American Author Blog Post #1

American Author Proposal

There are a lot of things that drew me to this writer, Alice Walker. One of which is that she wrote The Color Purple which is a book and eventually a movie that I’ve heard time and time again great and wonderful things about but had never seen nor read the movie or the book. Reading about her history and what she stands for also interested me. In some ways, I could relate to her in the way that she thinks about certain aspects of life. Her quotes make you think and question the world around you on whatever the topic is that she is talking about and they let your mind wonder and think about things you wouldn’t normally think about.
Alice Walker meets all the criteria for the American Author Project. She is an American Author which to me means she was born in America, lives here and wrote most if not all of there works and or novels here in America. Alice is a dramatist, most of her books have titles that seem to portray to me drama just in those few words on the front cover. Titles like By the Light of My Father’s Smile, and The Color Purple. The Color Purple is a simple title.It makes me wonder why did Alice Walker name it that and how did she come up with the name the book, The Color Purple and how did she come up with the name to begin with? She is non-fiction and fiction writer as it so seems at the same time because aspects of her books are about her life experiences. Looking at the front of “By the Light of My Father’s Smile.” This book already tells you that it’s about her father and probably a way her Father has guided her through something with his “smile”. She is most definitely not a “one hit wonder” when it comes to her writing. She has written over 20 plus works when you add up all of her novels and short story collections, poetry collections, and Non-Fiction. There have also been multiple Biographies written about this great American Author. Finally Alice meets the criteria for the American Author project because she has won numerous awards for her works and novels and has had her famous novel “The Color Purple” made into a feature film which I still have yet to watch.
Walker will enable me to make a literary, thesis based argument over the course of a ten page paper because there is just such a vast amount of information about her and what she’s done over the years for American Literature as a whole. Alice’s 20 plus works and novels and such have helped to shape American Literature. Anyone who has read just a bit of her work has probably been greatly influenced by this woman's vast creativity and her attention to detail.
I plan on reading 3-5 books by Alice Walker. The first of which being The Color Purple because I’ve been meaning to pick up this book and read it for quite some time. The second of which will probably be a book by the title of Meridian. The third book will be By the Light of My Father’s Smile. The last and final book I plan to read is a Biography that someone else has written about Alice Walker and her extraordinary life as an Author and how her work has helped to influence us all.