Alice Walker on Writing, Dancing, and Bursting Into Song

Alice Walker’s Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart is now available.

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What do you always want to talk about in interviews but never get to?
How much the study of the literature of other countries can inform our sense of history; making the present easier to understand.

What time of day do you write?
I used to write almost entirely in the morning; I had a small child to care for, to help dress, to prepare for school. After she left, I could, if no travel that day was involved, meditate for 40 or so minutes; then, still in pajamas, go to work.

How do you tackle writer’s block?
To my knowledge I’ve never experienced writer’s block. I have published over two dozen books, seven of them novels, and have kept a journal going since 1962. (Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker, coming next year.) My mother claims I was scribbling in the dirt with a twig when I was crawling. To me, writing was never a sentence but a delight, though weeping while doing it was not unknown. Too, there were always so many other enchanting things to do! Gardening, quilting, exploring the world, dancing on the Great Wall [of China]. . . A modest two-step, not to attract attention, but still.

Which book do you return to again and again?
The I Ching. A friend gave me a copy in the early 80s. She has since died, and I don’t think I ever told her it was one of the greatest, most useful gifts, of my life. There have been years when I have leaned on it as on a person. And, in fact, once I was talking to a friend about it and said “Brother Ching.” She, a feminist, countered immediately with “Mother Ching.” I think of it as more masculine because of the information on battlefield strategy, and rigid notions of courtly behavior. Confucian ideas of male superiority aside, it remains a book that rewards study and consultation.

Which non-literary piece of culture—film, tv show, painting, song—could you not imagine your life without?
When I am in a country where people still sing spontaneously, while working or even while strolling along the street, or beach, I feel comforted, and at home. I regret deeply that more people in more countries have given up the gift to others that is voluntary song. It is true many great voices have been “captured” on machines, I am not ungrateful. But if humans lose completely our human tendency to burst into song when the spirit moves us, we will be like birds who never learned to fly.