AMY GOODMAN: Eric Bibb singing “Don’t Ever Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down.” That’s Eric Bibb, here on Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!, broadcasting live from KZYX and KZYZ in Mendocino, California. Our guest today, Alice Walker.

ALICE WALKER: Be nobody’s darling;
Be an outcast.
Take the contradictions
Of your life
And wrap around
You like a shawl,
To parry stones
To keep you warm.

Be nobody’s darling;
Be an outcast.
Qualified to live
Among your dead.

AMY GOODMAN: Alice Walker, in the studio with us today, here at KZYX, KZYZ in Mendocino, California.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Alice.

ALICE WALKER: I’m so happy to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s a great privilege to have you in this Women’s History Month, a woman who is making history, author and activist Alice Walker. Alice Walker was born in 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia, to sharecropper parents. She’s become one of the most well-known and most highly respected authors in this country and around the world. Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her novel The Color Purple. Before that, she wrote The Third Life of Grange Copeland and Meridian. Her other novels include By the Light of My Father’s Smile, Possessing the Secret of Joy and The Temple of My Familiar. She’s also the author of two collections of short stories, three collections of essays, five volumes of poetry, and several children’s books. Her books have been translated into more than 2,000 languages. Now she lives in Northern California, in fact, pretty close by where we’re broadcasting from today, the very small but wonderful studios of KZYX and KZYZ, with their trailer — I mean, annex — next door.

Well, it is really quite remarkable to have you live in the studio. It’s a real privilege, Alice, and to have been able to spend time with you this weekend talking about your work and your life in your magnificent home. In fact, I would like to start by talking about just the beauty that you surround yourself with, the kind of home that you live in. Can you describe it?

ALICE WALKER: Well, it’s part a 14th century Japanese farmhouse and part Shinto shrine. And it suits me very well, because it supports the priestess energy, you know, that I feel I have, and it also supports the very peasant farm background that I come from.

AMY GOODMAN: You have lived all over the world. You were born in Georgia. Can you talk about your early years and your parents?

ALICE WALKER: My parents were very vivid people, and my mother very much connected to nature, very much a gardener and farmer. We were poor, had no idea we were poor, because, mainly, my mother’s wisdom meant that she surrounded us with beauty. So, I remember that she would can fruit in the summer. And the walls of the house, instead of being, you know, hideous, shack-like walls, actually looked like they had jewels on them, because all of the jars of fruit were in different colors. And so, when the sun hit the fruit, it looked like we were living in a paradise. And she also surrounded us with flowers, so that there’s no time in my early life that I can remember not being really aware of the beauty of nature and the beauty that happens when human beings interact with nature in a loving and respectful way.

AMY GOODMAN: I hear there were shacks on your land before you built your house.

ALICE WALKER: Yes. I lived in them, but I transformed them, because that is what my mother gives me, the ability to understand that you can transform something that is literally falling apart into something that is wildly original and beautiful.

AMY GOODMAN: And your father?

ALICE WALKER: And my father, my father was a great storyteller, loved to cook, loved music, any kind of music, even hillbilly music, which no Black people liked in the South when I was growing up, except my father. And I think it’s from him that I get my appreciation of all music, no matter where it comes from. If I can dance to it or if I can dream to it or if I can cook to it, it’s music.

AMY GOODMAN: Alice, in your early years, when you were very young, you had what your family called “Alice’s accident.”

ALICE WALKER: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe what happened and how it affected you?

ALICE WALKER: Well, my brothers had — were given BB guns when they were 8 and 9. And I was not given one, of course, because I was a girl. I mean, this is the part of the sexism of this gift giving. And the reason they were given guns is, of course, that in the culture, in the movies we saw, all of the cowboys had guns. The Indians had bows and arrows. Well, I got a bow and arrow. I kind of made it myself. This particular brother, who I think has always been rather disturbed and is also very hostile to women, shot me in the eye. And they made it seem as if somehow this was my fault. I mean, I understand it now as something almost the way that raped people feel, you know, that it’s your fault if you’re raped. So I went into a very deep depression, because I not only lost the vision of my eye, but for a long time it was very disfigured. And that was very difficult.

AMY GOODMAN: How old were you?

ALICE WALKER: I was 8.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, before that, you were very gregarious.

ALICE WALKER: Oh, yeah. I mean, I could take them on. I mean, I — I was very — yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And how did you change?

