God, who is this woman with her “only I understand the world, and it loves me for it” attitudes. I have read ONE article by her and I despise her shallow ways already.
From the link posted by saudade
As Ben says - zwoooooong.
Bloody hell, woman! They don’t give a flying fuck about you!
Ahh, bless, do the little people have an endearing quality? How sweet of you to say so YOU PATRONISING GOAT.
What a shame you came back.
For those who missed it, that was meant to be a bit of feminism inserted at a random point.
Unless, it seems, they are “tit women”, who just love working for peanuts.
I tell you what, darling, I would hurt anyone a hell of a lot more if I was thinking of you at the time.
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
Ben - you have ruined my life with a crazy hatred for a woman I have never met.
Is it just me, or is Walker’s English sometimes very poor for someone who has one the Pulitzer prize? I mean her diction, not that she isn’t a native speaker. For example, in the open letter to Clinton posted below:
This is very awkward, couldn’t she have said “When President kennidy was assassinated, and my whole school wept, I thought of those warming sips of coffee,” or is that just not pretentious sounding enough.
Maybe it is just me, and I am likely falling victim to Gaudere’s law here.
The question we should ask ourselves is not, “Is Alice Walker an appallingly bad writer?” (she is), nor, “Can you look a chicken in both eyes at the same time?” (you can’t). The question we should be asking is why any guy would read Ms.? Hell, I’m a card-carrying gay guy, and I read Sports Illustrated or Maxim over that New York liberal, Radcliffe grad, anti-male crapfest. Ben, just tell us you don’t read Oprah or Rosie’s magazines.
Male disliking non shaving piglet checking in. But this crap sickens ME, which is pretty hard to do.
Thanks for the advance warning. Now I’ll know what to expect if I encounter Walker’s stuff in the next few years.
I do remember reading a book in which the author complained about how only the best-looking feminists seem to get taken seriously. The comment was something like “Gloria Steinem, in her youth, could have been Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. No one ever thought much of mousy wallflower Andrea Dworkin’s ideas. “She just needs some big black cock,” seemed to be the prevailing opinion.”"
BTW, I just wanted to recommend Trey Ellis’ Platitudes. The first chapter is about a nerdy, well-to-do Black teenager and his trials and tribulations in a Manhattan high school. The second chapter starts with an angry letter from an Alice Walker-esque writer ranting about how his first chapter reeks of sexism, but she’s willing to re-educate him by rewriting chapter 1 the way it should have been written. What follows is her version of chapter 1, in which the characters have mysteriously become sharecroppers, and modern-day Manhattan has become the reconstruction-era South. From there on out the chapters alternate between the novel set in Manhattan and the Walker character’s rewrites about the sharecroppers. I, for one, found it to be a laugh-out-loud funny parody.
“Let’s all go
Down to Alice Walker!
Let’s all go
Down to Alice Walker!
I’ll get a hamburger, fries
And a bottle of Skeet
Drink it on down
With my baby and me!” (or something like that)
[nitpick]Doomis Walker’s serves slawburgers, not hamburgers. [/nitpick] My mother forces me to listen to the country station whenever we’re in the car together. Be sure to file that in your mental Rolodex, m’kay?
Alice Walker - proof you that you don’t have to be white to be a patronizing, ethnocentric, ugly American-type tourist :rolleyes:
I read Warrior Marks, or rather about 1/3 of it, and found it to be more about Alice Walker than about female circumcism. In the few areas she does talk about what is supposedly the subject of the book she comes across as “me educated Westerner here to save you, you uneducated savages ensalved to dark traditions and customs”
I’m sorry, Ms. Walker, just because your skin is dark and your ancestors came from Africa does not mean you have anything in common with the women of today’s Africa. Your ancestory and skin color do not change the fact that culturally you are a middle-class liberal American. The accident of your exterior appearance does not somehow entitle you to be an authority on African women nor does it give you the right to show up in their villages, criticize their way of life, disrupt their rituals, then profit off the experience by writing a book and (apparently) making a documentary. You’re just as exploitive as an abusive husband.
Every attempt to simply outlaw female circumcism has only resulted in the practice becoming more extreme and more entrenched. I highly recommend The Female Circumcism Controversy, an Anthropological Perspective by Ellen Gruenbaum from University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Now that is a discussion of the practice, its variations, and cultural factors involved both in maintaining the practice and also in its diminishing in certain areas, written by a woman who didn’t just fly in for a visit but has actually lived and worked in Africa for years.
But, of course, writing such a work requires thought, work, and some self-reassessing. It’s not nearly as easy as a work of fiction where the people do what you want them to, to prove the points you want them to prove, and sticking to the facts is not required.
Way, way back then, when I was a desperately sincere young Radical, I was working in a collective, the whole nine yards. My main squeeze (she’s long gone, I can say what I want) at the time insisted that I read Purple on pain of…well, lets call it excommunication. OK, so I knuckled under.
And I tried, Lord, I tried. But my ignorance kept getting in the way. I mean, I had no idea that lesbian relations were so common in the rural Black culture of the 30’s.
Nor had I any notion that black men were so utterly dominant in thier relations with women, I kinda thought those “She done me wrong, she threw my ass out” blues songs were about real stuff, I had no notion they were just sly fantasys. Boy, they sure fooled me, they sounded so sincere!
I was born and raised in Texas. I have considered calling my Aunt Ophelia and telling her she lives in a male-dominated culture. I’m a thousand miles away, she can’t take a switch to me.
Well, to sum up: I know its old-fashioned, but I like effeminate women. Nothing melts my heart quicker than watching a woman paint her toe-nails.
I’m going to go on a tangent here. The remark about “all men being potential rapists” reminds me of dialogue from an absolute gem of a film called Life is Sweet, directed by Mike Leigh. The following exchange took place between Jane Horrocks and Claire Skinner (Jane Horrocks, if you remember, was also the voice of Babs).
Horrocks (as Nicola) All men are bastards!
Skinner (as Natalie) What?!
Nicola: They’re all potential rapists!
Natalie: That’s a bit sweeping!
Nicola: All men have got the ability to rape.
Natalie: Well, they don’t all do it, do they!
Nicola: Well, they’ve got the ability; they’ve got the desire.
Natalie: That’s paranoid rubbish!
Nicola: What d’you know about paranoia.
Natalie: Well, not as much as you do; I’ll give you that.
Doesn’t anyone around here like Ms. Walker or her work?
I liked The Color Purple, both the book and movie, but frankly I don’t know enough about her or her other works to make an informed opinion one way or the other.
But she must have some redeeming qualities, no? I mean, are her accolades, awards and achievements just a fluke? There must be some fans out there, right?
[echoing into the abyss]
Anybody? Anybody?
[/echoing into the abyss]
I was just building off your post.