our country has done to other places, just hundreds of thousands of people murdered and abused, there is really just no contest. >> host: the next call, marietta california@@@@@ @ @ @px

in california. he has a lot of your books and as a matter of fact use the one that introduced me to your books and i am in all of you. >> host: who is on the cover, ms. walker? >> guest: i don't know who that is. she could be all of us. >> host: next call, patagonia arizona. >> caller: hello, ms. walker. hello? amaya there? hello? >> guest: you are here, hello. >> caller: you look exactly as you were 20 years ago when i saw you. i know you live the good life. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: i am 62 years. i was born in the philippines. your books have always made me cry. i just want to tell you that you gi me hope on this planet that

somehow. >> host: caller, why do alice walker's books make you cry? >> caller: because there's so truthful and because i wish more people would read them, unfortunately some people -- some people are too poor to read or they are looking for their next day's food to eat. >> host: thank you caller. >> guest: here is a kiss on both cheeks and tears are fine. they are just cleaning the windows. could you have any idea how many books you have sold? >> guest: 10 million a thing, something like that. >> host: "the color purple" obviously the best seller. >> guest: by far. "possessing the secret of joy" did very well. that is the novel about the young african woman to a elects to be generally mutilated,

tashi, and she thinks it is going to mean acceptance into what is left of our tribe. yes, that is just been reissued by the new press. >> host: you never knew introduction to this and you talk about a flight he took. in ghana. >> guest: in ghana, yes because after much work on this issue, not just me and not just her in our film, but people have been steadily in many ways chipping away at this awful practice of female cutting, so this was some years ago. we went to an abolitionist meeting in ghana and at that meeting there were lots of africans from all over the continent who are devoted to changing this practice, and so it was very emotional for us. we cried the whole time because we have been wanting so much for

the men to be involved and they were, and so it was just lovely. >> host: we're live here in alice walker's home in berkley california. this is vermeil in depth program. buford south carolina, you run the air. >> caller: hello ms. walker. my name is theresa and i wanted to let you know that you have changed my perspective on many things. telling me i have to read everything that alice walker has written. in 1989 he told me this. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: you are so welcome. thank you. we even now i think about the things i have read from you in the past 15 years, and i guess that was all i wanted to say. i did it for you. so take care.

>> host: thank you caller. new york city, please go ahead with your comment for alice walker. >> caller: is this alice walker? >> guest: yes. >> caller: my name is frank and i just want to call to ask, a long time ago i had written a paper at nyu about one of your books, one of your short stories called every day youth and i got a very good grade on it but i was always left with the question that the whole paper hinge on. and i am hoping you can answer the question. what made you name the husband in that story john thomas? >> guest: john thomas? >> caller: yes. >> guest: okay, it is then such a long, long, long time ago that i have no idea except that john thomas probably fit the character. >> host: alice walker, "the

same river twice", honoring the difficult, what is this book? >> guest: that "is about, i wrote that ten years after the film of "the color purple" was made, because the controversy over the story of "the color purple" had gone on for almost a decade and it was amazing. there were for five years when it was just hot and heavy, everybody had something to say, it seemed pretty a less, some of it was quite painful. but, i wanted to go back and look at it after ten years to see what we could get from it come what we have learned from what happened with the novel, the movie, the controversy, so that is what that is about. it is about writing a book that is controversial, having it fell by someone that many people disapproved of, steven spielberg and i liked very much, and going

on that amazing journey with steven spielberg and quincy jones and coming to the end of the journeyed with a really beautiful film, and really good friendships and really good, a good sense of what you can do collaboratively if you don't try to control everything. but it he can just trust people are going to do, first of all they are good people and they are going to do the best they can do. >> host: the next call for alice walker, a wilmington north carolina, you are on the air. please go ahead with your comment. wilmington? i will tell you what, we will move to the other coast. we will go to tacoma washington. >> caller: hello? >> host: takoma, you run the air. >> caller: hello ms. walker. i've a question for you about the third life of grange

copeland. it is something connected to the men in "the color purple" you talked about. people do things that you are male characters transform themselves and i was wondering where crownsville came from and where it was that grange was able to make the transformation but not crownsville. can you give an example as to was something worth thinking when you wrote the book. at it was one of my favorite books. >> guest: it was one of my favorite books to. it was so painful that i have never regretted. i get halfway through and i can't go any further. what i was dealing with, and i do this and some of my short stories too, is the fact that some of us overcome, some of us make it, but some of us don't, and our families are pretty much evidence of that. we can all look at people who did not pull through, so that is

what happens. grange finds the ability to love in himself, he loves his grandchild. brownfield is never able to love anyone and especially not himself, so he self-destruct and that is what happens to many, many people. >> hos next call, moran county california, just across the bay from where we are now. >> caller: good morning. i went to ask alice walker, do you have two or did you go through periods where you had to find and anecdotes to interferes that people would not like what you are writing, and how did you do that? >> guest: i thought that they probably would not like some things but i always knew there were some people out there who were very much like me and in fact never believed much in the

difference. i always felt that people were more like than the were different, so the artist in may rose to that occasion, that if i could create something that is so moving and that permits a kind of distance his sometimes need from what is painful, people will understand and understanding is basically what is fundamental, so i always felt that people are very smart and they are not so distracted that they cannot think, if they ponder whatever. jour offering, whether it is a painting or a novel, that they will, brown and this has been approved for instance by "the color purple" where so many people just hated it and hated me and thought it was terrible. and now when they go to see the play, they see this story and they are able to hold it and accept it and see themselves in seed we are not perfect, but we are really a life and we really

have a lot to share with each other. >> host: did you have an active role when the broadway musical was created? >> guest: yes. i was there as much as i could be. scott sanders, who was the very wonderful producer was calling me quite frequently with thoughts about the music and the characters and i went to talk to the musicians and sat with them and had long discussions about just what this is we're offering to people, because we are asking a lot. we're asking people to come and sit for over two and a half hours and to be open to transformation, and to be open to a few especially of the religious life that is quite different from most of the people who go see the play. many people who go to see the play at a very strong and in some cases quite rigid sense of what their religion is about,

and we were asking them to be open to a more animists, had a more nature directed you. >> host: speaking of religion, what your thoughts about the jeremiah wright controversy? >> guest: i think it is something that is probably going to be very good for us because we are in a time of intense learning. sometimes the only way we can learn is if things just bubble of that we are completely unprepared for, and then we have to scramble to try to understand what the heck is going on and i think that is what is happening. i think that he is providing a lot of information to people who would never think about it otherwise. and i think that what i would like to see is a reconciliation between obama and boot wright.

i think there is a lot of love there, i think there is a lot of hurt there, and i think the huge population of the earth has somehow gotten between these two essentially family members and they have to remember that they are family, that they are brothers, and that if they can get together and resolve this so that some of the hurts is assuaged, then we can have more faith that they can take care of the planet and in directing his flawed or wherever he is working now. i don't think he is the minister at his church anymore, but if they can get together and heal what has happened there, it will give us confidence, much more confidence in both of them that people, just regular people can also do that and that they can

lead, obama can lead. i want to see very much a healing of this very sad wound. i feel it deeply. >> host: is hillary clinton and a quince of yours or a friend of yours? >> guest: no,, hillary clinton is not. i have never met hillary clinton. my friend gloria steinem says to me, if you were in the room with her you would be drawn to her and that is probably true because i'm drawn to almost every but he but he i also feel it should not have to be in the room with her to be drawn to her. i think as much as i would like a woman as president of the united states end of the world, i don't think she is the right one. i think obama actually is a very good choice for now. >> host: right after 9/11 on september 22nd, you gave a speech and i would like to read a portion of it and allow you to expand on it. i remember laughing because one

of our leaders, perhaps a loss for something to say and put a quick us versus them spin on the dramatic events, call the pilots of the planes that had gone into the trade towers cowards. it was not a word that came to my mind at all. in÷ >> guest: yes, i think first of all we don't know what happened and i think i would recommend everybody get a dvd

called loose change, which will help our discussion about what exactly transpired at the world trade center and the pentagon. it is very important that we become much more curious about defense that caused us then to go to war, spend so much money that we need here but i was saying that if in fact -- i wrote a poem later about how we never know how transformation is happening, and so as the pilot was going into those buildings and also the other plane was going down in pennsylvania, for all we know there was a moment of transformation happening there but in the case i did not feel the people were cowards. i felt that, if they were in fact thinking that they had a mission, it probably had something to do with anger, alienation, and out frayed at

the behavior of our government versus their government. there are reasons why people do insane things. and rather than pretending that there are no reasons, we should try to face the reasons and change them. >> host: we're life at alice walker's home in berkley california. this is in depth on booktv. you can see pictures of her garden as we take our next call from warner robbins georgia. you are on with alice walker. go ahead. >> guest: hello. >> caller: for years i am learning about your different stories and i am excited to see. >> you. i believe you mentioned you began publishing your working chretien's. can you explain your process to give your early work published. "the color purple" was my favorite, where did you get the inspiration to write it and what

serve as your basis for it? >> guest: that is really very, very long. in fact i have already forgotten the first question. >> host: you were first published in your teens she said and how did you go about getting published? >> guest: i don't know about publishing a 19 spur guy think god colors debt stolberg college college -- spelman college in our alumni book, but i was writing in college and i was in kenya. i had gone to kenya when i was a sophomore or a junior in college, and i was helping to build a school and poland's started coming and i wrote almost all of that book in kenya. i came back to my school and i gave my poems to my teacher, and she was very impressed and love them and tried to get them published.

