{"id":57190,"date":"2018-12-31T01:42:34","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T01:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57190"},"modified":"2018-12-31T01:44:23","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T01:44:23","slug":"alice-walkers-terrible-anti-semitic-poem-felt-personal-to-her-and-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=57190","title":{"rendered":"Alice Walker\u2019s Terrible Anti-Semitic Poem Felt Personal \u2014 to Her and to Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alice Walker\u2019s Terrible Anti-Semitic Poem Felt Personal \u2014 to Her and to Me<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Intelligencer<\/a>
\nNew York Magazine<\/a>
\n2018-12-28<\/p>\n

Nylah Burton<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\nPhoto: Peter Earl McCollough\/The New York Times\/Redux<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

When I first read Alice Walker\u2019s<\/a> The Color Purple<\/em><\/a>, I leaned into every word, inhaling Celie\u2019s tragic and triumphant story. In Celie, I felt the presence and pain of my female family members brought up in rural Alabama<\/a>. In Walker\u2019s unflinching descriptions of misogyny, domestic violence, homophobia, and incest, I saw an open accounting of issues buried deep within the larger southern black community \u2014 and within my own family.<\/p>\n

Above all, I was drawn into The Color Purple<\/em> because it was haunted by ghosts \u2014 the ghosts of Alice Walker\u2019s past. Eloquently and bravely, she was able to confront generational trauma by telling a universal tale that still felt faithful to her own story. And it was Walker\u2019s ability to throw open the shutters and allow her ghosts \u2014 our ghosts \u2014 into her writing that made it so revelatory. It cemented her standing as an acclaimed novelist, a civil-rights icon, and a formidable thought leader in the field of black feminism.<\/p>\n

That changed abruptly two weeks ago, after the New York Times<\/em> invited Walker to list her favorite books in its weekly \u201cBy the Book<\/a>\u201d column. She took the opportunity to promote David Icke\u2019s<\/a> And the Truth Shall Set You Free<\/em>, which contains some of the most hateful anti-Semitic lies ever to be printed between covers. As excerpted in the Washington Post<\/em><\/a>, Icke\u2019s book alleged that a \u201csmall Jewish clique\u201d had created the Russian Revolution<\/a> and both World Wars, and \u201ccoldly calculated\u201d the Holocaust<\/a> to boot. Icke has also accused Jews (among others) of being alien lizard people. After a week of criticism, Walker doubled down<\/a> in her assessment of Icke\u2019s indefensible work, calling him \u201cbrave\u201d and dismissing charges of anti-Semitism as an attack on the pro-Palestinian cause…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\nFrom left: Mel Leventhal<\/a>, Rebecca Walker<\/a>, and Alice Walker<\/a>, 1970. Photo: CSU Archives\/Everett Collection<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

…In 1967, Alice Walker married a young Jewish civil-rights lawyer named Mel Leventhal<\/a>. Their interracial marriage \u2014 the first such legal union in the state of Mississippi<\/a> \u2014 was still illegal in Walker\u2019s home state of Georgia<\/a> at the time. Leventhal\u2019s mother was also deeply opposed<\/a> to the union, and his other family members didn\u2019t allow Alice to attend family events. \u201cLeaving no question about how she felt about her son\u2019s marriage to a shvartse<\/em><\/a> (a pejorative Yiddish<\/a> term for a black person), Miriam Leventhal sat shiva<\/a><\/em> for her son, mourning him as dead,\u201d Evelyn White writes<\/a> in Alice Walker: A Life<\/em>. A source who knows the family told me that Mel preferred to ignore rather than confront his family\u2019s bigotry. This caused Walker to feel increasingly isolated and resentful. The marriage ended in 1976, after the pair had one daughter together, named Rebecca<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alice Walker\u2019s Terrible Anti-Semitic Poem Felt Personal \u2014 to Her and to Me Intelligencer New York Magazine 2018-12-28 Nylah Burton Photo: Peter Earl McCollough\/The New York Times\/Redux When I first read Alice Walker\u2019s The Color Purple, I leaned into every word, inhaling Celie\u2019s tragic and triumphant story. In Celie, I felt the presence and pain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3601,1196,8,820,20],"tags":[717,29197,29198,29200,12972,29199,362],"class_list":["post-57190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-judaism","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-religion","category-usa","tag-alice-walker","tag-david-icke","tag-intelligencer","tag-mel-leventhal","tag-new-york-magazine","tag-nylah-burton","tag-rebecca-walker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57190"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57192,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57190\/revisions\/57192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}