Alice Walker is one of the most influential and controversial figures in twentieth-century American literature. This collection of essays represents a dispassionate scholarly effort to comprehend the essential elements of her prolific imagination, which celebrates women by chronicling their troubled journey from silence to self-expression and from pain to resistance. The essays fall largely into three main groups, focusing on Walker's most famous and controversial novel, "The Color Purple," on her poetry, which has for too long met with critical neglect, and on her ecofeminist novel, "The Temple of My Familiar."