Collected Essays, Prose, and Stories

The first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize-for The Color Purple-Walker is both a committed artist and engaged activist, as reflected in the four works in this volume.

Living by the Word: In this follow-up to In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, Walker reflects on issues both personal and global, from her experience with the filming of The Color Purple, to the history of African American narrative traditions, to global threats of pollution and nuclear war.

You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down: The women in these stories face their problems head on, proving powerful and self-possessed even when degraded by others-sometimes by those closest to them. But even as the female protagonists face exploitation, social inequalities, and casual cruelties, Walker leavens her stories with ample wit.

In Love & Trouble: Walker's debut short fiction collection features stories of women traveling with the weight of broken dreams, with kids in tow, with doubt and regret, with memories of lost loves, with lovers who have their own hard pasts and hard edges.

In Search of Our Mother's Gardens: In essays both personal and political about her own work and other writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Flannery O'Connor, and Jean Toomer; the Civil Rights Movement; antinuclear activism; feminism; and a childhood injury that left her emotionally scarred and the healing words of her daughter.