and, eventually they went to a blisher, harcourt brace company, and that company remains my publisher for 25 years, so i did not experience a difficult time. i was more interested in my own soul survival because it was an extremely difficult time in my life. >> host: who was mel leventhal >> guest: mel leventhal was the wonderful jewish lawyer that they married in mississippi. it was illegal to marry each other, and that was one of the reasons we did it, because we really understood that you cannot tell people who to love and who to marry, and we lived together there for seven years. he changed many of the racist laws by just he and other local lawyers, by just relentlessly

focusing on discrimination and working hard to transform a really cruel system. we lived in a great deal of danger. almost every week we had a calling card from the clan. it was so on one level amusing because you don't think the ku klux klan would have a calling card, but they did and they would leave it on our front porch. it is the one that says, the eyes of the clan are upon you, so we had a dog and we had a rifle and that is one of the places where we would have been violence, because we very much believe in defending ourselves and the thinning our child, who was one, too, three and four years old. rebecca, she started to grow up ther also was a time when the klan was firebombing a lot of people, some of them are friends. so, that is who he was and he is today my friend.

>> host: next call for the alice walker, we're going to take a break but the next call comes from manga qada minnesota. >> caller: heidi mrs. walker, this is jared. how are you doing today? i want to say first off, yes some awesome dreads, i love your hair. i read "the color purple". i think it is a great book but i was wondering your opinion on why we desperately need to reschedule cannas and also to impeach george bush before the next attack on america. >> guest: before the next what >> caller: before the next false attack on america, like the war with iran? >> guest: i think marijuana is the medicine and it should be available for people to use as a medicine. i think part of the problem with our culture though is that whenever we find something that is good and useful, we have a

tendency to use too much of it and until it's too much in it and really run it as a medicine. in fact, -- is the medicine that tastes terrible. it is so disgusting, you just have to force yourself to take it, but you know that you needed because it is going to help you with whatever psychic opening scene need to make. i was doing it once in circle with some other americans, just regular folk, who believe in all kinds of plant medicines, and even though it was so horrible and it makes you throw up even, they thought you could party on it, said they were over in the corner while the rest of us were gagging and trying to get through the roof part, they were over in the corner trying to party and to have. it was just such a complete misunderstanding of the

medicine, that it was just incredibly sad and we were working with a -- from south america who could not even understand this kind of behavior. there is no veneration, no reverence for the plant and this is what is happening i think with cannabis out there. i don't know if there ever was respect. i don't know if there ever was reverends but i certainly have not seen enough of it, so i think if we can restore or come up with respect and reverence for all of the plant allies and all the medicines that are here to help us, that perhaps the law will take care of itqelf because people would understand it as the medicine and not as the toy. >> host: does it taste as terrible as the first time you experienced eating see weed? >> guest: see weed viking pearson is delicious, and then of course love it, but is

dreadful tasting, and is truly disgusting. >> host: in the back of your house you have a beautiful old antique bed overlooking the garden. do you right here? >> guest: yes, or a nap. i love to net. >> host: do you ride lawn hander computer? >> guest: i write both. i wrote most of my books, all of the big thick ones in longhand and only later, because we did not have computers until recently. >> host: "the color purple", lawn him? get along and. there in spiral notebooks and i recently gave them to hammer university. >> host: ivan e-mail re in i hope i can get to it because it had something to do with that. this is an e-mail that came in. i recently had the pleasure of sitting next to retired amery professor richard long on a flight from atlanta to la.

i think richard was on his way to. after getting a lesson on the relationship between felonies dance and other forms of dance, our conversation turned to the subject of archives. richard is a dance historian. i asked them the same story with like to us now. is there any possibility for collaboration which spelman and amery share in the opportunity and responsibility of housing alice's capers, risa jenkins in san francisco. >> guest: that was one of the major points i made that the students of spelman would always have first dibs. they would always be referred people to use the archive. yes. but, i like amery. i can only go by my senses, my intuition and my feelings about people, and so when i went to spelman and went to uc-berkeley and the university of north

carolina, those are good places, but when i was at emory, partly because i have friends there, it felt much more peaceful and it felt more soft in some ways. in a good way. that is to say kind of more spiritually attune, and in fact the dalai lama has now been teaching there from time to time, so i think there is an awareness of the spiritual dimension and the possibility of really enlarging one's spirituality and using whatever is available already on earth to help us develop and grow so that we can basically save ourselves as the species. >> host: time for one more call before we take a break. arlington texas, you are on with alice walker. >> caller: hello, ms. walker? i wanted to ask you, what you call this spirit that drives you to do your work?

when was the last time you have been in love? >> guest: what was the last -- i am in love know. what was the first part of that? >> host: what is the spirit that drives your work? >> guest: this beard the drives my work is love. and that someone was asking me about "the color purple" earlier. when i was eight years old when to live with my grandparents, and i realized that they had never reprimanded me. they were very graceful and sweet to me. in fact, i actually made up my grandfather's the nets, and in a society like ours which is really quite pork, you did not ease the seed of anything because they needed the seed to keep going and you really should have scolded me but he did not. it is wynton borrows seeds from some morals, soy andrew stood

very early that there was such a thing as unconditional love and that i was fortunate enough to have it. i also am in love a lot it seems to me. i have had really many wonderful relationships, some of them lasting for quite a long time, so much so that i am concerned that all of this could have happened and i'm still here, but i think love is very elastic. this is a photograph of my parents, who had a very loving union and a great deal of respect for each other. >> host: what is the fault of say to you? >> guest: the photo says to me that my parents were determined to be coming in my mother's case, quite stylish even though the report and to have a certain attitude, even though they were not supposed to have an attitude. my father is very gentle they are, and very loving toward my

mother. they are looking at an itinerant photographer who would have been white, and at that time in georgia he would have been quite frightening to them, so i get that to, that they are looking at someone -- i don't know if they had never seen a camera before but they were definitely up for it. there were of relieving this image of themselves for their children and i take a lot of comfort from it. >> host: by the light of my father's smile, he wrote, it is a dead person who is doing the nir rating. is this your father who is speaking in this book? >> guest: that is not my father but it is the father, and it is like the universal masculine patriarchal religious person, who belatedly understands that he has created daughters who are sexual beings, and that being the case, what to

do about that, so he sets out to try to correct his errors after his death, and this is, i love this novel because it requires that the reader kind of a suspension of the everyday way of thinking about how we communate@@@@'ga'

