"(1991)
Anything e Love Can be Saved: A riter's Activism, (alker 1997) is a collection of 33 speeches, letters and previously published pieces with the consistent theme of the political merging into the personal in her life. Michael Anderson, reviewing this book and mentioning a piece that alker said "remains unwritten," states that "Ms. alker's admirers can rejoice that her silence did not extend to book length." Pettis remarks that the essays in this collection suggest the far boundaries of alker's activities. Marveling at her broad range of activism, she states "hat this volume communicates with equal success is that alker's intellectual and personal activism exceeds public demonstrations." Powells.com reviews her book thus: Alice alker writes about her life as an activist, in a book rich in the belief that the world is saveable, if only we will act," and that she was "speaking from her heart on a wide range…...

mla

Works Cited

Anderson, Michael. "Books in Brief: Anything We Love Can Be Saved." New York Times May 25, 1997, natl. ed. E4.

Bradley, David. "Books: Novelist Alice Walker Telling the Black Woman's Story," New York Times January 8, 1984. natl. ed. E4

Fike, Matthew a. Jean Toomer and Okot p'Bitek in Alice Walker's "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens" - Critical Essay.

MELUS,   Fall-Winter, 2000 www.findarticles.com/p/search?tb=art&qt=%22Matthew+a.+Fike%22"  http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2278/is_2000_Fall-Winter "

..] I suffered and raged inside because of this." With her beauty destroyed, the now six-year-old Walker gave up hope that the world would still prove as open and bountiful as it had for her life up to that point, and her inner sense of worth and beauty crumbled away just as her exterior beauty was eroded away by the sudden entrance of the BB and the slow buildup of scar tissue. This created, of course, a literal change in perception that was mirrored by the author/narrators reduced perception of and engagement with the outside world. She keeps her head down in school and everywhere else, convinced that the world will reject her for her appearance just as she now rejects herself.
In a strange way, the external reality surrounding the author/narrator continues to mirror her perception of its appearance, and her outer beauty continues to match her inner beauty. A…...

Alice alker's 1983 publication In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: omanist Prose addresses the role of creativity in women's lives. Creativity is the essence of womanhood, and therefore a symbol like that of the titular mother's garden. "Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and respect for strength-in search of my mother's garden, I found my own."(alker 675). Imagery of gardens and life contrasts sharply with imagery of abuse and death, which alker acknowledges in Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. Both the suppression or repression of creativity, and the stimulation and expression of creativity, are critical components of women's lives.
Creativity is the means by which women of color have mitigated their oppression and subjugation. On page 357, alker states, "I went in search of the secret of what has fed that muzzled and often mutilated, but vibrant, creative spirit that the black woman has inherited, and that pops…...

mla

Work Cited

Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. Harcourt, 1983.

y simply concentrating on connecting with their African heritage many failed to understand that their parents and their ancestors who lived on the American continent in general created a culture of their own that entailed elements belonging both to the African continent and to the American one.
Most of the short story is about how Dee struggles to find her personal identity by turning to cultural values. While Dee is more concerned with displaying her cultural values and preserving them, Mama and Maggie actually live through their traditions directly. They do not need to pose in individuals obsessed with their background in order to actually understand it. Their ability to preserve thinking present in their ancestors compensates for their lack of knowledge and is more important than Dee's efforts to put across pretentious attitudes. It is not necessarily that these characters are unwilling to accept their African roots, as they…...

mla

Bibliography:

Cowart, David, "Heritage and Deracination in Walker's "Everyday Use." (Alice Walker)," Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 33, No. 2

This journal article deals with the idea of heritage as seen from several perspectives. Although Cowart provides readers with the feeling that Dee is wrong by thinking that her mother and sister are unable to acknowledge the importance of her past, he also supports this character by highlighting conditions in the U.S. during the period and how African-Americans were vulnerable to gaining an incomplete understanding of their past.

Harris, Dean A., "MULTICULTURALISM FROM THE MARGINS: NON-DOMINANT VO," (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1995)

Harris' book provides important information concerning African-Americans during the 1960s and 1970s. By focusing on how the Black Power movement was devoted to raising public awareness concerning the importance of cultural values Harris makes it possible for readers to learn more about how African-Americans understood their background. His text supports Walker's thinking by emphasizing how many individuals fail to comprehend the exact attitudes they needed to employ in order to experience best results while trying to connect with their background.

