{"product_id":"conversations-with-margaret-walker-9781578065127","title":"Conversations with Margaret Walker","description":"Margaret Walker (1915-1998) began her writing career as a poet in the late 1930s. But she was cast into the limelight in 1966 when her novel \u003ci\u003eJubilee\u003c\/i\u003e was published to wide critical and commercial acclaim. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e In interviews ranging from 1972 to 1996, \u003ci\u003eConversations with Margaret Walker\u003c\/i\u003e captures Walker's voice as she discusses an incredibly wide range of interests. The same erudition, wit, and love of language on display in Jubilee comes through in conversations, as well as her sense of moral authority--imbued by a resonant Christian humanism--and her attention to historical detail. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e In a long 1972 conversation with fellow poet Nikki Giovanni, Walker argues about the tribulations and triumphs of motherhood, the presence of black women in literature, and race relations in American culture from 1900 to the present. With Marcia Greenlee in 1977, she talks extensively about her family's history and her love of botany. In several of the interviews, her friendship with Richard Wright rises to the forefront. Even in her interviews with Claudia Tate and John Griffin Jones, in which the interviewers try to direct the conversations toward the mechanics and thought processes behind Walker's writing, the talks often sweep into broader issues of African American culture, family history, and the past's influence on the present. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e This collection amply shows that Margaret Walker was a writer who considered her work to be deeply influenced by the culture around her. She viewed her writing as part of her larger life and not separate or distanced from her existence. Bracingly direct, witty, and oddly charming, the writer in \u003ci\u003eConversations with Margaret Walker\u003c\/i\u003e is complicated, passionate, forceful, and piercingly intelligent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMaryemma Graham\u003c\/b\u003e, a professor of English at the University of Kansas, is coeditor of \u003ci\u003eConversations with Ralph Ellison\u003c\/i\u003e, published by University Press of Mississippi). She also edited \u003ci\u003eHow I Wrote Jubilee and Other Essays on Life and Literature by Margaret Walker\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eOn Being Female, Black and Free: Essays by Margaret Walker, 1932--1992.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University Press of Mississippi","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50357067940114,"sku":"9781578065127","price":32.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_c70a9ddc-b95b-47cf-8adb-c58b8e592db7.jpg?v=1728316513","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/conversations-with-margaret-walker-9781578065127","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}