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>> we are back live in berkeley, california, at the home of alice walker. there is a shot from her back garden, you can see. ms. walking, hanging down from the porch overhang are some banners. what are those? >> those are tibet an prayer flags. my sweetheart and i put them

up last night because we knew you were coming and we wanted to send out a shout to those in tibet who are struggling to hold onto their customs, their traditions, their faith, you know. i so treasure and appreciate all that i have learned from the ancient tibet an masters. especially i'm grateful for a practice called tong lin which is a meditation practice that is thousands of years old. and i also just want to show some solidarity with the dalai lama and the process between those in tibet in exile and the chinese government. because, as you know, those in tibet are under the -- well, the boot of china and a lot of knows tibet have been

killed recently, monks, a lot of monks. >> in the political world should the olympics be can el >> oh, yes. i don't think china should host the olympics as long as they are treating tibet so badly. some of the stories i have heard from nunns who were abused, they were in prisons that the chinese had for resistors from tibet, some of those stories are appalling. a lot of people died. a lot of people will never be the same. so i think, yes, they should not have the olympics there. not -- do the olympics mean something? do they mean solidarity with humanity? do they mean human rights and the belief that we are broenerx and sisters and we should treat each other with dignity? if they mean, you know, some

kind of thing about business, if they mean something about, you know, just taking whatever you can get and grinding people into the dirt, then they should go ahead and have them. but if the chinese are going to treat those in tibet the way they've been treating them, then they should not have the olympics there, it just would not be right. >> ms. walker, whenever you publish a journal entry, you're often writing to the creator. who is the creator? >> well, my view of god is that it's everything. so i may say the creator, but really i'm saying everything. whatever is here is god. i mean, there is nothing else here. the whole thing is it. but the spirit of it that i worship, you know, that i acknowledge as a kind of symbol of the unknowable really is nature itself and how i experience nature. >> well, we've been joined

here in the room by miles. who is miles? >> miles is the wonderful dog of my sweetheart whose name is garrett larson. and miles is a spirit who one day just appeared at the side of garrett in this little town in mendocino, and they've been together ever since. >> who is marly? >> marly was my black lab companion for almost 14 years. she died on the 25th of february. and i miss her very, very much. >> let's take some more calls. next call for alice walker on in depth is eugene, oregon. go ahead, eugene. >> hello, ms. walker. i wish i could sit down and have dinner with you because the list of questions i have is really difficult to narrow down. i have been informed and inspired by you as an activist. i've been a prisoner support

activist for 15 years. and i would like to know what or who informs and inspires you as an activist? >> oh, i was very much inspired by howard zenn, professor of mine at spell man. they actually went off to hanoi during the vietnam war in order to try to bring attention to what was happening there. and also to bring back some prisoners of war from this country who had been taken prisoner by the vietnamese. they were at the forefront of every, it seemed to me, almost erything that needed to be more clearly seen and discussed in the society. and this is still true. in fact, my professor lin, he and his wife alice who became lawyers in defense of the -- i think it's the coal miners

in cleveland -- not cleveland, but in ohio. every christmas they send poems to me. and the last couple of times they wrote about bujamal because they have been friends with mumia who has been in prison now for i think almost 25 years or maybe more by now. so it's been wonderful to see how, when you become active, you keep running into your old friends who have not given up either. i was also inspired by a young man that i met after college who now is a long shore man and who is at this moment i think trying to stop the ships from being unloaded at the docks in protest of the war in iraq.

so there are all these people. and a really good friend of mine, gloria steinham has struggled all these decades for the rights of women. wilma man killer, principal chief of the cherokee nation is a close and dear friend, a wonderful person. so i'm just really inspired by all kinds of pple. dennis banks also, someone is telling me dennis banks, who is one of the founders of the american indian movement, and he and i have had some amazing journeys from the time he was arrested in custer, south dakota until another time when he and i were in cuba together. just a great warrior. >> host: i think it's in your kitchen, but you have a letter in the cupboard from

alice and lin. >> guest: i don't think he became a lawyer, i think it was just alice. she decided she would become a lawyer and they work in defense of the miners in ohio. and they have had this incredible understanding that in order to do your best to help people, you should live among them. and i'm so impressed by both of them. >> host: and our next call is from ohio, macilian, ohio, you're on with alice walker. please go ahead. i think we lost macilian. so we'll come back to the west coast, fresno, california, good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon. i am in my heart a daughter of the south, being born in mobile, alabama, and being in mississippi, knoy what ms. walker is talking about. ms. walker, you are an inspiration.

and everyone who saw the color purple for the first time did not need it. being from a dysfunctional family, it was for me and my sisters. you don't know how many lives you have touched with that movie. so whenever that movie comes on, i always call my sisters who live on the west coast. if it's on at 3 o'clock in the morning, they're going to hear from me. there was one thing that i live by that whoopi goldberg said to mister. whatever you say is going to happen to me is going to happen to you. i live by that. you are truly a blessing and i am so honored to talk to you. thank you so much. >> guest: thank you, thank you very much. i know many people loved both the book and the movie. and people like you really made a difference to my life when it was being attacked by other people, because i knew that it was, you know, transform ative. i knew it could change

people's lives and help them to see the places that had gone off track. >> host: what were the controversies about some of your writings? i know some of your writings have been banned. >> guest: yes, one story was banned because i wrote very em pathetickally about a horse, am i blue. and the people who knew these things said it was anti-meat eating and therefore it was not suitable for 10th graders. so they took it out of the curriculum. >> host: they were serious? >> guest: oh, they were éê),

>> guest: criticism is always painful when it's done without love. and i think virginia wolff -- i read a lot of virginia wolff. i love her as a writer. and she would be so traumatized that she would just lose her mind. part of her madness was that every time she would write a book and the critics came down on it, she would take to her bed and she would start

hearing voices. this was so sad because she was brilliant. but i have dealt with that by basically not reading reviews and criticism. i just don't. sometimes people will send things to me, and i will read whatever is sent. if it seems to be from a place of balance, but a lot of criticism is very unbalanced and there is no reason to basically pay that much attention to it. >> host: matt jenkins, chattanooga, tennessee writes in, who are the most important african-american authors of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries? >> guest: i love charles chest nut who was a great short story writer. i really love lang ston hughes for, not so much for his poetry, but for his auto biography. i love margaret walker for some of her poems.

i love phyllis wheatley for what she means to us. she was someone who wrote, you know, while being enslaved, and who showed us that she could basically, you know, deal with the oppression and write her way through it. and even though we used to hate the way that sounded, because it sounded very 18th century white and new england, we still were able to feel her heart. i love some of the poems of done bar. these are all older writers and i'm deliberately mentioning them. i don't think many people relate to them. i love jean tumer who wrote a wonderful book called cain. like an aunt to me. >> host: you edited a book of o'neal?

>> guest: yes, i edited a book. there is james baldwin, ann petrie. there is coming closer to our time, there's tony morrison, there's sonya sanchez. tony k. so many wonderful writers. i've just been reading a wonderful play by pearl cleg, a song for coretta king. so very moving. there are too many to name. >> host: by the way, if you're just tuning in, this will be rebroadcast midnight eastern time 9:00 p.m. on the west coast. so you can watch the entire interview with alice walker at that point. plus if you want to see it on the web, about 15, 20 minutes after we end today at 3:00 p.m. eastern time, it will be available at book tv.org on our web site. phone numbers are on the screen if you want to

participate in our conversation with alice walker. 202-7 37-00 01. for eastern central time zone, 202-7 37-00 02 for mountain and pacific time. we're off the ranch and unable to get those e-mails in california. next call for alice walker, we'll try masilian, ohio. please go ahead. >> yes, are you there now? >> host: please go ahead. >> caller: yes, go ahead, sir. >> host: caller, please turn down your tv, go ahead. >> caller: the tv is down, i've been holding 40 minutes. we share backgrounds and an abiding interest i can tell in eastern religious traditions. a read the dialogue on god to our unitearian congregation. they enjoyed it a great deal.

when i was in south carolina, i thought of your poem from your book "absolute trust in the goodness of the earth." your poem, the moment i saw her, i see the woman making the sweet grass baskets there. and i have that basket on my kitchen table. i have two questions. one comes from the epigram that you put in your book of poems, absolute trust. it ends, it's by clarissa estes. it ends, a world in which there is a prevailing and decent wild sanity. and i guess i'd like you to speak to how you would characterize a prevailing and decent wild sanity. what do you feel it will take for our country to regain some measure of respect from the rest of the world after the eight years we've had with president bush? and thank you, and i'll listen off line. >> guest: well, the wild

decent sanity is what we have. we have so much more in ourselves of balance, sanity, knowing what is right, than we ever give ourselves credit for. and part of the problem is our distraction. we are so distracted. there is always a noise. there is always something on that we are half into, but i would recommend that if we could find the discipline to meditate, it would help us connect with that wild decent sanity that is there, and we have to trust that it's there. about what we can do to repair ourselves, i think one of the things is to look at this period which feels like a disaster, but to look at it as an opportunity to see how we got here. and then to try to look into

ourselves to see how we, you know, in our behavior, contributed to how we got here. and to work on that. you can always work on that even when there's no demonstration, there's no large happening, there's no letter writing campaign, there's nobody going over to put their bodies, you know, in front of the water supply in whatever country we're bombing. we can always work on ourselves, and therefore you know, be a wave of peace as we go about the world. it's going to take a long time, longer than we are alive, our children and our grandchildren, for people to look at us, at the united states in the way that they were looking at us before. but that's not necessarily a bad thing, because often when they were looking at us before, they did not see what was really here. i come from a background that

