In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women

My son asked me to read a short story by Alice Walker. He was analyzing different writing styles for a writing class. I was pleasantly taken back by the way she uses certain details to communicated to those of us who are not literature major's. I bought several of her books. In reading them I found that she had retained a sense of her Africa culture. Her outlook is hoslitic and circular while most white writers write linear. The purpose of writing is to communicate and Alice Walker does that. Her writing is not pretentious but humble like the people she writes about. Her writing metaphorically legitimizes being black!

A collection of short stories that I first read for a Black Literature class when I was in college in the '70....and here recently, shared it with my book club as our book of the month. Ms. Walker's writing style makes you feel you are right there with the character. While each story presents different experiences of African-American women, women of all nationalities will be able to relate to the stories and the emotions. It's a fast paced book that is heart-warming, amusing, sad,....every emotion is touched.

Clearly no ground-breaking storyteller in the mold of Joyce, Ellison, or Hemingway, Walker IS, however, a very entertaining and resourceful author who is able to make up with charm what she lacks in originality and clarity of aesthetic vision. These stories, however, lean too hard against the trunk of Hurston's Eatonville folksy charm to make an indelible impression, and the sordidness which is featured in the narrative remains ill-conceived and dangerously ill-informed. For Walker's simple best, pick up a copy of her "The Color Purple", which remains landmark in its singularity of ambition and revisionistic approach to an otherwise- tired narrative form.