高级英语第一册_Unit_4_Everyday_Use_for_Your_Grandmama.doc

Unit 4 Everyday Use for your grandmama Alice Walker 1.) About the author Alice Walker (1944- ), poet, novelist and essayist, was born into a poor rural family in Eatonton, Georgia. Her parents made a living by growing cotton. When she went to Sarah Lawrence College in the early 60’s, the civil rights movement was in full swing. She was actively involved in the movement and upon graduation worked in Mississippi, center of the civil rights activities. After experiencing the political movement and as a case worker for the New York City welfare department, she became a teacher of creative writing and black literature, lecturing at Jackson State College, Tougaloo College, Wellesley, Yale and University of California at Berkeley. Her writing career began with the publication of a volume of poetry in 1968, which was followed by a number of novels, short stories, critical essays and more poetry. Now she is regarded as one of the most prominent writers in American literature and a most forceful representative of women’s literature and black literature. Her works include The Thrid Life Grange Copeland (1970), Meridian (1976), a volume of poetry Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems (1973), a collection of short stories In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973) and a recent novel The Temple of My Familiar (1989). Her most significant novel is The Purple, published in 1982, which won all the three major book awards in America – the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The novel was an instant bestseller and made into an equally successful movie in 1985, directed by Spielberg and starring Whoopi Goldberg. Alice Walker is at her best when portraying people living in the rural areas where the writer was born and grew up. As a black writer, Walker is particularly interested in examining the relationships among the blacks themselves. 2.) “Everyday Use” (1973) is included in the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 2nd Edition,