Since the beginning of America, the way African Americans have lived and been treated has been very different from how white Anglo-Saxon Americans live. While racial equality is more visible today than ever, just decades ago people lived very different lives just because of the color of their skin. In Alice Walker's award-winning novel, The Color Purple, she introduces the world to the lives and hardships faced by many African-American women, even today. It tackles gender, spirituality, and even sexuality in a way that leaves an impact on readers, even after they put the book down. Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944 as the eighth and last child of Willie Lee and Millie Tallulah Grant. Walker, tenant farmer in Eatonton, Georgia. When she was eight, she was blind in her right eye after her brother accidentally shot it with a BB gun. This was a crucial moment in her life as up until then she had always been outgoing, but her injury made her very self-conscious. She soon became a lonely outcast, but now she saw the world differently. She became an observer, paying more attention to people and the dynamics of their relationships. (Lister 3) As an adult, Walker spent time at Spelman College, a women's college in Atlanta, Georgia, and eventually transferred and graduated from Sarah Lawrence. During this time she travels to Africa for a summer and suffers an abortion, two events that inspired her to write poetry (Bloom Modern 229). After finishing school, she became very involved in the civil rights movement, working on voter registration drives and Head Start programs (Lister 3). A few years later, in 1968, his first book of poems, entitled Once, was published. She is...... in the center of the paper...... (Walker). Works Cited Bloom, Harold. Bloom's major novelists: Alice Walker. Philadelphia, PS: Chelsea House Publishers, 2000. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Network. April 8, 2014. Bloom, Harold. Modern Critical Visions: Alice Walker. New York: Chelsea House, 1989. Print.Lister, Rachel. Alice Walker: The Color Purple. Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Print.Proudfit, Charles L. “Celie's Search for Identity: An Evolutionary Psychoanalytic Reading of Alice Walker's The Color Purple.” Contemporary Literature 32.1 (1991): 12. Full text search file provided by publisher. Network. April 7, 2014.Robinson, Cynthia Cole. "The Evolution of Alice Walker." Women's Studies 38.3 (2009): 293. Full-text searchable file provided by publisher. Network. April 8, 2014.Walker, Alice. The color purple. First Harvest ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982. Print.