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From the Archive: Alice Walker

Daniel Hautzinger
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and poet Alice Walker

The Great American Read returns to WTTW this fall. Explore the list and vote for your favorite book.

One thoroughly deserving entry on the list is Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel The Color Purple, which was made into an acclaimed film in 1985 starring Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah, and others. In 2013 Walker sat down with Chicago Tonight's Carol Marin to speak about two of her books – a collection of poetry and one of essays – the continuing importance of feminism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Cuban Revolution, her criticism of Barack Obama, and how writers should face their critics. "I go where my heart says I need to be," she says.