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![[The Same River Twice]]( ../images/thesamerivertwice.gif)
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"Anyone who is really alive in their own time will have to be a political writer. As we reveal different worlds to each other, we move us forward into being more compassionate people. Virginia Woolf said writing improves society and makes the writer a better person, too," says Alice Walker. For all the compassion in her life and work, Walker has never shied away from telling the world some things it might not want to hear.
![[Alice Walker Mug]]( ../images/alicewalkermug.gif)
For years she has decried the inhumane practice of female genital mutilation, a rite of passage in many countries. She has sided with Fidel Castro over the fate of Cuba. Her books have been banned and then restored to the shelves in public schools and libraries. She will not be silenced, she will not turn the other cheek. Walker's new memoir The Same River Twice is as brave as anything she's ever written.
Of the author's four novels, five books of poetry, two short story collections and numerous books of essays, the world knows and loves her best for The Color Purple, her 1982 novel about Celie, a young black woman struggling through pain and poverty to find dignity, love, and selfhood. It is a tale of healing which won Walker the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. The Same River Twice chronicles the process of adapting The Color Purple to film in 1984. Steven Spielberg directed it, Quincy Jones wrote the music, Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey starred. Walker hoped the film would be loving and true to her novel. She worried it might fall short. She hadn't expected the torrent of criticism the film unleashed.
"It was said that I hated men, black men in particular, that my work was injurious to black male and female relationships; that my ideas of equality and tolerance were harmful, even destructive to the black community," Walker writes. While critics hurled barbs at her, she suffered from Lyme disease, nursed her dying mother, and ended a long relationship with a partner. She wants the public to know of her hurt, subtitling her book Honoring the Difficult.
"I remember when I was little, my mother used to say the worst thing you could do is hurt someone's feelings," Walker says. "It's true. When you hurt someone's feelings, you really create a major transgression against the spirit. My heart felt waterlogged. My spirit lost its shine. My grief was kind enough to visit me only at night, in dreams; as I felt it wash over me, I didn't care that I might drown."
The author has articulated human suffering in her fiction and essays, but she has never allowed the public to come so close to her. Her daughter Rebecca questioned the wisdom of doing such a thing in print. Wouldn't it be better keep silent, to never let people know the depths of her pain? That isn't Walker's way. "Daughters always have their ideas. You're their mom, they think they can tell you what to do." The author laughs then turns serious.
"I wanted to show the world," she says. "It was something I needed to do. It kept staying in the back of my mind, the whole experience of making a film from what was a very private book. I learned so much and it needed to be expressed. For those who are interested in film and in creativity, per se, I hope it will be a resource."
While The Same River Twice serves as an meditation on the assets and limitations of film, it is more than that. Incorporating correspondence, Walker's rejected screenplay of her own novel, and journal entries from before, during and after the filming of The Color Purple, it is a bold and often angry book which manages to be both personal and political.
What sustained Walker during this dark time was her family, her friends, and her writing. "Storytelling is how we survive," she says. "When there's no food, the story feeds something, it feeds the spirit, the imagination. I can't imagine life without stories, stories from my parents, my culture. Stories from other people's parents, they're culture. That's how we learn from each other, it's the best way. That's why literature is so important, it connects us, heart to heart."
Compassion and rising above human frailty has been the touchstone of Walker's writing and her life. "As a child, I would reach out people, wanting to be close, very trusting," says the author. "Even now, I find that no matter what has happened, I still have that trust. I have a lot of trust, that people can be better than they are."
Speaking from her beloved farm outside Eureka, California, Walker's voice is light, musical. "I'm sitting in my bedroom and looking up a hill, a tall, tall, tall hill. I can't see the top of it." She has been sick in body and soul. She has been vilified and misunderstood, but her voice lets you know she's come through it and moved on. If she retreated from the world, it wasn't for long.
"I am a typical Aquarian, I need my periods of solitude, then going about the planet, stopping by friends in various countries, going back to Georgia, eating what's on the stove, on anyone's stove, really loving where I am. There are times of solitude, times when I want to be with people. I give very good parties."
Walker has learned to let go. "This period I was talking about, it was difficult being so sick, so attacked and betrayed, and at the same time, as with so many difficult situations, there became a lot of light, a lot of freedom and a lot of exhilaration," she says. "I wanted to go into that for myself, I wanted to share that.
"You just continue," the author concludes. "You just basically keep getting up and making your oatmeal, playing with your dog, doing your work, your life just goes on. And you learn not to accept what is unjust."
Ellen Kanner has interviewed many authors for this publication. She can be reached at ellen_kanner@bookpage.com.
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