Alice Walker on activism

White, Evelyn C

hat with the former high school sweetheart of Alice Walker and he'll tell you that the famed author of a new book on activism has always trafficked in "love and trouble."

"I was driving Alice, myself and another classmate to our summer jobs," says Atlanta realtor Porter Sanford III, recalling their teenage years in rural Georgia. "Alice started talking about how unfair it was that we had to walk to school while the white kids had a bus; about how they got paid more for doing the same work we did."

I said we just had to accept it and there was no use in complaining," Sanford continues. "Alice got so mad at me that she demanded to be let out of the car. And she dragged the other guy out with her. It must have been five or six miles, but she walked the rest of the way to work. She was always real serious about her issues."

Reminded of the incident today, Walker, 53, bursts into gales of laughter. "I was in character," she says "That kind of behavior was not at all unusual for me." "Even though we disagreed and fought over a lot of things, I always felt that Porter admired my spunk," she says warmly. "He took pleasure in my rebellion."

The same might be said for the legions of Walker fans who, in recent months, have packed lecture halls nationwide to hear her discuss her 18th book, Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism. An inspiring and thought-provoking collection, Saved covers a wide range of topics that have engaged Walker over the years including: religion, motherhood, female genital mutilation, censorship, the Million Man March, Native American rights and the struggles for freedom in South Africa and Cuba.

"Wherever I've gone, people have been in the spirit," says Walker, triumphantly; about her book tour. "People are ready to get involved. And I think the youth and students on college campuses are especially encouraged when they see their elders committed and connected."

If there's anything that has become clear about Walker since her first book was published 29 years ago, it's that the Pulitzer Prize-winning author connects to people on her own terms. She is not bound by anyone's literary convention, custom or tradition. With regard to her commitment to addressing some of the most charged issues of the day, there's just no telling what Walker is likely to lay on us next.

For example, I would not be surprised if one day Alice Walker handed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas a Sweet Honey in the Rock album, to help, in her words, "bring him back to the community."

"I wonder what Clarence would do if you just locked him a room for five days with Bernice Johnson Reagon," says Walker, referring to the activist/leader of the acclaimed Washington, D.C.-based singing group. "He is one of those people who has turned against his roots and Sweet Honey struggles constantly to affirm and uplift us. I bet Bernice could bring Clarence around."

While some of her critics (in the aftermath of the controversy surrounding The Color Purple) have accused her of having a "deep hatred of Blacks," Walker says it is love that prompts her to embrace individuals and issues others have Shunned.

"I wrote about female genital mutilation hoping that one little girl born somewhere on the planet will not know its pain because of my work," Walker says about her efforts to end the practice. "And that in this one instance, at least, the pen will prove mightier than the circumciser's knife."

Mimi Ramsey, an Ethiopian woman who was herself mutilated as a child, underscores the impact of Walker's advocacy

"She is my hero," Ramsey says with tears welling in her eyes. "Genital mutilation had been a taboo subject for 1,000 years before Alice Walker broke the ice. She made it financially possible for me to return to Ethiopia and confront my mother about her role in mutilating me. It was a very healing experience for us both."

It is with an equally fierce dedication to challenging "cruelty done in my name," that Walker decries the longstanding U.S. embargo against Cuba. In Saved, readers will find several pieces detailing Walker's support of Fidel Castro, including a letter to President Clinton in which she lambastes a political policy that is, in her view, starving Cuban children.

"Would you want Chelsea to have no milk, to have one egg a day?" Walker queries Clinton in her letter. "You are a large man, how would you yourself survive?"

Gisela Arandia is an Afro-Cuban writer/researcher who attended one of the benefit readings (many held on college campuses) Walker gave to mark the publication of Saved. Overcome with emotion, she rose from a crowded audience in San Francisco, and in her native Spanish, praised Walker for being among a handful of influential Americans who have supported Cuba's efforts to feed, educate and shelter its citizenry.

"On behalf of the writers and artists in my country, I want to publicly thank Alice Walker for her solidarity and dedication to Cuba," Arandia said. "When we despair, we think of your work and it keeps us going."

Anything We Love Can Be Saved is dedicated to, among others, Mumia AbuJamal, the Philadelphia Black journalist currently on death row. University of Pittsburgh doctoral student, Cornell Womack, 30, helped to organize a reading that Walker, an ardent supporter of MuTrija, gave to boost his legal defense.

"We passed the hat and because of Alice's participation, we raised more than $6,000," Womack says. "It was the single largest one-night contribution in the history of the Mumia movement."

But more important, Womack explains, is the activist model Walker offers for students searching to find real meaning during their college years.

"Alice has left an important legacy for young people in that she remains a simple, unpretentious woman who's interested in adding her wisdom and commitment to the movement, not in being a star," Womack says. "Her alchemy is such that everybody involved with the Mumia event felt that we'd made a friend. After it was over, Alice came to my house and we all ate and partied. She danced so hard that by the end of the evening she was soaked with sweat."

Walker says it's the good times that follow the hard times, as surely as day follows night, that keep her in the struggle for justice.

"Activism centers you, empowers you and basically makes you feel completely in the stream of life," she says joyfully. "For me, it's not drudgery, but rather about being bonded. Part of my message is that I enjoy activism and other people can, too. As an activist, you can have a really good time."

San Francisco Bay area writer Evelyn C. White is editor of The Black Women's Health Book (Seal Press).

Copyright Black Collegian Oct 1997
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