Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism

This is one of the most wonderful books I have ever read. Anybody who wants to know anything about the soul of Paganism should burn all of their "So You Want to be A Wiccan" trash and read Anything We Love Can Be Saved. Walker's connection to the land, to Mother Earth, and to Spirit is as Pagan as it gets. This book is profoundly beautiful, profoundly Pagan. She understands that we belong to this wonderful planet, and that real worship of deity is not possible unless we're free, including free to explore and revel in our sexuality. She understands our connectedness to other animals, the nonhuman ones, and espouses their humane treatment as well.

I am a lonely and sad person regularly. I would not describe myself as depressed, because depression too often has a meaning that the person is down due to misunderstanding. My sadness is borne out of knowing that worthwhile ideas, methods, and interactions exist, and knowing I am no longer able to participate with them. (Which ironically is an underestimated and underdiagnosed cause of real, clinical depression.) When I get too sad, I pick up a book like this one by an author who has an insightful & challenging voice. When I feel an absence of someone challenging me with new & good ideas, I pretend that instead of just reading Ms. Walker's books - I pretend she is in the room with me discussing her radical ideas and intent on keeping me company with her arousing ideals. I imagine she appreciates attentive feedback, and a willingness to thoroughly consider all her ideas, even when she is angry. And when I pause between ideas, I dream of a world that doesn't exist. I dream that most people would choose to act in ways similar to Ms. Walker. I allow myself to fantasize that most parents might choose to be less hypocritical and would agree to say for the sake of their daughters, "all I can promise her is not to lie" even if it "is painful to her, I believe nonetheless it is better than a lie. Surely better than the lies I was told - 'for my own good' - only to sniff them out eventually and become entangled in them." Then I get a peaceful, easy feeling and like a mad one, I choose to live as if "love is best expressed through truth," "Because to me, it is precisely our personal memories of joy and delight in each other and our present passions and loves that sustain us." p. 66 And like Ms. Walker, I stubbornly refuse to forget or to pretend those memories never occured. It is a lonely refusal. It may be an unwise refusal. But it is a less unhealthy refusal for me than hypocrisy. It is not a raging refusal (as Ms. Walker indicates it is in her at times). And it is not a depressed refusal. It is a clear, conscious, chosen & sad refusal. And in that existence, I thank Ms. Walker for her ideas, her stubborn voice, her words against likely failures, and in my imaginary world - her companionship.

I want to be Alice Walker when I grow up, too bad that job has already been taken.

i love alice walker, but i didn't get what i expected out of this book. i got more. it was so interesting, i read it in a day, causing people to ask me if i had something "due" (i'm a college student) soon. she's involved in some of the same issues that are important to me, including female genital mutilation. she presents the issues clearly and fairly, and gives her opinions on them. she also includes a theory of hers which i found so amazing i could not stop thinking about it for days on end (involving "mammy" dolls and marilyn monroe). i would recommend this book to anyone, but especially women. also, this book includes two of my favorite walker poems, "be nobody's darling" and "never offer your heart to someone who eats hearts", which i thought of as an added bonus.

That is how I feel about Alice Walker's book. I read it everyday on my lunch hour and I marked passages that were important to me. I want my daughter to read this book. One day her boyfriend got mad at her because she did not know what happened in the civil war. She knows thousands of other things - for example, she wants to spend part of her life trying to help AIDS babies - she just did not know why that was so important to her boyfriend. He has lived a different view of life than she has and I think that seeing things through Alice's eyes, the black experience for want of a better way of expressing what I am trying to say, will help her see and understand. I know what it is to be a woman and to feel the many things that I have felt in my life that have beat me down but I don't know it from Alice's perspective and I see things in such new ways after reading her book. I found her in an Anthropology class when I read Possessing the Secret of Joy....I was 48 then and I did not know there was such a thing as genital mutilation. I could not get over the horror of it. I read it, bought a hard copy, and also purchased warrior marks. I admire her work so much. She and Frida Kahlo are the top women on my list of women to hear. Don't miss this book!!