ALICE WALKER: Well, to myself, I became more withdrawn. But, to them, I — you know, I asked them later, “Well, didn’t you notice that I dropped out of sight?” And they said, “Well, no, you were just the same,” which was such a puzzle, because I couldn’t imagine that I was just the same.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, wasn’t it another brother who helped you along later with —

ALICE WALKER: Oh, yes, my favorite brother. Yes, he had took me to Boston and had me — he took me to a hospital. I had surgery. And it helped me. It didn’t restore the vision, but it at least removed some of the scar tissue.

AMY GOODMAN: I was thinking about the poem you just read about being no one’s darling and being an outcast. Did this shape the way you view the world?

ALICE WALKER: Possibly, because I went through a very long period, I mean, six years or so, from the time I was 8 until the time I was 14, when I do feel that I dropped out of the world, and therefore was able to see the world as if I didn’t exist in it. And that’s an amazing view. It really is. And I deeply appreciate it now, because I was so gregarious and such a little darling, you know, really cute, and, you know, everybody was always kissing on me, and, you know, Sunday school dresses and little shoes and all of that, that I think if I hadn’t had that period of being just really pushed out of that, I might have been the vainest person, the most self-conceited person imaginable. Because, you know, I was the last child. I was the girl that they had been praying for. They had had boys before, you know. And as my — this brother who took me for surgery said, “We needed a girl. You know, we desperately wanted a girl. And so, when Alice was born, we just lost it. We just, you know.”

AMY GOODMAN: And were you writing all through that time? What does your mother say?

ALICE WALKER: Well, my mother claims that she noticed I was a writer, because she was looking for me one day, you know, while I was crawling. I had crawled away from the house, and I crawled around to the back of the house, and she said I was sitting on the ground, scribbling into the margin of a Sears, Roebuck catalog with a twig. I love this story, whether it’s true or not. And so, I always feel that that means that writing for me is — was a past life experience, that I came into the world to write. And I’ve often felt that. I’ve felt that it’s a charge — you know that song, “A Charge to Keep I Have” — that it’s something that I’ve had to do.

AMY GOODMAN: Alice Walker is with us. We’re in Mendocino, California, in Northern California. And we’re broadcasting from a community radio station, actually two, KZYX and KZYZ. We’re going to break for stations to identify themselves around the country. And when we come back, we’ll talk more about Alice’s writing, about all of the work that she’s done and about her future plans. It sounds like there’s a change in store. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, the Exception to the Rulers. I’m Amy Goodman, broadcasting from Northern California, Mendocino — Philo, to be exact — KZYX, KZYZ, the studios we’re in right now. And I’m joined by the great author and activist Alice Walker. Again, it is a privilege to have you with us. And I should say the music that you’re hearing on today’s program is Alice’s choice. And during the break just now, we played a CD from — called The Elements, with Esther “Little Dove” John, flute; Dent Davidson, Kaaren Moitoza, synthesizer; with nature sounds, by Earthsong Productions. Alice Walker is known to so many around the world because of The Color Purple, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book that she wrote in the — well, it came out in the early ’80s. How long did it take you to write that book?

ALICE WALKER: It took me about a year to actually write it, but I had to change my life entirely. You know, so that took a few years. I had to leave my husband, leave New York, resettle on this coast, come here to Anderson Valley, find a house, rent a house, and somehow keep it all going while I wrote the book.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s talk a little about the before time. You have broken down barriers in all sorts of ways throughout your life, taken major risks. In your latest book, that has just come out, The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart, you write, “I used to feel that way myself,” referring to something else. And you say, “Though what I’ve come to realize about myself is that I honestly like living on the edge, wherever it is; that is where I feel most alive and most free.” Your, I’m sure, not first breaking of the rules, but one of them in this series in your life, was breaking the law by getting married to a white man in Mississippi.

ALICE WALKER: Yes. I think that Mississippi actually needed to experience that, you know, to see that, after all those years of white men being with Black women illegally, but happily, you know, because they control the women, it was time for them to see what it really looked like to have an honest relationship between a man and a woman, a Black woman and a white man, in which there was love, in which there was respect and honor. So, it was very, very good. It was very hard on us, however, because we were the only people, you know, doing that. But we survived it.

AMY GOODMAN: You were a civil — you were involved with the civil rights struggle, both you and your husband. He was a lawyer. You were writing then, and you had a child. What was it like when you say, living in Mississippi at that time, an interracial couple?