let me see from birth the inequities, the violence, the terrorism. we lived under terrorism, and i knew what we were capable of. so i feel, even though that was very hard, i feel grateful that we did not grow up under an illusion of what the country actually is. if we use this time to see who we have been as a country, especially the leadership that we have chosen or sometimes had chosen for us, and where that has taken us, i think we need to believe more in our goodness. we have a lot of goodness in this country. but it often just gets snagged off course by the people who have the money, who have the weapons, and who have the media. so it's up to us. it's up to us to be the

united states. wherever you go, just accept you are your country, and then behave in a way that makes the rest of the world feel that you're not threatening them, but that you're coming to be with them in a peaceful way. >> host: ms. walker, on the altar behind you are several items. and you can watch here. if you could tell us about some of the items that you have on the altar, we'll put those on screen. what's back there? >> guest: let's see. that candle, we can move that out of the way. i don't know what's on that. that was just to illuminate. >> host: a picture behind there, a couple of statues. >> guest: the sculpture of the skelton woman -- i love mexico, and i spend as much time there as i can because i love warmth. and it's taken me many years to understand that to me,

warmth is as important as almost as food. the feeling that people are connected to their inner spirits. so mexican culture is very good for me. but when i'm in mexican, what i love is that the artists are just incredibly creative and they make art out of everything. so there are two of those sculptures where the women are skeltons. it was probably the day of the dead. and i bought these for almost nothing. but they're perfectly formed. the photograph right in front of that one is amanata dia who -- she and i are standing somewhere in london. she had run away from mali trying to get away from being mutilated genitally. we met in london.

and pertiva palmer and i were making a film that included her story about her life. and i just loved her so much and couldn't imagine that anyone would harm her. and it felt exactly like seeing a slave maybe in the 1700s who had run away to canada. there's fidel. when i was in cuba on that trip, we had taken i think $5 million worth of medicine. a lot of it was antibiotics because they had fever a lot during that period. one of the things he said that was so him, well, you know, antibiotics are really not that good for people. and so -- but anyway, it was a nice chuckle because they really did need it. and he's reading one my books. and then this is maybe another trip to cuba where i'm with the children.

and when i realized that they don't really have a fear of americans, they know about the government wanting to blast them off the face of the earth basically, but they don't have a fear of americans, and that was wonderful to me. it was so great because they all just kind of put their faces up to be kissed. i felt very protective of them. >> host: and a photograph of nelson mandela, right, behind? >> guest: this was a photograph taken i think in l.a., my daughter and i were there. i think this was during a period -- i don't even remember t. was just an opportunity to meet this amazing being. i always felt very fortunate to meet him and to realize, too, that he and castro were very close and that fidel had helped turn the south african army away when it was, you

know, trying to smash -- i forget which country it was. but anyway this is a photograph at a demonstration. i think -- woops. we were demonstrating and marching against the war, and that's joan baez, bonnie rate, barbara lee and dolores huerta and me. barbara lee is one of the most courageous people on the planet because she is our representative from here, and she was the only person in congress to vote against giving bush permission to -- not that he would have listened, but to bomb and to spend all the money on war. she was very much against it and said so. >> host: one more item before we take the next call. the pair of shoes that you have on the altar. >> guest: i travel with these

shoes because, especially after 9/11 and all of the sabre rattling, and we're going to go and get the terrorists, i would go to audiences and i would talk about the terrorists and i would have them hold the little shoes so that they could see just how the feet of the terrorists looked. [8

it just as, i'm going to write about that. i would be very interested to see what white women writers who have african-american children -- i would like to see what they have to write about this experience. i'm sure it's very interesting. and, in fact, there is a woman whose name has just not shown itself, who has written about her life with her

african-american sons, a very fine writer, too, and i'm deeply sorry i don't remember what her name is. and about bob marley, i had never met bob marley while he was alive. i feel, though, that i've met his spirit every year since i discovered him. he has meant a great deal to me. i think he has given us -- you know, artists give energy. that's part of what we do. and it's just -- it's free, you know. it's not like it's even a commercial thing ever. it may become commercial at some point, but part of what we do is we just give this energy. when you're from a part of the culture that is oppressed, it's a big gift because it means the people can keep going. and so i feel that bob has kept millions of us going.

and when you see him dancing when he's singing -- you know, he's a shaman. he's doing a shamanic kind of dance when he's singing. you see the purity of his giving. and i think that millions of people around the world have connected with that, all people. that is why he was so beloved, that he was completely free and giving the transmission of deep caring about each other and the planet. >> host: you write about hair being the human antenna. what does that mean? >> well, i believe -- i realized this not so long ago, you know how there is a part the bible whe i think it's esau and somebody. anyhow, the father who is blind knows them by their hair. you know, one comes and he feels his hair and it's all

straight and everything. that's whoever it was. then he feels the other one's head and his hair is all kinky and wooly, and that's the other one. and that's how he knows his sons. and so he then does whatever he does. and i think that on some level i feel that by honoring my natural hair and letting it be that antenna and letting it be that connection to the ancestors and to my lineage, that i remain recognizable as that person, as that creation. not so much that person, because as we all know, we go through so many changes, and this time is like that, and then we'll be something else. but i like the idea of living in that connection and not trying to change it.

so i feel that, for instance, the book that i so love that is almost too -- there is so much going on in it, i never try to teach it or anything. but i don't think i could have written that novel if my hair was any other way than it is. host: which book was that? >> guest: the temple of my familiar. >> host: and it's stacked in here somewhere. i apologize for not -- >> guest: that's okay. it's the biggest one. it's a thick book, very beautiful covers usually. >> host: port st. lucy, florida, you're on with alice walker. >> caller: hello, alice. i, too, watched the second plane fly into the second building. you come in under the motivation of the pilots, such as anger and so forth. i have a comment and a question. i myself felt it was an

attack by muslims, by those that had attacked us previously. so it was not a surprise to me since bin laudin had already warned us a few years before that. the big problem to me is the misinterpretation, or in other words, to explain the motivation, has to do with the brain washing of muslims by the interpretation of the -- or the misinterpretation of the koran, and more importantly the certainty of god, since god cannot be proven, to me it's uncertain. my question has to do with the certainty and the use of the word agnostic. i am a deist. i know nothing about god, so i say i am an ag nothing tick deist, using the word as an adjective to let people know

that i'm uncertain of what i believe, so it's not a facd. do you believe or could you see where that might help solve the problem worldwide if people all knew they did not know? thank you. >> guest: yes, yes, i think that's excellent. i think that's excellent, yes. i think it would help so much if people just said, yes, i don't know. how can you know? you know, how can you know? it's so amazing, it's so incredible. i look at my plumtree every year and it produces plums. how does it do that? i have no idea. so yes, i agree with you. on the question of islam, i would like very much to recommend a book called

"infidel" by ayan harsey ali. if we want to understand all of our religions, rather than listen to the people who have been running it down to us all these years, we should listen to the women who are now free to write about it. she's not so free to write about it because she was upped the threat of death -- under the threat of death for quite a while. she still may be. it is an incredibly useful, clear, strong book about islam and should be read by people, just really broadly so that we can have a real discussion about what this is we're talking about. some people think we're talking about farakhan. maybe you are. not you specifically, but maybe people are. but it is essential to go to the root of whatever is being discussed, you know, especially now at this time. we can't afford not to know. and we can't afford not to understand how all of these

religious thoughts impact on the lives of the people who have to, you know, deal with them, especially women and children. so, again, "infidel" by ayaan hirsi ali. a really amazing eye opening book. >> host: kansas city, missouri. kansas city hung up. let's come back to california. sacramento, california. you're on with alice walker. go ahead with your comment. >> caller: yes, ms. walker. i am a 73 year old black senior citizen. i'm living in a community that i'm facing racism and bigotry. i've had invasion of my civil rights. i got in touch with the legal situation and i'd like some kind of maybe suggestions from you on what are the

steps i should sake. >> guest: oh, gosh, i don't really know what steps you should take. do you have a circle of friends that you can sit with and all of you together can brain storm about this? which brings me to this thought that i would like to is that ier. this is not a time to try to solve your problems by yourself or by even, you know, talking to one other person. but it's a time of circling. it's a time of actually having a steady group of people that meets maybe once a month or every two weeks where you can be absolutely honest and talk about all the things that are happening in your life that you need some counsel with. we can't do it alone, and that's okay. in our culture we thought we could. but it turns out that when one person is elected or

selected to be the leader, that one person can do things that are so horrible that the rest of us are injured forever. >> host: you write an essay about orchid. you delivered a message to the african-american yoga instructors. here's a comment you can explain. is american society culture a rotten log? a burning tree james baldwin thought we were turning into? perhaps we should not try continuing to live here. i have friends saying bitter sweet good-byes and leaving. they point to what is for them the final straw after the stolen election of 2000, the disenfranchisement of black people, the growing suppression of women's rights and burgeoning intolerance the way drug addiction is changing the characters of humans?