Alice Walker
The Image of the Quilt: Alice Walker's the Color Purple and "Everyday Use"

What makes us who we are? A large part of our current lives are derived from the lives of those who came before us. Our family traditions and heritages are an important part of ourselves. In Alice Walker's The Color Purple and "Everyday Use," cloth, quilts, and the act of sewing are highlighted as a way to bring together the diversity of a family to provide for a strong structural foundation for preserving family traditions, allowing any family to survive and thrive despite any wide number of obstacles.

It is clear that Walker uses patchwork quilts and the act of sewing itself as an obvious motif in her work The Color Purple. Celie finds individual success through sewing. Based on her skills, she is allowed to become financially independent, which is a huge deal based on the…...

mla

References

Fiske, Shanyn. "Piecing the Patchwork Self: A Reading of Walker's The Color Purple." Explicator. 66.3(2008): 150-153. Academic Search Premier. Web. 3 Dec 2012.

McKever-Floyd, Preston L. "Tell Nobody But God: The Theme of Transformation in The Color Purple." Cross Currents. 57.3(2007): 426-433. Academic Search Premier. Web. 3 Dec 2012.

Walker, Alice. "Everyday Use." American Literature Since the Civil War.

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 2006.

Mamma has always given Dee anything she wanted, and allowed Maggie to step back into the shadows.
Maggie has the knowledge of a promised and very scant dowry. Mama has promised her the quilts that have been handed down in the family and those which they had themselves made. The promise was genuine and meaningful as quilts are important to a new bride as they can protect and keep one warm. Yet, Dee assumes that whatever she asks for will be granted, so she requests the quilts from Mama, who refuses her, request and reasserts her promise to Maggie. The whole argument is directed by the stoicism of the mother, the surrender of the Maggie and the brutish manner in which Dee assumes the right to have the quilts, as she is enlightened and Maggie is not, and she will give them their proper place, while Maggie will likely simply…...

mla

Works Cited

Walker, Alice Everyday Use

Alice alker that her works demonstrate a creation of modern American Mythology. So much so that her thematic works of modern mythology, riddled with the feminine, not the feminist, have been given a special name, womanism. (Colton and alker 33-44) In the sense that her characters tell enduring stories about universal problems of the human condition, especially the condition of those subjugated by the majority, e.g. women and African-Americans. Yet it can also be argued that alker's thematic representation of character and universal human conflict is also a retelling of classic mythological themes. In alker's short story, Her Sweet Jerome, she represents a retelling of the story of Media.
In a very clear and basic outline of the story one can see the correlation between the fable of Media and the story within Her Sweet Jerome. Medea also uses the promise of wealth and a sacrificial gift of the Golden…...

mla

Works Cited

Bulfinch, Thomas. Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable; The Age of Chivalry; Legends of Charlemagne. New York: The Modern library, 1934.

Colton, Catherine A., and Alice Walker. "Chapter 4 Alice Walker's Womanist Magic: The Conjure Woman as Rhetor." Critical Essays on Alice Walker. Ed. Dieke, Ikenna. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. 33-43.

Dieke, Ikenna, ed. Critical Essays on Alice Walker. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.

Elsley, Judy. "Chapter 14 Nothing Can Be Sole or Whole That Has Not Been Rent:

Alice Walker writes about African-American movement. It has 4 sources.
Alice Walker is acknowledged as an undoubtedly important figure in African-American literature. Her work dealt with the issues of racism, sexism and mankind's ability to overcome all forms of oppression through active or passive struggle. She did this in the form of poetry, novels such as "The Color Purple," "The Third Life of Grange Copeland" and "Meridian" or essays like "In Search of Our Mother's Gardens." Her stories were often from the point-of-view of and portraying the situation of abused and oppressed Black women in America. That this gave a negative picture of Black males to some extent is true but as Walker said it best when defending objections to the cycle of black male violence depicted in [Taylor CA. 2001] "The Third Life of Grange Copeland" "I know many Brownfields, and it's a shame that I know so many.…...

mla

References

Author not available, Contemporary Black Biography. 1991. Profiles from the International Black Community, Gale.Volume 1,

Taylor CA. 2001. Critical Essays on Alice Walker.(Review) African-American Review.