ALICE WALKER: Well, the Klan used to leave a little calling card on our porch almost every week that said, “The eyes of the Klan are on you.” And we could never figure out how they did that. And, of course, they were, you know, bombing people, you know, fairly constantly, shooting people, disappearing people. This was not too long after, I think a couple of years after, the three civil rights workers — the two Jewish men and the Black man — were lynched, and their bodies were put into a dam to hide them. So we were very aware of the constancy of the terrorism against Black and white people who were working together in Mississippi.

AMY GOODMAN: And you ultimately left.

ALICE WALKER: Yeah, I was — I really was breaking down. It got to be, after seven years, an awful lot, just the dailiness of the violence. And even though things have started to change, largely because of people like my husband — he, for instance, was the lawyer who did most of the work on desegregating the schools of Mississippi. So, on that morning, when they actually, you know, opened to all the children, we got up early and went to see Black and white children going to school together. So, there were really many wonderful things, you know, that we were part of and that we could see changing. But the toll was great. And by the time I left, I was thoroughly sick of Mississippi and sick of being in the South.

AMY GOODMAN: You left with your husband, but then —

ALICE WALKER: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — shortly after, you both parted.

ALICE WALKER: Yes, yes. We moved to Brooklyn, and we joined the brownstoning movement, because, you know, if you — activists have to be active. So, we bought this enormous ruin of a house, and — because we were trying to, you know, restore Brooklyn, this huge Brooklyn, which you know well. And it took all the money we had, all the energy we had, all the time we had. And by the time we, you know, got the house back to its former splendor, and it was absolutely gorgeous, there was nothing left between us. And so we parted.

AMY GOODMAN: So you then became a single mom and a writer.

ALICE WALKER: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: So, how did you do it? And this is the time when you were writing your books and writing — then came to write The Color Purple.

ALICE WALKER: Well, we had joint custody, which we thought was the right thing to do. We didn’t want to have our daughter with one or the other of us; we wanted her to share us. Later on, she would tell us that it was a terrible choice. But, you know, we thought it was good. So that gave me a little bit of time. I was an editor at Ms. magazine for several years, and that gave me a connection to women and to the world and to, you know, activism. I was responsible for publishing a lot of African women writers in that magazine. And it was just — you know, I would get the best care I could for my daughter, and I worked. You know, I worked. I mean, you know, I had a different perspective after publishing so many African women writers, because one of them, Buchi Emecheta, actually said —

AMY GOODMAN: Nigerian writer.

ALICE WALKER: Yeah, yeah. She said, “You know, I couldn’t write my books without the chatter of my five children in the room.” I thought, “My god. You know, now, here’s a different perspective.” Because I had thought I’d have to have absolute silence, you know, a room of my own, with my key in the lock and all of that. And so, I thought, “Well, of course. You know, why shouldn’t we be able to write our books with our babies on our backs?” I couldn’t do it, but, you know, it’s a dream.

AMY GOODMAN: So, how did you write The Color Purple? What is the writing process that you go through? And is it consistent with all your books? I mean, Isabel Allende describes how she chooses one date every year. Is it January 8th? I can’t remember exactly. And that is the day she will start any of her books. She has a deep ritual with all of her books. Do you?

ALICE WALKER: Not at all. No, they’re all so different. And if the people in them don’t literally start talking to me, and talking to me in such a way that I cannot ignore them, I don’t bother. There’s just no point. Because I want us all to be together. I want it to be a really, you know, happy thing happening. I mean, even if it’s a sad story, I want us all to be present. I want everybody to be really delighted to be a part of this venture. And so, I’m content to wait.

And that is why it’s been very nice that my mother made sure that I became a gardener, and that there are other things to do, you know, that I study Spanish, I study the dharma. I’m always doing something else, because I know that there’s something very one-sided in this culture, anyway, about being a writer. I mean, you can just feel like that’s it. And I just never — I never feel comfortable with that. I think that you have to be real in your life. You have to have your own connections with your friends. You have to develop that. You know, you have to be not cut away from life, but really in it all the time.

AMY GOODMAN: Who do you feel you’re serving when you’re writing?

ALICE WALKER: My ancestors, very much so. In fact, I have a motto over my desk that says I work for the ancestors. And it’s amazing how that helps, because if I always understand, you know, who my employer is, I don’t have to then worry about what is said, what is thought, you know, because in my line of work, misunderstanding is just the rule of the day. You know, I mean, people just delight in misunderstanding what you’re doing. But I’m very clear with my ancestors, and I feel very taken care of by them. And I really have no fear. I mean, I have no fear about, you know, that part of it, you know, what I’m saying and how they and I are together. We are one voice.

