Alice Walker Boxed Set—Poetry: Good Night, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning; Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems; Once, Poems, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1985.

By being white, Lynne was guilty of whiteness. Then the question was, is it possible to be guilty of color?" Other characters are presented with sympathy and understanding—from Meridian’s prim and limited mother and her dreamy father to various poor people Meridian encounters on her travels. Major sections of the novel, however, are devoted to two other characters: Lynne Rabinowitz and Truman Held. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated, leading Meridian to reflect on the Civil Rights movement in general and on her personal involvement in the movement and her growth in particular. She remains friends with Truman and seems free from sexual and other kinds of entanglements. Walker, Alice, The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult; A Meditation of Life, Spirit, Art, and the Making of the film "The Color Purple," Ten Years Later, Scribner (New York, NY), 1996. Zurich’s application was made just over two weeks before the pre-trial review. It was partly successful but partly unsuccessful in the application. What the court had to sayWith Pratibha Parmar) Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1993. Ayers, Edward L., and Bradley C. Mittendorf. The Oxford Book of the American South: Testimony, Memory, and Fiction. Oxford University Press, 1997. As time passes, Truman attempts unsuccessfully, to achieve personal and financial success while Meridian continues to stay involved in the movement and fight for issues she deeply believes in. In this case, the judge found that Zurich’s application was “ well outside the norm”. HHJ Keyser QC, sitting in the Business and Property Courts in Wales, said in his judgment: “ If parties make such oppressive and disproportionate applications, resulting in the incurring of very substantial and quite unnecessary costs, they can hardly be surprised if their conduct is marked by an award of costs on the indemnity basis”. Meridian does her best to adjust to college life, having left her son behind after getting pregnant in high school, but wanting to pursue a greater life for herself. She also falls in love with Truman. The two begin dating. White women arrive from the North, volunteering to assist the movement. Truman is attracted to one of the new arrivals, Lynne, and the two begin dating. Although Truman and Meridian briefly resume sexual relations, Truman continues to pursue his budding relationship with Lynne. Meridian becomes pregnant and has an abortion. After Lynne leaves, Truman attempts to rekindle his former love for Meridian, asking her to have his children. Meridian, in response, strikes him with her book bag, cutting his cheek.

She understood, finally, that the respect she owed her life was to continue …to live it, and not to give up any particle of it, without a fight to the death, preferably not her own. And that this existence extended beyond herself to those around her because…the years in America had created them one Life. (Meridian, 200)” However the path to change for Meridian, like her people, is fraught with obstacles, not the least of which is her own community, filled with an assortment of unusual characters. Based on Walker’s great-grandmother, a slave who was raped at the age of twelve by her owner, Celie works her way from ignorance about her body and her living situation all the way through to an awakening of her self-worth, as well as to an understanding of the existence of God, the relations between men and women, and the power of forgiveness in uniting family and friends. Much of this transformation is brought about through the magic of a blues singer named Shug Avery, who guides Celie in understanding sexuality, men, and religion without causing her to lose her own fresh insights, naïve though they are. They have a saying for people who fall down as I do: If a person is hit hard enough, even if she stands, she falls.

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He...wondered if Meridian knew that the sentence of bearing the conflict in her own soul which she had imposed on herself—and lived through—must now be borne in terror by all the rest of them” (Walker). Meridian’s friend at Saxon College and a radical member of the civil rights movement. Anne-Marion is judgmental, opinionated, and easily angered, and she has a strong desire to succeed. She is also radical and rebellious, and she brings an intensity to her contributions to the civil rights movement. She cuts off her hair and openly disavows any belief in the Christian faith. At her worst, she is self-centered and incapable of true friendship or emotional vulnerability in any form. Gertrude Hill PBS recently aired a fascinating documentary on the writer Alice Walker who rose literally from a hardscrabble existence to reverence as writer and activist. I have always been a fan of her clear prose and rich characters, and I was reminded that I had never read Meridien, her second novel, which is now available for e-readers, as are all her works. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 6: American Novelists since World War II, Second Series, 1980, Volume 33: Afro-American Fiction Writers after 1955, 1984, Volume 143: American Novelists since World War II, Third Series, 1994. Cosgrove, Shady. 'Reading For Peace? Literature As Activism – An Investigation Into New Literary Ethics And The Novel'. Ro.uow.edu.au. N.p., 2008. Web. 2 Dec. 2014.

They’ve been a part of it, we’ve been a part of it, everybody’s been a part of it for a long time” (Walker).

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Set in the 1960s and 1970s, Meridian centers on Meridian Hill, a student at the fictitious Saxon College, who becomes active in the Civil Rights Movement. She becomes romantically involved with another activist, Truman Held. They have a turbulent on-and-off relationship, during which she becomes pregnant by him. The inside cover over of this book says it was published in 1976 and this fits. I can see it. The Civil Rights 60's are over. What was The Movement has either died or morphed into something else. This book is almost a reflective look at its history, humble beginnings, the height and what became of it. All this metaphorically speaking through the protagonist character of Meridian, the books namesake. Upon the release of The Color Purple, critics sensed that Walker had created something special. “ The Color Purple… could be the kind of popular and literary event that transforms an intense reputation into a national one,” according to Gloria Steinem of Ms. Walker “has succeeded,” as Andrea Ford noted in the Detroit Free Press,“in creating a jewel of a novel.” Peter S. Prescott presented a similar opinion in a Newsweekreview: “ The Color Purpleis an American novel of permanent importance, that rare sort of book which (in Norman Mailer’s felicitous phrase) amounts to ‘a diversion in the fields of dread.’” Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, February 7, 2001, Ira Hadnot, review of My Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart, p. K1172; February 13, 2002, Sue Corbett, review of Langston Hughes: American Poet, p. K4900; March 12, 2003, Jeff Guinn, review of Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth, p. K2933. Women also face familial risks which men do not. Meridian’s mother became pregnant despite not wanting any children. She decided to raise her children because in her mind she did not have a choice in doing so. When Meridian became pregnant the first time, she decided to have the child and attempted to raise him. However, she was faced with the choice of going to Saxon College to pursue her dreams and try to make something of her life or remaining at home and raising a child that she did not even want. Meridian often thought about murdering her child. When Meridian decided to give up her son, she also gave up her relationship with her mother. In giving up her son, having an abortion, and having her tubes tied, Meridian gave up motherhood. However, throughout the novel, Meridian shows maternal characteristics. She is motherly to Lynne, the family at the end of the novel, Wile Chile, etc.