By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Roselily’ is the opening story of Alice Walker’s short-story collection In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973). The story explores the conflicting emotions of a young black woman on her wedding day, as she prepares for a new life in which she must leave behind her young children and move north from her home in Mississippi.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Women’ is a 1970 poem by Alice Walker (born 1944), one of the best-known African American writers of the second half of the twentieth century. Although she is probably most famous for her 1982 novel The Color Purple, Walker has written short stories and numerous other novels. She also started out her published career as a poet.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Everyday Use’ is one of the most popular and widely studied short stories by Alice Walker. It was first published in Harper’s Magazine in 1973 before being collected in Walker’s short-story collection In Love and Trouble.
Walker uses ‘Everyday Use’ to explore different attitudes towards Black American culture and heritage.