AMY GOODMAN: In your dining room, you have a picture of Zora Neale Hurston. Is she one of those ancestors you’re working for?

ALICE WALKER: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely, I work for — I work for Zora. And I work for my great-great-great-great-grandmother, who lived to be 125, who was forced to walk from Virginia to our little hometown, carrying two children, with a rope around her neck. And she was sold for $2,000 in the square of my hometown by these people. You know, the sins of the people are still there. I mean, you know, so there’s no getting away from these ancestors. I have some incredible ancestors. They are very powerful. And they are with me. And I know that.

AMY GOODMAN: The Color Purple, something I didn’t know is that the names that you used — Nettie, Albert and others — were the names of people in your family.

ALICE WALKER: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about that and how you chose what characters to put with what names?

ALICE WALKER: I can’t really remember exactly how I chose it, but I know that I chose to memorialize these people who otherwise would not be memorialized. Their names would be forgotten and meaningless. And so, when I set out to write this book, I took all the names that I could think of from my family, and I used them in the novel.

And I often, deliberately, made the character, the character’s life, exciting and full of adventure and full of travel, particularly when the real person never went anywhere or did anything. For instance, Nettie. Nettie is the name of my grandmother, my mother’s mother, who had 12 children. She was always pregnant. She had an abusive husband. She never went out. You know, she never left the yard. So, I thought, in The Color Purple, I would give the name Nettie to the one who gets to go to Africa, who gets to travel, who has no children, and who falls in love with this wonderful man and just has a great, you know, time. I love the feeling of being able to liberate people, you know, whether they’re characters or whether they are in real life, because their liberation leads to my enjoyment, really. I mean, there’s a really selfish reason to want people to be free: They’re more fun.

AMY GOODMAN: Describe in a nutshell, Alice Walker, just the plot line of Color Purple, because I find there are younger and younger people who listen to this program, just all over the country. On Friday night in Los Angeles, a 5-year-old came up to me. She said she likes it when I talk about mad cows.

ALICE WALKER: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Five years old.

ALICE WALKER: Five.

AMY GOODMAN: And then a 12-year-old. But we’re hurtling forward. And as famous as the book is — and then, of course, Steven Spielberg making it into the movie made it even more famous — a lot of people just coming up now may not even have been born then. But what that story was you were trying to convey?

ALICE WALKER: Well, you know, Amy, at this point, I can’t even remember. I mean, you know, it would take a lot to try to tell you this morning. What I can say, though, is that it is about sisters who love each other dearly and who are separated for 30 years and who grow to understand that, you know, nothing can separate you if you love a person. Even death is powerless. I mean, love is the most indestructible thing. And so, they are separated by, you know, horrible people who, you know, hate them, basically. But they come back together.

AMY GOODMAN: In the book, or the book’s reception, you were criticized, by some, for being anti-male. How have you responded to that?

ALICE WALKER: Well, I wrote a book called The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult, about that whole period, because I got so tired of people asking me, you know, that question and the one about “What did you think about the film?” Because, you know, what I think, it takes a lot of thinking. And so, 10 years after the film, I wrote a book about it to explain it. It’s a very difficult thing to have so much of your work trashed. And there were people who trashed The Color Purple, not even sincerely. I mean, they trashed it because they could, not because they read it.

AMY GOODMAN: It was also a time where a lot of people got their starts or became well known. You had Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey. Well, Danny Glover was Albert. And you skyrocketed to world fame as a result of the book. How did that affect, and did you find that people’s expectations changed, paralyzed you maybe, or actually inspired you?

ALICE WALKER: I wasn’t that aware of people’s expectations. I’m telling you, I mean, I do work for the ancestors. And so, if you’re not an ancestor, I’m not really concerned about your expectations. I mean, really. Now, when you get to be an ancestor …

AMY GOODMAN: Other ancestors, you wrote a biography, that is about to be rereleased, of Langston Hughes. Talk about his effect on your life. In fact, you knew him a bit —

ALICE WALKER: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — when he was alive.