i understand their position, however, if we can learn how to blossom in our rotten log, our ordinary tree or perhaps save enough of the burning house to live in in peace, how exactly do we accomplish that? >> well, i think this is a very good topic for african americans because we have been so discouraged and felt so much like it's impossible to live here and to be happy. but my point there is that i have actually known many people of color here who are happy and there is a way to do that and part of that is to be connected to nature and to your friends and to -- it has been very cruel and very painful. yet many of us thrive. we thrive as artists, as

writers, as poets, and really as musicians. we are just so fruitful and so wonderful. so, you know, i think it says that, you know, we just deal with it as best we can. and we have a life that is directed at what is really valuable and what is wonderful. >> host: live here from alice walker's home in berkeley, california, santa cruz, california, good afternoon. >> caller: greetings. i'm sitting here in a nice garden in santa cruz. with any luck you'll be able to hear some happy birds. along with that last question about despairing because you see so much the poisoned earth, there is a great gorilla gardening movement going on and there are a lot of opportunities. the more land is eased by the powers that be, the more opportunity that we have to put gorilla gardens on those properties and if you plant a little hemp out there,

they'll lose their property. i wanted to ask you about your investments. people like alan ginsburg, for example, invested in his comrades and friends. as i was looking at the list of books that you were recommending, you were talking about howard zinn, for example. i wonder if you are spending some of your invested money in other authors, other oprtunities to advance civilization like that. for example, alan ginsburg has a long history of getting book contracts for his associates. i'm just wondering if you've worked along those same lines. >> guest: yes, i founded a publishing company. i published six years and i published people who would not have been published.

cooper, you may have heard of her. i've also endorsed -- i'm pretty much strop now because i'm tired. but i've been doing it for @@@)

>> guest: um-hm. >> caller: my name is glenn juan from san juan, puerto rico. because of the success of the color purple, people are discovering your other novels. the images in your work have stayed with me for so long and i was wondering whatever happened to if you wanted to try to make possessing the see yet -- secret of joy into a film. you have such powerful images there. i'm always struck by the final scene where your main character is going to be shot by a firing squad and her friends and family members unfurl the banner in front of

her that says resistance is the secret of joy. i have one other question, too, that i wanted to ask you. in the novel push by the excellent writer sapphire, her main character is a literal young woman who is an incest victim. and she learns to read and her literacy class reads the color purple. and sapphire, i knew sapphire in new york city. and she always expressed that she would have loved to have met you because, you know, so much of her novel references your work and the codverer purple through the story of her main character. and she knew your daughter rebecca in brooklyn and i was wondering if you ever got to meet sapphire or gotten a chance to read push. >> guest: the latter first. i have not read push.

i feel this is one my friend gloria steinham would say desserts in my life. i'm going to read some of the writers that i missed. i did hear wonderful things about her book, and i'm glad you read it. about possessing the secret of joy, i'm still trying. i think if we could make a movie of possessing the secret of joy. we could save millions of children from the terror of being held down and mutilated june tally. i have recently asked some people that would be excellent producers if they would could take it on. many people who want to do this kind of thing are already so bogged down with projects and really good things that they're already doing. that's one of the things

about activism and people with heart. they're just overloaded, as i have been. i have felt at times that unless everybody could step up to the hoop and help hold up the world's hoop, it was going to fall. and so a few people are always trying to hold it up, but really everybody has to do it. so i'm hoping for the film but i understand it will probably be a very long shot. >> host: you write from time to time you cancel your newspapers and turnoff the news. are you in one of those periods right now? >> oh, yeah, i can take news fasts very much easily. i like very much i can use youtube and the news on my computer so that i can get just what i want to read. i don't appreciate being inundated with a flood of information and images that have little to do with my life

because it's invasive and like eating bad food. and i am very careful about what i eat and i'm very careful about what i let into my body because if you have images coming into you, it's like being filled up with a lot of chaos. i would much rather meditate and have a clear mind and an open space in my mind. >> host: sitting here with stacks of alice walker-written books, fiction, poetry, nonfiction, essays. another stack on the table, 25 in total, is that correct? >> guest: i think it's 30. i've never counted. sometimes i speak, they say it's 28, or 29, it's between 25 and 30. >> host: next call, sherman oaks, california. >> caller: hi, miss walker. >> guest: hi. >> caller: can you hear me?

>> guest: yes. >> caller: what really concerns me is that people like you and all those who are, for lack of a category, of seeking out peace in the world and love in the world have been so focused on the hatred towards the present horrors that we've done to iraq as if it all started in 2003. and i wonder what you have to say about the fact that -- and there are a couple questions i hope you'll let me ask, that we started attacking iraq and killing them since 1990, '91 with the older bush. we then went under sanctions by bush, killed a million and a half people denying chlorine for their water, met

sins under the dual use. president clinton never took any blame, so a million and a half people, 500,000 children died, mostly from painful dehydration from diarrhea, but now we've continued with another war. it seem because bush is so hate offul and on the right more than any other organization. there is a man they've had on c-span who runs a program called emergency, which opens hospitals in war torn zones just to treat wounded civilians from wars and analyzed afghanistan and other wars and came up with the fact we've gone from 17% in world war i, since world

war ii, 90% civilians, which essentially means every war we fight must be called what it is, a genocide. >> host: thank you, caller. alice walker. >> guest: yeah, i'm not one of those who just thought it just started. i've been writing about it since i was a teenager. i think that maybe on this program we haven't been able to go back to, you know, '91, but i remember marching band. i remember, you know, writing about it then. so, you know, i don't know. i mean i think it's true, as my teacher, howard zenn says. war is as reprehensible and objectionable as cannibalism and slavery which sometimes hammes in war.

so it's an evil. it's a terrible affliction that human beings impose on themselves. and i actually have done as much as i think i could do and still maintain a reasonable amount of health in oppong wars we are -- whether they are against iraq or cuba or whatever wars they've been. i just don't believe in war. so i don't remember the last part of your question, but you know, all that you say is true. i mean, it makes sense. and it's incredibly painful and it's very hard to bear that we as a country are doing these awful things to people, all of those children. i remember, i think it was in the '90s when someone said to madeleine albright, well, you

know, and this is the first round or maybe the second round with iraq, but there were 500,000 children that had been killed. and i don't know if they had been killed out right or they died from kohl ra or the water system being terrible. but she asked whether this was okay, the price was worth it. we could go in and do whatever destruction we were doing. she said she thought the price was okay. so, you know, this is the kind of thinking. she may say she didn't say this. i hope not. that would be great. but the kind of thinking, whether it's men or women who talk about, you know, any child losing its life being okay, that's not good. that's wrong, in my opinion. and also if you talk about, you know, obliterating countries as hillary has

recently said about iran, this is a dangerous thing that we should not except at all. we should take statements like that very seriously. when you say you're going to obliterate a country, how many children in those little tiny shs are you planning to obliterate? be really conscious of who you're obliterating. >> host: you dedicate one of your books to water. >> guest: yes. >> host: why? >> guest: well, water is -- the ancient way of thinking of water is that it has feelings and it has emotions. so if we feel that water, you know, we get near water, we always feel so good if it's pure water and we swim in it, we drink it. it's such a spiritual gift. . . .

i have done a lot of reading about plant medicine and the old religions such as w.i.c. the and i wondered whether not you could comment on reverence for nature as a religion and how you see it in during in a country that is so dominated these days by the religious right and seeing kind of only one flavor of religion

as being the right way? >> guest: lucky for us, i think the earth will win. i think you are this going to win in any case, no matter what happens in the he is mill lot of relief because as a symbol of everything earth is when i worshiped. so, i think for those of us who have this in a feeling of reverence for it, we should just continue and bring that more into the open and make earth is center of our, make it, show it as the divinity that we feel it is. >> host: it is about 11:00 a.m. currently on the west coast. the marine layer is burning up the san francisco bay area. where live from alice walker's home in berkley california. one more hour to go with our guest in we will be right back.

