Walker was born February 9, 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia, about seventy-five miles southeast of Atlanta. She was the youngest of eight children, five boys and three girls, all of whom lived in a three-or four-room house in the country.

Her father, Willie Lee Walker, was a sharecropper and dairy farmer, earning around three hundred dollars a year. "Though it is more difficult to write about my father than about my mother, since I spent less time with him and knew him less well, it is equally as liberating. Partly this is because writing about people helps us to understand them, and understanding them helps us to accept them as part of ourselves. Since I share so many of my father's characteristics, physical and otherwise, coming to terms with what he has meant to my life is crucial to a full acceptance and love of myself.

"I'm positive my father never...