Gathering Blossoms Under Fire

'These journals are a revelation, a road map and a gift to us all' TAYARI JONES, author of An American Marriage

From the acclaimed author Alice Walker - winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize - comes an unprecedented compilation of four decades' worth of journals that draw an intimate portrait of her development as an artist, intellectual and human rights activist.

In Gathering Blossoms Under Fire, Walker offers a passionate, intimate record of her intellectual, artistic and political development. She also intimately explores - in real time - her thoughts and feelings 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 writes about an astonishing array of events: marching in Mississippi with other foot soldiers of the civil rights movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., or 'the King' as she called him; her marriage to a Jewish lawyer, partly to defy laws that barred interracial marriage in the 1960s South; an early miscarriage; the birth of her daughter; 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 Pulitzer Prize; being admired and maligned, in sometimes equal measure, for her work and her activism; burying her mother; and her estrangement from her own daughter. The personal and the political are layered and intertwined in the revealing narrative that emerges from Walker's journals.

“One of the most haunting books you could ever wish to read ... it is stunning - moving, exciting, and wonderfulTHE COLOR PURPLE is a lush celebration of all that it means to be female, to be a black female and like the best of celebrations, it is an honest one . . . combative, relentless and redemptive”

One of the most haunting books you could ever wish to read ... it is stunning - moving, exciting, and wonderful

THE COLOR PURPLE is a lush celebration of all that it means to be female, to be a black female and like the best of celebrations, it is an honest one . . . combative, relentless and redemptive

ALICE WALKER, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, is a canonical figure in American letters. She is the author of The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful, The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart and many other works of fiction, poetry and nonfiction. Her writings have been translated into more than two dozen languages, and more than fifteen million copies of her books have been sold worldwide.

VALERIE BOYD is author of the critically acclaimed biography Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston, winner of the Southern Book Award and the American Library Association's Notable Book Award. She is founder and director of the MFA Program in Narrative Nonfiction and the Charlayne Hunter-Gault professor of journalism at the University of Georgia. She is editor-at-large at the University of Georgia Press and senior consulting editor for The Bitter Southerner.

'These journals are a revelation, a road map and a gift to us all' TAYARI JONES, author of An American Marriage From the acclaimed author Alice Walker - winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize - comes an unprecedented compilation of four decades' worth of journals that draw an intimate portrait of her development as an artist, intellectual and human rights activist. In Gathering Blossoms Under Fire , Walker offers a passionate, intimate record of her intellectual, artistic and political development. She also intimately explores - in real time - her thoughts and feelings 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 writes about an astonishing array of events: marching in Mississippi with other foot soldiers of the civil rights movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., or 'the King' as she called him; her marriage to a Jewish lawyer, partly to defy laws that barred interracial marriage in the 1960s South; an early miscarriage; the birth of her daughter; 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 Pulitzer Prize; being admired and maligned, in sometimes equal measure, for her work and her activism; burying her mother; and her estrangement from her own daughter. The personal and the political are layered and intertwined in the revealing narrative that emerges from Walker's journals.

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