Editing Alice Walker (section)

==Early life and education ==

Alice Malsenior Walker was born in [[Eatonton, Georgia]], a rural farming town, to Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Tallulah Grant.<ref name=":5">{{cite book |last=Bates |first=Gerri |title=Alice Walker: A Critical Companion |url=https://archive.org/details/alicewalkercriti0000bate |url-access=registration |publisher=Greenwood Press |year=2005 |isbn=9780313069093 |oclc=62321382}}</ref><ref>Moore, Geneva Cobb, and Andrew Billingsley. ''Maternal Metaphors of Power in African American Women's Literature'': From Phillis Wheatley to Toni Morrison. University of South Carolina Press, 2017, {{oclc|974947406}}.</ref> Both of Walker's parents were [[Sharecropping|sharecroppers]], though her mother also worked as a [[Dressmaker|seamstress]] to earn extra money. Walker, the youngest of eight children, was first enrolled in school when she was just four years old at [[East Putnam Consolidated]].<ref name=":5" /><ref name=":06">{{cite web|url=http://www.emory.edu/alicewalker/sub-about.htm|title=About Alice Walker|last=The Officers of the Alice Walker Literary Society|publisher=Alice Walker Literary Society|access-date=June 15, 2015}}</ref>

As an eight-year-old, Walker sustained an injury to her right eye after one of her brothers fired a [[BB gun]].<ref name=":06"/> Since her family did not have access to a car, Walker could not receive immediate medical attention, causing her to become permanently [[Visual impairment|blind]] in that eye. It was after the injury to her eye that Walker began to take up reading and writing.<ref name=":5" /> The scar tissue was removed when Walker was 14, but a mark still remains. It is described in her essay "Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self".<ref name="Apr 20094">''World Authors 1995–2000'', 2003. Biography Reference Bank database. Retrieved April 10, 2009.</ref><ref name=":06"/>

As the schools in Eatonton were [[Racial segregation in the United States |segregated]], Walker attended the only high school available to Black students: Butler Baker High School.<ref name=":06"/> There, she went on to become [[valedictorian]], and enrolled in [[Spelman College]] in 1961 after being granted a full scholarship by the state of [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]] for having the highest academic achievements of her class.<ref name=":5" /> She found two of her professors, [[Howard Zinn]] and [[Staughton Lynd]], to be great mentors during her time at Spelman, but both were transferred two years later.<ref name=":06"/> Walker was offered another scholarship, this time from [[Sarah Lawrence College]] in [[Yonkers, New York]], and after the firing of her Spelman professor, Howard Zinn, Walker accepted the offer.<ref name="Apr 20094"/> Walker became pregnant at the start of her senior year and had an abortion; this experience, as well as the bout of [[Suicide|suicidal]] thoughts that followed, inspired much of the poetry found in ''Once'', Walker's first collection of poetry.<ref name="Apr 20094"/> Walker graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1965.<ref name="Apr 20094"/>