ALICE WALKER: Yes, I did. Well, in fact, I was at Sarah Lawrence, and I had just written my first short story. I gave it to my teacher, Muriel Rukeyser, great woman. She gave it to Langston. And he immediately loved it. And when we met, he immediately loved me, and I immediately loved him. He was, you know, almost 70. I was 19, something like that. And we just had this amazing meeting of, you know, like the young daughter and the father, because I was always looking for, you know, a father. And he was just warm and accepting. And when he died, which was, you know, not so long after that, I was amazed, because his spirit seemed to continue with me for at least 10 years. I mean, very, very present, very powerful. So that he was like a guardian spirit that I had actually known. I mean, there are many guardian spirits that I feel, but I didn’t know them in life. For instance, Sojourner Truth, I feel very much as a guardian spirit. So, yes, he was — he’s an ancestor that I love. And so I went on to write a book about him, because when he said to me, “Which of my books did you really most enjoy, Alice?” I had to admit I hadn’t read a word. And I was so ashamed. And so, as soon as I could, I wrote a book about him for children, so that nobody on Earth needs to be as ignorant as I was. And he does not deserve our ignorance.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Alice Walker. And on that theme, from her latest book, The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart, the idea of “living on the edge, wherever it is; that is where I feel most alive and most free.” When we come back from our break, talking about the way she has crashed through barriers, whether it was the interracial marriage, whether it was being a single mother, writing the books, the essays, the poetry she did, whether it was taking on FGM, female genital mutilation, moving on to be an out lesbian, and talking about that, writing about that, talking about love and relationships, and taking on the cases of controversial political prisoners, people like Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier. She has been there over these decades. And we’re going to continue with our conversation with this Pulitzer Prize-winning author, gardener, mother, activist —

ALICE WALKER: And lover.

AMY GOODMAN: — lover and servant to the ancestors. You’re listening to Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Pacific Radio’s Democracy Now!, Free Speech Radio. I’m Amy Goodman, here with author Alice Walker.

ALICE WALKER: I need to say something. I don’t consider myself a lesbian. And I don’t consider myself a heterosexual. And I don’t consider myself a bisexual. I do consider myself a lover. And although I’ve had women lovers for the last 10 years, I’m in love with a man. And that’s the kind of edge I mean when I say living on the edge is where I’m most at home.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you write about love? How do you convey that?

ALICE WALKER: How do I convey what?

AMY GOODMAN: How do you convey just what you’ve just said, in — I mean, you write it — really, your last book, The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart, you describe it through real life and through all of the fantasies that you’ve had.

ALICE WALKER: Well, that’s exactly — the way that I write it there is the way I live it. I mean, I fall in love with people. I really do. And mostly I fall in love with the spirit of the person. And actually, it’s very secondary, you know, what else they have. You know? I mean, maybe it’s because I’m so attached to the ancestors, and they’re not even present, you know, that it’s the spirit that comes first with me always. And then I love whatever else there is. But the notion of categorizing people and fixing them is one that I really abhor. I just — it does not work for me, and I really don’t care for it.

AMY GOODMAN: So, how have you challenged it?

ALICE WALKER: Just like now. I mean, I just don’t let it go. I mean, people like to say, you know, if you’re with a woman, you’re this; if you’re with a man, you’re that. But that’s not really the way human beings are. I mean, our sexuality is ours, you know, and how we then, quote, “apply” it is determined by who we meet. I mean, at least that’s how it’s been for me.

AMY GOODMAN: How have you fit being a lover, being a partner into your life? Because you’ve described what it’s like to go through the writing process, which is almost to become a priest, as you’ve said.

ALICE WALKER: Yes, yes, very much a priest. I mean, I feel like I’ve been a priest for 30 years, and it’s been damn hard on everybody in my life. But I have not had a choice. I mean, I feel like, you know, the ancestral priest up there, whoever, said, you know, “This is the work. Only you can really do this, because you have been placed, you know, right here in Eatonton, Georgia, in this family, where you can actually see what slavery was was like, because you’re still as sharecropper slaves. And then you get to be educated. You end up at Sarah Lawrence College. You’re taught, you know, how to write. And you do have to do this. I mean, there’s nobody else. And you’ve been wounded in this way that really means that you have a vision of what it’s like not even to be here.” You know, because you — I mean, all of these things, and I take them seriously. You know, I mean, they are sort of like the synchronicity that Jung talks about in a life, where you start to see that there is a reason for all of your joys and your sorrows, and you begin to see that there is a work for you to do in the world. And I have done that. And I have been absolutely faithful to it. And it has been difficult on me, and it has been difficult for everyone in my life, you know, but we have survived it.

