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Abstract
Alice Malsenior Walker is born on February 9, 1944 as the eighth child of Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Tallulah Grant Walker. Growing up in a sharecropper family in Eatonton, Georgia, Walker experiences first-hand the southern atmosphere in which the “black vernacular [is] prominent and the stamp of slavery and oppression [are] still present”and which will shape many of her future works: When she is eight years old, Walker accidentally gets shot in the eye by one of her brothers playing with his BB gun. The incident leaves her blind in her right eye and turns the young Alice into a timid and reclusive child. Yet, this solitary attitude leads her “really to see people and things, really to notice relationships and to learn to be patient enough to care about how they turned out” (Walker, 1990: 244). It brings her to “read stories and beg[i]n to write poems.” (Walker, 1990: 245). Alice Walker focused on versatile themes in her novels.