Editor's Note p. vii
Introduction p. 1
Cast Out Alone/To Heal/And Re-Create/ Ourselves: Family-Based Identity in the Work of Alice Walker p. 5
Walker's Celebration of Self in Southern Generations p. 25
The Black Woman Artist as Wayward p. 39
Walker's Blues p. 59
The Color Purple: Revisions and Redefinitions p. 67
Walker's Women p. 81
Discourse of the Other: the Third Life of Grange Copeland p. 97
Black Matrilineage: the Case of Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston p. 115
The Changing Same: Generational Connections and Black Women Novelists p. 135
The Hoop of Language: Politics and the Restoration of Voice in Meridian p. 153
Show Me How to Do like You: Didacticism and Epistolary Form in the Color Purple p. 185
Clytemnestra's Children: Writing (out) the Mother's Anger p. 195
Writing the Subject: Reading the Color Purple p. 215
Chronology p. 229
Contributors p. 231
Bibliography p. 233
Acknowledgments p. 237
Index p. 239