I was nervous. She was just waking up.
Overly grateful and armed with a list of questions I’d been curating for the better part of a month, I introduced myself to Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Alice Walker. I first asked the literary titan about what it meant to be the keynote speaker for the 30th annual Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities.
Awake and accommodating, she answered, “It’s a tradition... reminding her community what a blessing they had in her when she was here and writing. It’s just a great celebration of a beautiful life.”
My follow-up question, “What drew you to Zora?” was met with a question of her own:
“Have you done any of this research, Nikesha?” It was not the question, but the way she said my name, the higher inflection in her voice that made me imagine her raising her eyebrow at the phone receiver, that chastened me. She questioned whether I was prepared and suggested we put the conversation off until I was ready.
My nervousness turned into fear that she would hang up the phone in my face and I would have nothing to show for this interview. Thankfully, she didn’t hang up, and I managed to explain how I’d been consuming old interviews and videos of her on her current book tour for Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart.
Graciously, she allowed me to ask my question again, but I was at a loss for words. In a long pause and an awkward, but expectant silence, I abandoned my two pages of notes and fumbled for a coherent sentence that wouldn’t make her question my ability or hang up the phone. The only thing I could think of was, “What inspires you to keep going after you’ve had such a long literary career?”
“Life," she said, "is extremely interesting, fascinating, and beautiful.”
Walker paused between each of the adjectives she used to describe the miracle we’ve all been afforded; to breathe air on a planet perfect for sustaining our very being. Her own amazement at life itself is what fuels her writing.
Alice Walker has been writing longer than I’ve been alive. Her seminal novel, The Color Purple, from which the movie was adapted, both came out before I was born. My childhood was spent watching the movie on Sunday afternoons quoting the lines of Celie, Shug and Sofia, Sofia, Sofia. I’ve seen the play twice and read the novel more times than I can remember. In college I went on an Alice Walker bender, buying as many of her works as I could in an effort to consume her essence.
But reading her work and speaking with her are two very different things. I abandoned whatever notions I conceived about the kind of woman and writer she is and allowed her to tell me in her own words.
Alice Walker began writing poetry when she was eight or nine because it was something she could afford to do more than anything else. She believes life and the world we live in are magical and that her work is for the ancestors who came before her.
“I don’t work for anybody except ancestors. Period,” Walker said. She referenced an old gospel song, “A Charge to Keep I Have” and said it is how she views her work as a writer: as a responsibility to her ancestors, to do her best for them, and to never disappoint them.
Walker identifies as a "womanist," and speaks openly about the earth and the responsibilities she feels toward the planet. This love affair is captured when she describes the environments her characters inhabit. Descriptions of the southern United States or the lush landscapes of Africa are so poignantly written, you can’t help but see them in your mind.
It is this scenery and other such bucolic locales Walker told me keeps her entertained and distracted enough to write about the pain and trauma of the lived experience, and I asked, “What have been some of the hardest subjects for you to write about?”
With works tackling everything from domestic abuse to female genital mutilation, I expected a long and thoughtful answer about mining the lived experience to express the roots of pain. What I got was quite different.
“Life. Death,” she said. And then she laughed, full, rich and throaty, imbued with the grandmotherly wisdom that is embedded in her speaking voice.
She told me she meditates and loves dancing, especially to Stevie Wonder; her favorite song of his is “As.” She recently read Michelle Obama’s, Becoming, and Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend. As a writer she believes she and other artists are all “here to help people heal, to help people see, to help people understand something.”
She loves life — so much so she doesn’t look back on her own legacy. When I asked her how she thought later writers would describe her work and her voice as a canon, she answered — without hesitation — “I never think about it.”
To hear the great Alice Walker is not concerned about her literary canon is unnerving — and freeing. So, if adding to her own legacy doesn’t keep her going, what does?
“Life. It’s incredible,” she told me. When I responded by telling her “you sound mesmerized by life,” she didn’t agree with my assessment — but said, with joy and gratitude, “it’s a pretty amazing journey we’re on.”
I couldn’t agree more.
I didn’t ask Ms. Walker about The Color Purple, or what drew her to Zora Neale Hurston, or even about her latest collection of poems. However, of the questions I did ask in our early morning conversation marked by sleepiness (hers) and fear (my own), showed me something deeper about the woman behind her words.
Alice Walker's work is one of service: to the ancestors, to the planet, and to the people and things that inhabit it; to share its joys, its pains, its hypocrisies, and its testimonies.
And I am glad this has been her charge to keep.