RIP To Reading Alice Walker. Long Live THE COLOR PURPLE.

RIP To Reading Alice Walker. Long Live THE COLOR PURPLE. In 2013, I was still fairly new to book reviewing. When I requested Alice Walkers book, The Cushion in the Road, for review, I expected to be refused. Newbies dont get assigned books by legends, right?   But I got it: my most exciting assignment yet. I had recently graduated from divinity school, where I studied feminist theology. Intersectional feminism was all that I thought about. Alice Walkerâ€"who conceptualized womanism, who gave us The Color Purple, and who had earned her many accolades, including a Pulitzerâ€"was a god within that realm. I was also in the midst of my conversion to Judaism, which Id recognized as my religious home precisely because it emphasizes intersectionality as a religious value. So when my admiration for Alice Walker crashed into her claims about my community in The  Cushion in the Road, I was heartbroken. My expectations of a book-long experience of intersectional sisterhood were dashed. Alice Walker, I discovered, hated Jews. Im choosing those words deliberately. This is, in part, because I hesitated to say them then, and that was a mistake. No one wants to discover that someone they admire is capable of hate, especially of hating them. But even minor gods are fallible, and Alice Walker is an anti-Semite. She believes in global Jewish conspiracies. She thinks that we are to blame for the ills of the world. She thinks that were money-grubbing. Pick your canard: shes got it down in print. Some of it has something to do with Israel, but all of it has everything to do with hate. The Cushion in the Road didnt introduce Alices prejudices, though they were my first confrontation with them. And in the book world, people gave her wide berth. Reactions to  The Cushion in the Road generally  skipped over its anti-Semitism entirely, favoring the books broader, more familiar Alice Walker themes. Even I buried my dismay over her comments regarding Jewish people and Israel beneath praise for the less noxious portions of the book. I celebrated her awareness, her boldness, and the challenges she posed to all readers, including President Obama. I called her comments regarding Judaism, and Jewish people, strange within the collection. I used words like invective and hyperbolic regarding them, but my implication was that those portions were an anomaly, rather than indicative of what Alice truly believed. I loved her. I owed her. I didnt want to accept that she truly believed that I deserved suspicion or hate. On topics other than Judaism, Alice Walkers work is sensitive, thoughtful, concerned with justice, and a voice for righteous protest. On topics related to Judaism, she is myopic and foments hate. I held the sensitive Alice in such high esteem that I decided to talk about the Other Alice in a whisper. That willingness to minimize what was, even then, pronounced prejudice was a mistake. I regret the forgiving tone of my review. The ADL review was clearer (if it also concentrated entirely on one chapter of that book): it called out anti-Semitic tropes in  Cushion, including suggestions that Jews dont do anything that we cant make money off of, the use of terms like Jewish supremacy, and the pronounced ignorance regarding the Torah. God save us from the Jews! a woman says to Alice in one of the books accounts; Too late, she replies. I already married one. Walkers resentment toward her ex-husband snowballed into negative impressions of all Jewish people: if hed proved duplicitous, then so would I. So would any of us. We were not to be trusted. We were to blame. This is how prejudice works. I think that the fact that the anti-Semitism in  The Cushion in the Road is  mostly contained within a chapter made it so easier for reviewers to ignore. We could compartmentalize the part of Alice that seemed capable of such ugliness, could pretend that it was contained, or a quirk, or whatever. Alice Walkers anti-Semitism is the topic that you trouble briefly and blow past when youre discussing her greater body of work, that you excuse because  The Color Purple  was, and is, so important, and because we need womanism, desperatelyâ€"now more than ever. Maybe that isnt HER. But it is. The furor over her endorsement of David Ickes work in a recent issue of  The New York Times is deserved. Its also overdue. Alice didnt introduce her anti-Semitism with that book recommendation; she reminded us of it. Shes been airing it for years. Sometimes its cushioned within criticisms of Israelâ€"which also makes it easier to dismiss as not-hateâ€"but its always about something deeper. It shouldnt have taken her praise of a conspiracy theorist who believes that Jews are part of a global Illuminati alien-lizard-people conspiracy to make that obvious. But it did. NOW people are shocked. NOW people are dismayed. Welcome. I am still the woman who fell in love with womanism and  The Color Purple while learning how to be an intersectional feminist in divinity school; that will not change. I want people to be womanist. I want  The Color Purple to broaden readers perspectives. As critics like Roxane Gay have pointed out: theres no need to throw any of that away. Alice Walker has been anti-Semitic for years. I talk about it at my events when I talk about how much I appreciate Possessing the Secret of Joy. â€" roxane gay (@rgay) December 17, 2018 If some of you would do some basic reading you would know that Walker’s anti Semitism has nothing to do with her critique of Zionism. I am not conflating these things. Read her blog, note the anti Semitic writers she values, and Jesus Christ, face reality. https://t.co/NLdt6lrcX8 â€" roxane gay (@rgay) December 18, 2018 But we also need to hear Alice when she tells us plainly that that essential work does not mean that she is a person whose every word is gospel. Alice Walker is a writer who exposed the flaws of white feminism and who demanded intersectionality and equal footing for black voices. She is also a woman who is far from intersectional when it comes to her Jewish sisters. She is a writer who laid bare realities of racism, misogyny, and institutional power imbalances. She is also a woman who promoted a book that draws upon  The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic screed. Keep  The Color Purple, but stop letting Alice Walker air her hatred for another marginalized community. Hold womanism in one hand and combat anti-Semitism with the other. Immerse yourself in her essays from before, but dont miss out on her daughters book, Black, White, and Jewish, which adds some nuance and context to her wordsâ€"and which approaches Judaism with the thoughtfulness that is sorely missing in all of Alices mentions of my tradition and my people. Early Alice Walker deserves to be be heard, and read, and celebratedâ€"right up until the point where she expresses hatred for others. Alice Walker now, whos airing her hatred for Jewish people with David Ickeian fervor, deserves to be called out. It is not easy to hold our literary giants to account, but I am grateful for those who are finally doing that hard work.