Alice Walker Is Very Happy, A Lot of the Time

Notes from America with Kai Wright

WNYC Studios

News Commentary, Politics, History, News

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2022

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After publishing 34 books, Alice Walker talks through her latest release, a collection of personal journals spanning four decades. Read more in Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker, 1965–2000, out now.

Companion listening for this episode:

Lynn Nottage: Unexpected Optimist (1/3/2022)

Playwright Lynn Nottage breaks down her remarkable career and shares how, as an optimist at heart, she finds the light and resilience in unexpected stories.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Do you, by chance, keep a journal?
0:03.0	Yes, I've kept a journal actually since I was nine.
0:06.0	Really?
0:07.0	Yeah, my mom keeps journals.
0:08.0	So I kind of wanted to be like her.
0:10.0	I was like, oh, I'm supposed to write my thoughts down.
0:12.0	And I've been doing it ever since.
0:14.0	I've been journaling since I was a kid.
0:16.0	I just think expressing your thoughts in a way that you feel comfortable or
0:21.0	you kind of just get in everything that you need to fill out and be sorting through your own feelings.
0:25.0	Does my notes count in my phone?
0:27.0	Yeah, for sure.
0:29.0	Has there been a moment recently that you felt like in the moment you had to document it?
0:34.0	Yeah, for sure.
0:35.0	So I'm going through like a little heartbreak at the moment.
0:38.0	And in the last couple of days, I've had many moments where I feel like I need to write this down
0:45.0	because it's just sometimes the thoughts in your head can be overwhelming, but when you write it down,
0:49.0	at least for me, I get clarity.
0:51.0	Welcome to the show.
0:58.0	I'm Kai Wright.
0:59.0	And I recently had the pleasure of meeting one of the writers who quite honestly shaped my understanding of the world
1:06.0	as I was growing up and trying to figure out what it meant to be a young black man in the 1980s.
	...

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