podcasts. >> host: back leavitt alice walker's home in berkley california. it is then that from day and the pulitzer prize-winning author is our guest. we're here in the altar room. one more hour to go. alice walker, you are the youngest of eight siblings. how many are still alive? >> guest: for. >> host: are you close to them? >> guest: i am not as close as i would like to be. partly because they live on the east coast and i live here, but we're close enough. >> host: so many of your books are about relationships, why is that? >> guest: i think we're all trying to figure it out and we all understand it is for relationships that we grow, and

i am very curious. that is the most outstanding trait in my character. i want to know, so i have always put myself in the positions with other people so i can learn who they are, what makes them tick and all of that, and it has been fascinating. >> host: the numbers are on the screen, if you would like to participate (202)737-0001 eastern central time zones, (202)737-0002, mountain and pacific time zones. no e-mails today because we are in california and not back in our studios. we will continue with our conversation with alice walker. fairview heights illinois, you are on the air. >> caller: hello alice. i just have goose bumps. the first thing i want to say is that your book, everybody has talked about "the color purple" and it is a wonderful book without a doubt but what i

thought was a stunning was your third life of grange copeland. [inaudible] >> host: caller, why did you like this book? >> caller: i still remember it, but she describes the scene in there were think the lady is abused and she is going, she went to get some food and she was attacked by a guy. her description of how the food falls out of the basket and how the apple raul's on the ground. she took the most simple movement and described it in such a way that i had never read before, and it just stuck with me. it is kind of on a similar theme as "the color purple", but it is a wonderful book. i don't think people are aware of it because once you've read

"the color purple", all of the books became popular. i thought the third life of grange copeland was wonderful. you mentioned earlier about one of my favorite authors -- and i am looking for new books, and if you have contact with her. and you look so wonderful. what is it that you are doing? >> host: let's leave it for those three questions. thanks for calling in. >> guest: well, jay california cooper. i think she listened well like california and i believe she is still writing and she is funny as can be. when i met her, i met her through her daughter, paris. that is a whole story there because her mother want to go to paris, but she got pregnant with paris and named her daughter

paris instead of going to paris, so then she began to be played right. her daughter paris took me to see one of replaced, and i love the play. i said to her, do you have any desire to turn your plays into short stories? she went right home and turned her place in the short stories, and i was able to publish her first book called, a peace of mind. so, on the question of what i am doing, i don't know. i am just living my life and being very happy in lot of the time. but, also eating really well and walking a lot, so maybe that is what it is. >> host: her first question, the third life. >> guest: "the third life of grange copeland". i want to write a novel about the struggles of the sharecropper family. i was interested in how three

generations of people, with this as a foundation, how would they fair. so much has been destroyed and so much is just exhausted by the second generation, and then the third generation, what would go on there. i wanted to do things, just as you described, i wanted to write in such a way that the apple rolls out of the bed, i want you to feel the sadness of the apple falling as this woman has been shot in the face, and that part of "the third life of grange copeland" unfortunately is based on something that happened, a classmate of mine whose last name was walker actually, her mother had been murdered by her father and my sister worked in the funeral home where the bodies were taken, the dead bodies were taken, so catherines

mother's body was taken to the funeral home and my sister, who was a cosmetologist was required to make her up and do her hair. so, my sister was very upset and i was really fairly young, but i was the only relative she had, so she said come with me to see what happens to this woman whose husband and shot her in the face. and so, i went and i saw this woman in this terrible condition they were very poor people. you know, they have in the old funeral homes -- i don't know if they have them still but they have a basket did they take you to the funeral home and and then they have an iron fellow. so she is lying on his iron fellow and she still was wearing some of her -- one of her shoes and it was almost off of her foot so i could see in the bottom of virtue, there was a hole in the bottom of virtue and

she had used newspaper to cover the hole. and so, this woman's life then became something of incredible interest to me. how could this happen? why with this kind of rage built in her husband for her? he murdered her on christmas day. she had come home, carrying the groceries and the presence for the children that she could afford working as a maid and it's that time made maybe made $10 a week if they were lucky. so, i was wanting to share this kind of story with people to make you think about that moment and then all of the oppression, all of the abuse and all of the missed opportunities in the relationship that had happened prior to that. >> host: the temple of my familiar, alice walker told us

earlier this was her favorite of all of her books. the next call for her comes from oakland california just south of where we are right now. >> caller: hello alice. what i wanted to ask is, i am an artist who has been able to walk through the doors that you and so many others sought to open at the height of the black arts movement and i was wondering what role you see the new generation of black artists playing and what issues you would like to see? >> guest: i don't know. i think it would be good if you address the truth of what is happening. i think a lot of younger artists are doing that quite brilliantly , often in music and also in poetry, a lot of rap, a lot of poetry, a lot of hip-hop even though it has some problems. it also has a lot of energy and

a lot of truth. yeah, and i just tried to stay, i once was commenting in complimenting quincy jones on the beauty of his skin and i said to him, what you do with your beautiful skin? he said, well i just tried to stay in it, so try to stay in your skin and try to be as truthful to what you discovered in life as you can. and give it to us, just think of your art not is something commercial but as a gift and if you make some money, that is good because you should be taking care of, you should be very well taken care of because you are precious and who are priceless, but think of your art as a gift you are giving to the people and to the planet in something that will help us. >> host: quincy jones was one of your. he is.

>> guest: yes, when he first came to talk to me about making a movie out of "the color purple" i was beginning to do yoga, so that was very interesting to him so he immediately went through all of the poses with just this great fluid way, and it was just wonderful. >> host: next call, pratt fell alabama. you are on with alice walker. >> caller: hi ms. walker, nay is -- and you are one of my mentors. you can write -- barber streisand and jane fonda ran the world it would be a great place. i am a writer as well and i you've read a lot of your work. i wanted to ask the question about "possessing the secret of joy". the character, ishi based on, and i've had this question for many years, it is she based on the french philosopher --

especially thinking about her whole conversation of duality and the whole character of pierre and his dual racial and social background, that sort of thing. >> guest: note, i don't think i know this person. what was her name? >> caller: her name is -- she is a french philosopher. >> guest: note, no, no, lipset is probably my take on french women, some french women friends of mine. i ahead french women friends, and i think i was very interested in her having a relationship with adam, who is the husband of toshiki it was then mutilated, because it wanted to bring in that kind of intellectual scrutiny that many french women have, because they

have rigorously . she comes from a long line of french women who have been opposed to things like scarification, and utilization. and she is independently minded so she can easily take on the responsibility of raising and mixed-race child. and, so she gives birth to

pierre, who then comes to the united states, goes to harvard, goes to uc-berkeley, learns how to deconstructs the myth that is the foundation for white people mutilate young girls and mutilating cultures and he actually teaches this to tashi before she is executed. >> host: at hesitancy on the screen, we are showing a mass of yours that you have been a window. what is that? >> guest: that is a mess that i like, and i bought it somewhere, and it is just incredibly beautiful to me. i don't even remember where i got it or what was going on, but i just think it is wonderful. it is also wonderful because when you look at that, the aesthetic is that is so different from what people think of this beautiful and yet it is gorgeous. >> host: in your dining room, but young is on camera, he is

increases enough to let this wander through your house in joy to the world. but young is on camera. there is a huge painting, a green painting were going to show it to you. there is love, you just went past that there. >> guest: you know who that is? that is the beginning. he is just one of the great blues musicians and i've love him because as you may or may not know, a lot of the blues can be very derogatory and can give you the blues. but his blues is very high spirited and you always feel that he has a love of living, that he doesn't, he is not a misogynist and there is a great deal of playfulness in his character. i just am concerned that he towards so much. he is on the road almost always and he can be very young know, so i am at the stage in my own

life or i want people who have given us so much pleasure, so much joy, so much understanding, i want them to have peace and rest. i want -- if he is happy playing every night that is fine but the ever wakes up in the morning and says to himself, i would really just like to take a bubble bath and students have somebody beat me tea and cookies, that is what i want him to have. really i do. >> host: we'll have this image no of bbk and taking a bubble bath. how many invitations to get to speak, four of the ridings that etc. and how many do except? how many times to go out and speak? >> guest: almost never any more. i have three more things to do, maybe for that i agree to for this year. that is it for the foreseeable future because i have decided i want to spend this next phase of my life in meditation and

wandering, and i want to be able to meditate for as long as i want. i want to be able to walk and look at things in look at people, and to feel the blessing that it used to be on this earth with all of these very interesting people that i have no desire at all ever to harm. i just want them to be happy and i want to see them in their lives, just fall, so my sweetheart and i will be going on a journey in november to vietnam and india and sri lanka because i want to among other things come and get more of an understanding of how we can start to feed more people and make them more healthy so that when you do coded visit them you are not looking a lot of the impoverished people. you were looking at people who could look back at you and say, what is it?

