During the summer of 1984, The Color Purple was listed as a required reading for students in AML 4275--The Afro-American Novel class at Florida A and M University. About half of the students had already read the novel, and the others were knowledgeable about Walker vis a vis her recent signal honor as the first Black woman to garner the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Interest and enthusiasm ran high, though it was partly mitigated by the students' inability to find bibliographic references for secondary sources. It was out of this need that we began the simultaneous tasks of compiling and organizing these listings and searching for a publisher.
This bibliography presents descriptive rather than evaluative annotations which are intended as a guide for the reader or researcher intent on exploring Alice Walker's social and literary philosophies and analyzing the growing body of critical exposition and interpretation of her work. Thus, every effort has been made to list references which either present significant aspects of Walker's artistic approaches or critical discussions of her work. The "Primary Sources" section lists collected works, recordings, and uncollected writings such as interviews, essays, letters, book and movie reviews, short fiction, and poetry. Secondary compilations feature bibliographies and indexes, biographical articles, unpublished dissertations, articles, essays, and reviews of Walker's works.