Includes index.

Bibliography: p. [213]-218.

Introduction : Alice Walker, a woman walking into peril / Ikenna Dieke -- The occupational hazard : the loss of historical context in twentieth-century feminist readings, and a new reading of the heroine's story in Alice Walker's The color purple / Dror Abend-David -- Heritage and deracination in Walker's "Everyday use" / David Cowart -- Alice Walker's womanist magic : the conjure woman as rhetor / Catherine A. Colton -- When a convent seems the only viable choice : questionable callings in stories by Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Alice Walker, and Louise Erdrich / Margaret D. Bauer --Creating generations : the relationship between Celie and Shug in Alice Walker's The color purple / E. Ellen Barker -- Alice Walker and the "man question" / Pia Thielmann -- Revolutionary stanzas : the civil and human rights poetry of Alice Walker / Jeffrey L. Coleman -- The color purple : an existential novel / Marc--A Christophe -- Alice Walker's redemptive art / Felipe Smith -- Walker's The temple of my familiar : womanist as Monistic idealist / Ikenna Dieke -- Alice Walker's American quilt : The color purple and American literary tradition / Priscilla Leder -- Who touches this touches a woman : the naked self in Alice Walker / Ruth D. Weston -- "Nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent" : fragmentation in the quilt and The color purple / Judy Elsley -- A matter of focus : men in the margins of Alice Walker's fiction / Erna Kelly -- "What she got to sing about?" : comedy and The color purple / Priscilla L. Walton -- Alice Walker : poesy and the earthling psyche / Ikenna Dieke.