence of class warfare; Plato is reviled as fascist and "Paradise Lost" as sexist.