gathering blossoms under fire the journals of alice walker

(Photo: Phields Photography)īasu continued: “It was Valerie’s mission to get involved with what she saw as worthy projects by women of color. 6, 2013, at the Ferst Center for the Arts, Georgia Institute of Technology. Alice Walker and Toni Morrison and a couple others, and Valerie was just thrilled to find entries like that.” Alice Walker and Valerie Boyd in conversation about the movie, “Beauty in Truth,” on Nov. “I remember once that she found this passage where all the Black female titans were there at a dinner. “I know it was a labor of love and a joy for her to do this work,” Bentley said. Rosalind Bentley, another close friend of Boyd’s, recalled how she would spend hours at the Emory University Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library combing through Walker’s papers. “Alice was one of Valerie’s idols and the opportunity to edit her idol’s work through such personal writings was an incredible honor for Val,” Basu said. With Walker, Boyd knew it was her calling to help another one of her idols.

Zora Neale Hurston, who was the subject of Boyd’s book, “Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston,” was another idol. Boyd became a writer because she was inspired by the writings of Toni Morrison. Basu said Boyd was influenced by three great Black female writers. There were boxes and boxes of papers and journals and Valerie asked Alice, ‘why are you doing that alone?’ I said, ‘yeah, you need an editor’ and that was the start of conversations of what this book might look like.”īoyd was so excited about the publication of the book, according to Basu. “I remember the three of us were in an informal conversation and Alice was talking about going over to Emory to look through her papers and she was talking about what a daunting task that was. Walker was in town to lead a program at Spelman College that Boyd moderated, and Basu, who was working at CNN at the time, interviewed Walker after the talk. It seemed like a perfect fit.”īasu remembers the night that Boyd offered to help Walker with the project.

“Like Alice, Valerie was so strong and such a masterful writer. “If there was ever an editing role for Valerie, this was it,” said Moni Basu, Boyd’s friend of nearly 30 years. On this bittersweet day, “ Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker,” a book edited by Valerie Boyd, is published nearly 10 years after the project began-and, two months after Boyd’s death.

Gathering blossoms under fire the journals of alice walker