so i have been very interested in this organization called heifer international. >> host: heifer? >> guest: heifer da capo. they have come up with an incredible thing in a catalog, the most important catalog he will ever receive and it is because you can order water buffalo, the cows, chickens, ducks, pigs, rabbits, all kinds of animals and you can arrange for them to be sent to people who don't have them, and then someone will go to them and teach them how to take care of them, how to get milk and make cheese and how to sell your profit and then, when your animal has a child, whatever, a calf or a pig, then you give that to your neighbor, give that to somebody else in the community. i am deeply concerned about the sustainability of people and how

they can keep going, how each child can actually be stronger than the one before it in each generation. so, i do that. i order animals for people, and now wants to see how the animals are cared for, i want to see how the people take care of them. the other thing i want to do is be more active in women and children healing aft the war. it is so devastating on women and children and they are the least thought of their. it is like they don't exist. so, those are the things i am more interested and then talking or writing. >> host: would you ever go to iraq? >> guest: yes, one of my good friends as iraqis. in fact the women who heads whitman for women international, which is a healthy women after war agency is in iraq the woman and every time i see her, it is

just almost unbelievable that we are responsible for just trying, our people, the country, the water supply, it is just beyond, almost beyond bearing. >> host: one more painting and then we will go back to calls, i promise. this is in your dining room. >> guest: that is a painting by monica and shoed along with barbara more as written a book that i highly recommend which is called the great cosmic mother, returning to the religion of the earth. it is an amazing but that if you have any desire to understand our connection to the earth as a divinity, this is the book for you. the great cosmic mother, barbara moore and monica shoe, and monica, she died last year. she was this amazing painter, and these are our three

matriarchs. these are the three, the asian, the african, the european, the mother's his work sustains us on this planet. they are the ones with figured out how to plant the grain and half agriculture eventually develop and they are the ones who do most of the work in the world. in africa for instance, most of the feeding of the continent is in the hands of women. >> host: next call for call us walker, san diego. >> caller: hi, i hope that your journey brings to the ultimate joy and understanding. i have a question about a recent conversation, a casual conversation in which the mentioned to an individual that i was a volunteer tutor in adult literacy and that i did mired my student who was able to find tools to survive as far as --

this students is 50 years old. the individual, he was very adamant and better that i would admire something like that in that individual, and said alacon could not read and write either. his response took me aback. i did not have the opportunity to add that i thought he had a great deal of courage to admit the need in seeking help. so in thinking about his response, i am wondering if there is any thing to admirer about anyone finding a way to survive and function and it's so , why? >> host: thank you. >> guest: is there anything to admirer about anyone finding a way to survive and function? >> host: that was the question, yes. >> guest: absolutely and even without an education. one of the things i learned from my parents and grandparents is

you have to be educated to be very wise, because they were very wise people and i admire them very much so yes, we do survive and we challenged whatever it is oppressing us. all of these things are admirable. >> host: rochester new york, you run the air with alice walker. >> caller: hi, this is actually minnesota, rochester. hi. ms. walker. it is nice to talk you today. i have been listening to the conversation and it sounds clear that the people, the gloria steinem dimension is a friend of yours etc.. it seems a lot of people would consider it a far left philosophy, which is fine and fear for anyone to hold. my question is, how i know it is important for an individual the matter what their philosophy is to read about and tried to understand the point of view of people who have disagreeing opinions or different ideas.

for example, i would like to know if you do any reading of conservative libertarians, the point of view of say i ayn rand for william buckley, people like that. just to understand their perspective as to what they -- i think is important for conservatives to listen to what liberals have to say. i think that is important. the the thing i had a question about is, what is your thought of condoleezza rice? she to me is a very inspiring individual. you don't have to agree with her politics. she is in the bush white house in a very high position, but i think her life story is fairly well known, growing up in alabama in the 1960's. the pastor is taken as inspirational. >> host: thank you caller. alice walker. >> guest: i have just been reading a book called wrestling with the angel of democracy by

susan griffin, and one of the things i really like about this book answers scrutiny of jefferson, because this is how i have to study. i have to study people, and i prefer to see them in this way. they have various places where obviously we're not going to agree. jefferson was wonderful about writing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the declaration of independence and really understanding on some level to the the god of nature is the one that connects with most of us, but there is that big problem of jefferson, the slaveholder, who did not liberate his slaves. he kept them. there were there when he died. there was jefferson had the black mistress, who was enslaved and he had children by her, all of them having jefferson's fiery

red hair. so, i have to look at people in that way, not so much in a political way really. all the buller flood. they have some things you really wish they did not have. so the rest of your question i have forgotten. >> host: condoleezza rice. >> guest: condoleezza rice. i find it really difficult to understand how she got to be a part of that administration. because it is so hard for me to believe that she actually believed the administration. if you were -- you are probably not a black person. you might be, but for me as a black woman, when i looked at her there with all of those people were dropping bombs on people of color, destroying their lives in their countries for generations, it is excruciatingly painful. it is like a nightmare.

it is like saying all of the struggle for real free them into real justice and real peace that people have died for, it is like saying all of that just completely ignored. so there you end up on the side of people who really don't care anything about that. you are on the side of people who disenfranchised black voters so they can win an election or get an election. so, i try to hold all people in respect as human beings, but i would have as much as a problem with her as i have with thomas jefferson. >> host: and about 20 minutes left with our guests, alice walker. we're kunar home in berkley california. if you'd miss any of this and you want to watch it, it will be available in booktv.org, also

had booktv.org you'll be able to find a list of all of alice@i pocket titled, why america may go to hell, so my question is, bill clinton was called the first black president in four years the clintons were personally and politically

involved with black civil rights issues and leaders. isn't it somewhat hard to believe that hillary was really so taken aback by reverend bright's comments? >> guest: yes, but i also feel that there is a lot of political talking and a lot of political thinking and a lot of political behavior, which is to say is not genuine and we should not be surprised. of the clintons are very political people, they always have been and i think that it is easy to say that martin luther king jr. would have been her pastor now. he is dead. i think it would be much more interesting to hang out with reverend wright and try to talk to him about issues that disturb you and to show some courage in the face of the reality, that

not everybody sees the world the same way you do and there is no reason why we should. this is so true, one of the things reverend wright says, he said that the people called enslaved on the slave ships and the people who were actually manning the sales in the captaining, they were dealing with two different gods, and if you think about that for half the second, you can see that is exactly how it would have to be. >> host: her blue body, everything we know, a book of poetry by alice walker and there is a poem in here, january 10, 1973. i sit for hours staring at my right can, wondering if it would help me should the judge who called him chimpanzees from behind his bench and what it felt port ours nick into the governor's coffeepot or drop cyanide into yours? yvonne have to tell me, i understand there the klee shade fantasies of 25 million

lobbyings that spring spontaneously to like every generation. it is hard for me to write what everybody already knows. still appears to me i've pardon the dead enough. >> guest: yes, well this is the essence. when we lived in mississippi, and you go through hell trying to get a case, some horrible horrendous case. shortly after we got there we discovered that someone, a man had tried to vote and they had shot him in its brain, literally his brain was under the truck that he had been in, and there were all these other issues, so you finally get a case to court and then there is the judge. the judge says you are a bunch of chimpanzees. so, what do you do with this thing here? what you do with it? what you do with the injustice? part of the time i was in mississippi it was so difficult.

i was very depressed allot but i also have to deal with the fact that it was very tempting to retaliate with violence and that is why the people who claim they don't understand suicide bombing, they just can't get it that people get angry and get fed up, i don't understand the thinking except to know they have never been deeply wounded by racism, sexism and injustices. that is a point of that period. >> host: portland oregon. >> caller: hello. >> guest: hi. >> caller: i am bringing a toast and a cheer, all the kindred souls that i hopefully can give voice to were admiration, appreciation for all your work and above all, for your raised, thank you. my question, have you ever been

stopped and/or threatened because of your hope will participate in offering in peace >> host: thank you caller. alice walker. >> guest: i think we all are. i think people who believe that we can do better, that we can do what has not been done before, which is have a peaceful our earth, i think we're threatened by the people and make the weapons and it doesn't have to be a direct threat. the earth poisoning is a threats. the way we can hardly as women got it night, that is a threat. i don't feel necessarily single out. i feel i am one of the many people who left to just accept that when you want something that is so different from other people and they feel they have the power to prevent you from having it, there is bound to be conflict and i accept that.

