Alice Walker

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. * Choice *

Deborah G. Plant is associate professor of Africana studies at University of South Florida, Tampa, FL. She is editor of Praeger's "The Inside Light": New Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston and author of Praeger's Zora Neale Hurston: A Biography of the Spirit.

Series Foreword by Joanne M. Braxton Acknowledgments Introduction Section I. Earth Poem: "There Are Bad Women Walking on the Planet Now" by Phyllis McEwen One I Am the Earth. Two For Six Years I Do Not Look Up Three Everything Changed Four A Spelman Girl Five On My Own Terms Section II. Fire Poem: "A Message to Younger Sisters: Be Whole" by Phyllis McEwen Six I Would Only Be the Philosopher Seven Changing the World Eight Meridian: Coming of Age in Mississippi Nine Thought at the Meridian Ten Truth Teller, Freedom Writer Section III. Air Poem: "The Clitoris Knows When and How" by Phyllis McEwen Eleven Apologia: Honoring the Difficult Twelve Helped Are Those Who Know Thirteen A Woman of One's Own: Womanist Philosophy and Revitalization of the Sovereign Feminine Fourteen The Sacred Masculine Fifteen The Gnostic Gospel of My Father's Smile Section IV. Water Poem: "My Body Is a Farm" (For My Son) by Phyllis McEwen Sixteen Mbele Ach Seventeen Sub Rosa No Longer: Our Daughters Have Mothers Eighteen Absolute Goodness Nineteen Why War Is Never a Good Idea Twenty We Are the Ones Section V. Aether Poem: "Little Girls" by Phyllis McEwen Twenty-One The Cathedral of the Future Twenty-Two Caritas: The Greatest of These Twenty-Three Ouroboros Twenty-Four "Alice" Is Old Greek for Truth Twenty-Five Lapis Philosophorum Notes Index