Bily has a master's degree in English literature and has written for a variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, she discusses the poetic qualities of Walker's story.

Over three decades of continuous productivity and acclaim, Alice Walker has earned a place as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century. She has published six novels, two collections of short stories, two collections of essays, five volumes of poetry, and several books for children. Ten million copies of her books have been sold around the world. She was the first African- American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, for her novel The Color Purple, and several of her other books have been as well-regarded by critics and scholars as by the buying and reading public.

Walker has come so far from the young writer struggling to find her voice, it is...