>> host: out in your garden you have a statute, you can see it on the screen. >> guest: key is the goddess of abundance, because one of the things that i izzo, i am amazed that. i started out thinking that, if i could just have one room, a fairly sizable room, and a bed in one corner in the kitchen in the other corner and a desk in the middle, that would be fine. i would be very happy. a nice view, but it seems to me that even though what i do have does not compare to great, huge heaps of stuff that other people have but it seems amazing to me. it seems amazing to me that i have a house. i have a nice house and it means something to me. so, this is the god in hindu ideology. they have all these gods and

goddesses and she is the god of abundance, and i just love having her there because she is such a blessing. >> host: were you comfortable materially before "the color purple"? >> guest: i was okay. i did not feel that i left anything. i live in a cooperative apartment. we had two bedrooms. my daughter had a bedroom, i had one and a steady and a little tiny dining room, living room combination and a galley kitchen. i had bought the co-op thing -- it is not an ownership but it was $11,000, something like that and i was very happy. i remember the date that it shifted. i was there working and my sweetheart at the time was talking, robert allen, and we heard over the radio that i had won the pulitzer prize.

i it just gotten over this long period of work where i was very distance somehow in the relationship. i just have this feeling that it was changing again and not necessarily in a good way. so, i have a great capacity for happiness, and it doesn't seem to be a happiness that hinges on possessions, which is why i am so surprised i have so much art. i have more art. i will buy a painting very easily. i love art. i just think it is wonderful. >> host: western massachusetts, your on with alice walker. >> caller: hi ms. walker, of my name is julie johnson and i mickey back in 1993. you had come down to the pine street inn. i was homeless at that time, and

i gave you a hug, and you said to me that is not the way you hugged someone, and you showed me how to hug some one. i tell that story to people and i appreciate what you gave me. it is an honor and pleasure to see you today. >> host: caller? please tell us what has happened since that time. >> caller: my whole life has changed. i am an afro-american woman. it is change for the better and some bad. i found out in 1993 that i was hiv-positive, and my world has just, i am helping a lot of women. i have now been working in the field of hiv for five years ago i started off as the pure person, now in a case manager and i am learning so much about

women in trying to write down so much from watching you. my world, i am so grateful that i met you. it is just change me so much for the better. >> host: thank you caller. >> guest: i would like to speak on the hugging issue, because most people don't know how to hug and i'm so glad that we had that moment when i could demonstrate the hug. many people feel that it is just one of those things, men do that that -- this lets each other on the back and they don't read. nobody bredeson hugging. it is a rare thing when you just really stay there and in fact if you do it in thatay, nothing is really happening. it is like when the missionaries came to hawaii, and the hawaiians at that time would always meet you, hold your head and you would exchange breath through the nose.

the missionaries were offended by that and they did not do it, so that is why white people to this day in hawaii are called hollies because it means without breath. the missionaries of these people had no breath. the same thing happens when you were trying to mug someone. for the hug to be real, you have to give yourself to it, and that means just dropping whatever weight you are carrying, stand there in its, breathe tenet's and bright and the essence of the other being. you don't have to breathe into the their nose, but you should breed in their essence in you should really be present for it and not in a hurry. if you do it in that way, you are real to the other person and they are very real to you. usx we feel the imprint of each other and it is something worth doing. >> host: the producer put this program together, we worked for five months with ms. walker and your people to put this together

to be able to come out here to our house. greg is directing, but rarely is the production manager. their all-out in alice walker's mirage for the of clean it out, so we had room to set up all of our equipment so we thank them. of young is on the roving camera, capri jeffries is helping him out. that is bob young's camera. karen alter room with us, jason medicare and mike bittle are on camera, thank you very much. written winter is doing audio and we have about ten minutes left, atlantic city new jersey. >> caller: hello? >> host: please go ahead. >> caller: it is a blessing to be able to talk to you. i have it's twofold question. do you think we in this lifetime where earl see leadership like martin luther king or stuckey carmichael and two, when you are writing the book "the color

purple" something was happening in your life in which you have to take a break. i remember this so well because you had to get with tarboro and -- to see if you could take a break. can you break that down? >> guest: i guess on the leadership issue, i think the time of the external leader is pretty much over. as much as i feel at this point barack obama would be a really good leader, i think essentially the leadership has to be ours. we have to lead and then the leader that we choose to represent us should follow us, and therefore we should elect somebody who is capable of that kind of humility. end also, we should think of ourselves as our own leader and not project on to people what we

would rather they do for us. now, about harpo's and sophia, i am not sure i know what you mean. the novel was written in about a year and i don't remember meeting to take a break. i do remember getting a divorce, moving to california, going up to the country, renting a tiny little cabin, and working on it in absolute ecstasy. it was the most wonderful experience to write. even the painful parts, i would be writing in tears but really very happy, so i don't know what that part of the story was for you. >> host: alice walker, you are also an author of children's books. what is this one? >> guest: "why war is never a good idea". i was so distraught that the united states government would even think of bombing a country, this was afghanistan, that

already had 700,000 disabled orphans. i just could not bear it, and so i thought, i was then the marches and making speeches and all of those things. you remember we were not paying any attention to the government, which went ahead and did all of the bombing in the killing, so i decided i would write and make this a children's book. there was it poem dedicated to children who had been blinded in war, and then turned it into a children's book and it is illustrated by this incredibly wonderful italian illustrator, stefano vitale and i take it around and i read it to people, lots of grandparents especially to understand come up partly because they are of my generation, if we don't teach the children really early, they really won't understand what war is and it will go off and fight

people that they should be playing with. >> host: and other children's book, to hell with dying. ocean shore washington. >> caller: hello. i would like to hug you and it's the same time i want to blame you. i am 82 years old. i lost my wife of 63 years recently and sunday morning is my time for housecleaning and i have not been able to do any housecleaning because of you. i have been listening to your program. i need your advice. i have limited income. which of your books should i buy >> host: alice walker? >> guest: why don't you try absolute trust and the goodness of the earth. it is a volume of poetry, and they think it would be very good for you. and, it is interesting you mentioned this praise and blame issue because that is one of the

things we really have to look at, that essentially praise happens to us, blame happens to us and as the buddha said, you basically sit there in all of it passes. that is what you learn. that is one of the wonderful things as being as old as your and as old as i am. we learned that, whether people praise us, what did they plame's is -- the next day something else is happening. >> host: why youext day somethig else i collection of poetry. for myself, as they get older i like to read things with a lot of space around them and i like to contemplate. i like to have a poem just be like some kind of wonderful seasoning in a dish and i am the dish, and it just keeps sending out these wonderful tantalizing suggestions of flavor, so i think he will find something in there that is really wonderful

for him. >> host: what is the toughest for you to write? poetry, fiction, nonfiction for political essay? >> guest: i don't find any of the tough. all of those books, i look at them and i miss mystified is you are. it is like, how did i write all of that and i know i was disciplined. i was as disciplined as most religious people are like marx, but i did not find any of the difficult. i found it all very joyful in the part of it that is joyful is to be able to do it. >> host: are you currently writing another one? >> guest: i never talk about what i am writing. >> host: let's call froze walker, a berkley california. >> caller: good morning. i want to thank you for your comments and consciousness radiating through my tv screen in thank you c-span. quickly two cummins. i would like to recommend -- at

the corner of oregon in sacramento. push is also my dessert list. i had a 20 year relationship with the authors is there. my question briefly as, your comments on michael eric dyson and the teaching recently in oakland. thank you. >> guest: i don't know if i can speak on the last part of that because i don't know anything abo it. did you hear him? >> host: michael eric dyson and mickey giovanti. >> guest: i am sure they do is wonderful, i think i need help support the garden that you mentioned, if it is the same when the carl linda was involved in. i believe i was helpful in doing the alternative power experiment that happened in that little

house in that garden. it is a wonderful garden and i am so thankful to live in berkley where people are into their gardens, so much so that last week when to buy plants and they were all gone, and that was not so happy. i would like to introduce my sweetheart here, if he is agreeable because he has made such an effort to make this shoot smoot. >> host: he has been very helpful. >> guest: this is skerritt. he plays a wonderful trumpet, just beautifully and loves charlie parker. >> host: who is the photograph of you in the kitchen? [inaudible] >> host: chris jorgensen, a symphony of the redwoods. earred larson has been very helpful and we also have nearly

the entire family here in the room with us. this is miles. we have not met, surprised the cat. surprises not surprised this. >> guest: surprised the cat did not even come to our own wedding. >> host: she is married? >> guest: i don't know, you know how cats are. we had a sacred ceremony, but surprised decided to stay upstairs and snooze. >> host: allyson walker, for the last three hours we have been live from her home in berkley california. this is then in depth. in may be 20 minutes or so, if you missed any in you want to rewatch this you can go to booktv.org and will be available on line, give it 20 or 30 minutes before we can put it up there. fatigue go to booktv.org confine the list of all of alice walker's books that we have been talking about today and some we did not have the chance to mention. this will reair tonight at

midnight eastern time, 9:00 p.m. pacific time. alice walker, thank you for allowing us to invade your home and enjoy the rest of your sunday. >> guest: thank you.