To Hell with Dying

Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker was born in 1944 in Georgia, United States, to Minnie Walker, a maid, and Willie Walker, a sharecropper. The youngest of eight children, Walker was a gifted student and was awarded numerous scholarships to continue her education, successfully graduating with a bachelor of arts from Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Walker’s work is regarded as staple writing in African American literature. Her experiences growing up part of a poor African American farming family living through segregation are reflected in her works, such as The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973) and The Color Purple (1982).

Themes that go on to define her work and contribution to literature and wider social thought are present in her first published short story, “To Hell with Dying” (1968). The story is set in the American South, and Mr. Sweet’s residence on a cotton farm, unattained ambitions, lost love, and depression within a tight-knit community are reminiscent of segregation, surviving the wake of slavery.

Walker’s most famous novel, The Color Purple, earned her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1982, making her the first African American woman to win the prestigious award.