AMY GOODMAN: Your daughter writes a bittersweet story in her first major work, about her own life, called Black, White, and Jewish, Rebecca Walker. Her book came out about the same time that your book came out, The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart. And she talks about the difficulty — I think of what you’re just describing — what it was like to be raised by you and her father, both the beauty and also the pain. How has that affected you?

ALICE WALKER: It’s been very painful to realize that she suffered. But I don’t think it could have been any other way. I did my absolute best, you know, to be a really good mother. But it’s true, you know, if you — I mean, when I was writing The Temple of My Familiar, I lived in that world for two years. I mean, I may have been functioning, you know, being the mother in body. But every part of my spirit, almost all of my attention, had to be on all of the people who were just literally pouring into me to be expressed. And some of them weren’t even speaking English. I mean, I had to — you know, I had to get a tutor to start learning Spanish, because the people in my dreams were speaking Spanish. I had no idea what they were saying.

You know, it’s very magical, this thing that I’m talking about. It’s not a hardship, except that when you try to — you know, I mean, as I was saying to you earlier, we now know — I mean, I now know why priests don’t marry, you know, because you really — you know, you’re married to, in my case, the ancestors, and they are, you know, very stern taskmasters. They want this, you know, record. They want this expression. And to the extent that I am them, you know, I understand it perfectly. I mean, so we’re well matched.

AMY GOODMAN: Where did you write The Temple of My Familiar?

ALICE WALKER: Partly in Mexico, because I needed to be there for the language, and partly in San Francisco and partly here in Anderson Valley.

AMY GOODMAN: You say now, Alice Walker, that you may not write again. Is this something you say after every book, or do you mean it more than ever now?

ALICE WALKER: I mean it now, partly because I can see the completion of 30 years of work. And I feel like I’ve just done it. I’ve done — you know, I’ve done the job. I’ve done what I was put here to do, basically. Now, if there’s something else, the universe and the ancestors will, of course, knock on my door and get me out of bed and put me to it.

But I have to say I’m enjoying the freedom of not doing it now. I mean, it feels like a major liberation. It feels like, you know, the letting go that Buddhists talk about, you know, a lot. Finally, you know, you’re going to die. I mean, we’re all going to die, and you just let go of everything at that point. But before that, there is a lot of good in learning to let go of things that you’re attached to, even identities. You know, they shouldn’t be these things that, you know, basically kill us before we’re dead. I mean, they just sort of fix us in time and space as this, as that. And I feel more like water. You know, I feel more like flowing and being changeable and doing whatever else there is to be done that’s appealing and exciting.

AMY GOODMAN: You took on the issue of female genital mutilation in a big way. When you were at Sarah Lawrence, having left Spelman, you lived for a year in Kenya and —

ALICE WALKER: Only a few months in Africa.

AMY GOODMAN: In Africa. But then you returned. Right now the U.N. Population Fund estimates that 120 million women around the world have had their genitals mutilated, and that a staggering 2 million young girls undergo what’s called FGM, female genital mutilation, every year. You wrote extensively about female genital mutilation. You did a film on it. It was very controversial. Some criticized you, saying you’re imposing Western values. What do you say? And what exactly did you do? What did you want to accomplish?

ALICE WALKER: Well, I see this as a very good example of working for the ancestors, because can you imagine what it must have been like for my enslaved maternal ancestor coming here on the ship genitally mutilated and infibulated? Which means that she would have had everything cut away and then everything sewed up. So, suppose she was pregnant. You know, there she’d be, in the hold of a ship, you know, pregnant, nobody knowing a thing about how to basically defibulate her and let her have the baby. She would have died. I mean, she would have died the most horrible death you could imagine. Now, if I can’t work for that ancestor, what good am I? Really. I mean, what good am I if I cannot use the skill that I have acquired through the grace of, you know, graceful people? So, I was speaking to her and for her, and also for all the little girls.

You know, I went to Africa at one point when we were making the film, and we were watching this long line of girls who had been mutilated. And there was one little girl who hadn’t been mutilated yet, and she ran up to me, and she took my hand, you know, just in silence. And I knew that, you know, her time was going to come, and it was going to come before her mother heard what we were doing. You know, I couldn’t stop it. But at least I was there. And that’s where I’m supposed to be. I know it. I mean, there’s no question that that is exactly, you know, the edge that I belong on.