Clark C. 2000. Alice Walker.(Brief Article) Black Issues Book Review

Muellero ME, 2003. Alice Walker. [online] Thomsan Gale [available at]  http://www.galegroup.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/walker_a.htm

Nobody's Darling," Alice Walker dramatizes the conflict between the comfort of conformity and the courage it takes to be different. The speaker offers advice to the reader, in a didactic tone but one that confers wisdom. "Be nobody's darling, be an outcast," means standing up for truth and justice even if it means martyrdom (1,2). The speaker refers to the "thousands perished / for brave hurt words / they said," (23-25). It is preferable to walk alone, and even die, than it is to remain silent in the midst of injustice.
Using second person point-of-view throughout the poem, the speaker is invisible and anonymous. The reader is to take her at her word as a person in a position of authority, one who has presumably witnessed the benefits of being the "outcast." Part of her rhetorical strategy is to engender trust through the use of ethos, pathos, and logos: the…...

African-American Literature -- Alice Walker
Women breaking the barriers in literature: Alice Walker, Pioneer of Womanism and astion of the African-American Culture (Literature)

African-American culture as American society characterizes it today contains significant elements that enrich the character of African-American society and communities. In the realm of arts, African-Americans have excelled, producing works of art that uniquely speaks for the African-American experience, but is universally crafted for people to appreciate and understand the history of one of the dominant societies in the United States at present. African-Americans excelled in the performing arts, music, visual arts, as well as literature, which has been developed with the emergence of Harlem Renaissance during the early 20th century. Alice Walker, following the great tradition of African-American literature, has been considered one of the women writers, particularly, African-American writers, who fought to 'break the barrier' that divides African-Americans from other races and women from men in a…...

mla

Bibliography

Abel, E. (1997). Female Subjects in Black and White: Race, Psychoanalysis, and Feminism. CA: University of California Press.

Bloom, H. (1994). Black American Women Fiction Writers. NY: Chelsea House Publishers.

McDowell, D. (1995). "The Changing Same": Black Women's Literature, Criticism, and Theory. Indiana: Indiana University Press.

"Womanism." Microsoft Encarta Reference Library 2002. Microsoft Inc.

" She wasn't an "old collie turned out to die," but some people apparently had pity on her and saw her that way. That is a good metaphor, "old collie," and alker also explains that she was "the color of poor gray Georgia earth, beaten by king cotton and the extreme weather."
alker is just as effective using similes (82): Her elbows were "wrinkled and thick, the skin ashen but durable, like the bark of old pines." She word an old "mildewed black dress" with missing buttons, and when people saw her, some "saw the age, the dotage," and others saw in her "cooks, chauffeurs, maids, mistresses, children denied or smothered in the deferential way she held her cheek to the side..."

All these descriptions are stereotypes that people have of an old black woman, and alker packs this story with descriptions of those stereotypes. The reader has a whole lot of…...

mla

Works Cited

Walker, Alice. In Love & Trouble. San Diego: Harvest/HBJ Book, 1973.

Flannery O'Connor's fiction, under the spell of the writer's occasional comments, has been unusually susceptible to interpretations based on Christian dogma. None of O'Connor's stories has been more energetically theologized than her most popular, "A Good Man Is Hard To Find." O'Connor flatly declared the story to be a parable of grace and redemption, and for the true believer there can be no further discussion. As James Mellard remarks, "O'Connor simply tells her readers -- either through narrative interventions or be extra-textual exhortations -- how they are to interpret her work" (625). And should not the writer know best what her story is about? A loaded question, to which the best answer may be DH Lawrence's advice: trust the art, but not the artist."
Paraphrase

Stephen Bandy states that while O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" has been interpreted as a profoundly Christian work, when it comes to judging…...

mla

Works Cited

Bandy, Stephen C. "One Of My Babies': The Misfit And The Grandmother." Studies

In Short Fiction, vol. 33, no. 1 (1996): 107-118. Print.

Hoel, Helga. "Personal Names and Heritage: Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use'." American

Studies in Scandinavia, vol. 31, no. 1 (1999): 34-42. Print.

