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.“When she died I suffered,” said Walker. It is true many great voices have been “captured” on machines, I am not ungrateful. I regret deeply that more people in more countries have given up the gift to others that is voluntary song. 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. Which non-literary piece of culture-film, tv show, painting, song-could you not imagine your life without? Confucian ideas of male superiority aside, it remains a book that rewards study and consultation. 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. There have been years when I have leaned on it as on a person. 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.
A friend gave me a copy in the early 80s. Which book do you return to again and again? A modest two-step, not to attract attention, but still.
Too, there were always so many other enchanting things to do! Gardening, quilting, exploring the world, dancing on the Great Wall. To me, writing was never a sentence but a delight, though weeping while doing it was not unknown. ( 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. I have published over two dozen books, seven of them novels, and have kept a journal going since 1962. To my knowledge I’ve never experienced writer’s block. 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. I used to write almost entirely in the morning I had a small child to care for, to help dress, to prepare for school. How much the study of the literature of other countries can inform our sense of history making the present easier to understand. What do you always want to talk about in interviews but never get to? Alice Walker’s Taking the Arrow Out of the Heartis now available.
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