And it matters not at all what people say. I do not care. You know? I mean, they can scream and yell as much as they like. But as long as a child is crying, there’s a reason. And as adults, it is our responsibility to be there with that child. I don’t care whose child it is.

AMY GOODMAN: Alice Walker’s book about female genital mutilation is called Warrior Marks, and she did it with Pratibha Parmar. You took on that issue. You also take on the issue of prisoners. You had come out to New York in December, and you spoke at a rally for Leonard Peltier, who ultimately didn’t get executive clemency, and have long spoken about the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, long before many other people took up this case. What has focused your attention on these men?

ALICE WALKER: You know, I feel very strongly that when I read people, I can read their hearts. And so, when I read — they sent me, a long time ago, Mumia’s first book, and I sat down and read it. I think it was called Live from Death Row. And they wanted me to give a blurb. And I just sat there reading it, and I could feel — I could feel him. And I had no — I had no doubt that he was a good person. Then I went to see him. And I ended up, you know, doing a benefit in Pennsylvania for him, and I went to see him twice. And I have to say, you know, this is a really good person, deeply amazing and wonderful. And just the idea that anybody would want to kill him for any reason is an insult, and it would be like robbing the world of, you know, its most precious jewel.

AMY GOODMAN: What was it like to see him? Was he shackled at the time?

ALICE WALKER: He was totally shackled. And he was in an orange prison suit. And he still managed to look more beautiful and more alive than all the people who were guarding him. They all looked very sick and like they needed help.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think about his prospects, and also Leonard Peltier’s, who remains in prison?

ALICE WALKER: Well, I think that Clinton should have pardoned these two men, for his own good. I mean, you know, it is beyond trying to do something for other people now. It is more about: What are you going to do for yourself, if you act in a decent way toward others? And so, all of the trouble that Clinton has had — you know, it’s like he’s left the White House trailing tin cans, you know, because of all the other people that he pardoned who were not deserving. I think if he had pardoned them, he could have left the White House with a lot of dignity and grace, because he would have tried to right a major historical wrong. Leonard is also, of course, innocent and was framed.

AMY GOODMAN: Would you like to read for us one last poem? As we wrap up this program, this Women’s History Month special with Alice Walker, reading from her book, Her Blue Body Everything We Know.

ALICE WALKER: When they torture your mother
plant a tree
When they torture your father
plant a tree
When they torture your brother
and your sister
plant a tree
When they assassinate
your leaders
and lovers
plant a tree
Whey they torture you
too bad
to talk
plant a tree.
When they begin to torture
the trees
and cut down the forest
they have made
start another.

AMY GOODMAN: Alice Walker. Any final words to our listeners around the country of Democracy Now!? and by the way, I want to let people know you can get this interview by calling the archives at 1-800-735-0230. That’s 1-800-735-0230. And you can write to us with comments or messages you’d like to pass on to Alice — we’ll pass them on — at mail — that’s M-A-I-L — at democracynow.org. That’s mail@democracynow.org. Alice?

ALICE WALKER: I would just like to say that this is a time when it’s very important to honor our teachers. And they can be teachers who are, you know, ancestors. They can be teachers who are Indigenous people who are living today. They can be ancestors that you don’t even know you have. But honor your teachers, because they are our hope. They really help us to move along in some kind of dignity and clarity.

AMY GOODMAN: And in these next four years of a Bush administration, your thoughts on?

ALICE WALKER: I think that we have to concentrate on being our own leaders. I mean, there is no point in trying to be led by people who don’t know where they’re going. So, we should understand that we are our leaders. And on that note, I should say that you make a fine leader, because you lead yourself. And that is really very commendable.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Alice Walker, I want to thank you for being with us and being in your home studio here at KZYX and KZYZ, this special broadcast from Mendocino, California. I want to thank all the people who participated in today’s broadcast: Ron O’Brien, Mary Aigner, Mitchell Holman, Burton Segal, Owen O’Toole and, of course, our girl power producers back in New York, Kris Abrams and Terry Allen; Anthony Sloan, our engineer; here, Mitchell Holman, our engineer today in Mendocino, Anthony in New York; and Errol Maitland, our technical director and spiritual guide. Again, if you’d like to write to us, mail@democracynow.org. From the studios of KZYX, KZYZ in Mendocino, California, I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for listening to another edition of Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!