Editing Alice Walker (section)

==Personal life==
In 1965, Walker met [[Melvyn R. Leventhal|Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal]], a Jewish civil rights lawyer. They were married on March 17, 1967, in New York City. Later that year, the couple relocated to [[Jackson, Mississippi]], becoming the first [[civil marriage|legally married]] [[interracial]] couple in Mississippi since [[miscegenation]] laws were introduced in the state.<ref name="entertainment.timesonline.co.uk">{{cite news|url=http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3866798.ece |title=The day feminist icon Alice Walker resigned as my mother |newspaper=The Times |location=London |date=May 4, 2008 |author=Driscoll, Margarette |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080511201732/http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3866798.ece |archive-date=May 11, 2008 }}</ref><ref name="democracy">{{cite news|title=Inner Light in a Time of Darkness: A Conversation with Author and Poet Alice Walker |work=[[Democracy Now!]] |date=November 17, 2006 |url=http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/17/1454228 |access-date=June 14, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070613182120/http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06%2F11%2F17%2F1454228 |archive-date=June 13, 2007 |url-status=dead }}</ref> The couple had a daughter, [[Rebecca Walker|Rebecca]], in 1969. Walker and her husband divorced in 1976.<ref>{{cite news |url= https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2007/may/26/familyandrelationships.family2 |title=Can I survive having a baby? Will I lose myself ...? |newspaper=The Guardian |date=May 26, 2007 |location =London |author=Krum, Sharon}}</ref>

In the late 1970s, Walker moved to [[northern California]]. In 1984, she and fellow writer [[Robert L. Allen]] co-founded Wild Tree Press, a feminist publishing company in [[Anderson Valley]], California.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://testaae.greenwood.com/doc_print.aspx?fileID=JBP&chapterID=JBP-3181&path=encyclopedias/greenwood|title=Black Book Publishers in the United States: A Historical Dictionary of the Presses, 1817–1990|publisher=Greenwood Press|location=Westport, CT|date=1991|website=The African American Experience|first=Donald Franklin|last= Joyce|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131203010208/http://testaae.greenwood.com/doc_print.aspx?fileID=JBP&chapterID=JBP-3181&path=encyclopedias%2Fgreenwood|archive-date=December 3, 2013|url-status=dead}}</ref> Walker legally added "Tallulah Kate" to her name in 1994 to honor her mother, Minnie Tallulah Grant, and paternal grandmother, Tallulah.<ref name=":06"/> Minnie Tallulah Grant's grandmother, Tallulah, was [[Cherokee]].<ref name=":5" />

Walker has claimed that she was in a romantic relationship with singer-songwriter [[Tracy Chapman]] in the mid-1990s: "It was delicious and lovely and wonderful and I totally enjoyed it and I was completely in love with her but it was not anybody's business but ours."<ref name="Wajid">{{cite news |url= https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/dec/15/gender.world |newspaper=The Guardian |date= December 15, 2006 |title= No retreat |access-date= May 26, 2013 |location =London |author=Wajid, Sara}}</ref> Chapman has not publicly commented on the existence of a relationship between herself and Walker and maintains a strict separation between her private and public life.<ref>{{Cite magazine|last=Pond|first=Steve|date=1988-09-22|title=Tracy Chapman: On Her Own Terms|url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/tracy-chapman-on-her-own-terms-60993/|access-date=2021-01-25|magazine=Rolling Stone|language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|date=2002-10-15|author=Aurélie M.|title=2002 - Tracy Chapman still introspective?|url=http://www.about-tracy-chapman.net/2002-tracy-chapman-still-introspective/|access-date=2021-01-25|website=About Tracy Chapman|language=en-US}}</ref>

Walker's [[spirituality]] has influenced some of her best-known novels, including ''[[The Color Purple]].''<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lackey|first=Charlie|date=Spring 2002|title=Soul Talk: The New Spirituality of African American Women|journal=MultiCultural Review|volume=11|page=86|via=Women's Studies International}}</ref> She has written of her interest in [[Transcendental Meditation]].<ref>{{cite book |title= Circling Faith: Southern women on spirituality |author1=Reed, Wendy |author2=Horne, Jennifer |publisher=University of Alabama Press |year=2012 |page=185 |isbn=9780817317676}}</ref> Walker's exploration of religion in much of her writing draws on a literary tradition that includes writers like [[Zora Neale Hurston]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Freeman|first=Alma|date=Spring 1985|title=Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker: A Spiritual Kinship|journal=Sage|volume=103|pages=37–40|via=Literature Resource Center}}</ref>

Walker has never denied that there are some autobiographical dimensions to her stories. When "Advancing Luna—and Ida B. Wells" was first published in [[Ms. (magazine)|''Ms.'' magazine]], Walker included a disclaimer that "Luna and Freddie Pye are composite characters, and their names are made up. This is a fictionalized account suggested by a number of real events".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Petry |first=Alice Hall |date=1989 |title=Alice Walker: The Achievement of the Short Fiction |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3195263 |journal=Modern Language Studies |volume=19 |issue=1 |pages=12–27 |doi=10.2307/3195263 |jstor=3195263 |issn=0047-7729}}</ref> John O' Brien's 1973 interview with Walker offers further details.<ref>{{Cite book |last=O'Brien |first=John |title=Interviews with Black Writers |publisher=Liveright |year=1973 |edition=1st |location=New York |pages=196 |language=English}}</ref>