Alice Walker

"Since the publication of The Color Purple in 1983, Alice Walker has gained a reputation as one of the most popular and controversial writers in the African American literary tradition. In this, the first book-length study of her prose to appear in Britain, Maria Lauret explains Walker's project as a womanist writer and as a cultural and political activist who increasingly styles herself as a visionary for the new age." "Why is it, Lauret asks, that Alice Walker's critics have so often either dismissed or celebrated Walker's work? What is it in Walker's 'voice' that lends itself to adulation as easily as it provokes ridicule? And how does Alice Walker's autobiographical writing seem to fuel this controversy? These questions are answered with reference to Walker's interest in the work of psychoanalyst Carl Jung, her concern with ecology and spirituality and with Native American philosophies of the life cycle."--BOOK JACKET.