The American Short Story Hearts of Gold
Henry L Golemba is of the opinion that the society’s perception of nobility could be somewhat skewed. According to the author, the unlikeliest of all – the unemployed cowboys, prostitutes, gold-seekers, as well as gamblers - have hearts of gold. As a matter of fact, Golemba is categorical that specific circumstances could prove the so called society’s outcasts nobler than some of those the society already deems noble. This is despite the fact that such persons are often times rejected by the society.
Most men in Roaring Camp (in The Luck of Roaring Camp by Bret Harte) could largely be perceived as reckless, tough, and ill-mannered. However, in reality, very few of them could fit this description. Despite their perceived incivility, these are persons who actually have a pleasant personality and intrinsic goodness. These are persons who, unexpectedly, possess hearts of gold.
We have a similar situation…...

mla

References

Crane, S. (2013). The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky. New York, NY: e-artnow.

Poe, E.A. (2008). The Cask of Amontillado. New York, NY: The Creative Company.

Roth, P. (2006). Goodbye, Columbus: And Five Short Stories. New York, NY: Vintage.

Preserving Family Traditions and Cultural Legacies: Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and Individual Identity
In Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use,” the conflict between a desire for personal fulfillment and the need to honor one’s tradition is dramatized in the conflict shown between two daughters, Maggie and Dee. Maggie has never had a desire to leave home and seems content to live with her mother. Mama is a woman who has grown up poor, tough, but also very deferential to white people, because of the profound societal injustices she has endured. “Who can even imagine me looking a strange white man in the eye? It seems to me I have talked to them always with one foot raised in flight, with my head fumed in whichever way is farthest from them” (Walker 1). In contrast, her other daughter Dee is brave, goes away to college, and seems to have a confidence her sister…...

Alice alker
There are different expressions and types of culture, and culture can mean different things to various people who are a part of the same culture. This truth is demonstrated poignantly in Alice alker's short story entitled "Everyday Things." In this tale, there is a generation and culture clash between the worldly aspirations and ambitions of Dee, and the normal, everyday ambitions of her mother and her sister Maggie. At the heart of the issue explored within this story is what the proper usage of culture actually is. For some people, culture is something that is a reminder of the past and which is not readily interacted with everyday. For other people, culture is simply a way of life and how individuals and collectives go about pursuing their lives. A close examination of "Everyday Use" reveals that this tale examines a generation clash within a family related to culture,…...

mla

Works Cited

Walker, Alice. "Everyday Use." Short Story Classics. 2006. Web.

http://home.roadrunner.com/~jhartzog/everydayuse.html

Selecting Essay Topics that Cover a Book

1. Character Analysis

Topic: The protagonist's struggle with identity and purpose in Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird."
Focus: Examine the protagonist's evolving self-awareness, the challenges they face, and how their journey shapes their character.

2. Theme Exploration

Topic: The theme of prejudice and its impact on society in Alice Walker's "The Color Purple."
Focus: Analyze how the novel portrays different forms of prejudice, its consequences, and the characters' responses to it.

3. Symbolism and Imagery

Topic: The use of symbolism and imagery to create atmosphere in Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights."
Focus: Discuss how specific symbols....

Research-Based Essay Musicals

"The Molecule Men: A Musical Tour of Chemistry" by Bob Martin and Tonya Pinkins: Explores the fascinating world of chemistry through captivating songs and energetic dance numbers.

"The Starry Night: A Musical Journey into Physics and Astronomy" by Janet Allard: Delves into the mysteries of physics and astronomy, presenting complex scientific concepts in an accessible and entertaining way.

"iHamlet: A Digital Drama" by Dane Karol: Combines Shakespeare's classic tragedy with elements of artificial intelligence and digital technology, exploring the timeless themes of revenge and mortality.

Persuasive Essay Musicals

"Suffs" by Shaina Taub: A powerful and moving musical that....

The Art of Captivating Titles

In the realm of good writing, a title is more than just a label; it is a captivating first impression that can entice readers to delve into the depths of your work. A truly memorable title has the power to resonate with an audience, spark curiosity, and set the tone for the journey that lies ahead. Crafting such a title requires a delicate balance of intrigue, brevity, and relevance to the content. Here are the key elements that contribute to the allure of a captivating title:

1. Enigmatic Allure

Titles that hint at a deeper meaning or....

1. When it comes to crafting empowering messages in literature, two short stories that stand out are The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Everyday Use by Alice Walker. Both authors effectively utilize various literary techniques to build up powerful messages that resonate with readers. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman tackles the themes of female oppression and the importance of self-expression, while Everyday Use explores the complexities of heritage and identity. By analyzing the ways in which these authors develop their empowering messages, we can gain valuable insights into how literature can inspire and empower individuals.

2. In The....