Alice Walker is an American author, novelist, short story writer, poet, and political activist. She was born in Eatonton, Georgia on February 9, 1944, the youngest child of eight. His parents, a sharecropper and a maid, had little money. At the age of eight, her right eye became scarred and caused partial blindness because her parents could not take her to the doctor for a week. Blindness led to her being teased and bullied by classmates; he retired and began writing to escape everyday ridicule. At age fourteen, the scar tissue was removed, but she continued to feel like an outcast despite her successes. She became the valedictorian of her high school and went on to attend Spelman College on a full scholarship. She later transferred to Sarah Lawrence College, graduating in 1965. While at Spelman, she became involved in the civil rights movement. Walker continued with the movement, registering black voters in rural Georgia and Mississippi. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence, she married Melvyn Leventhal in 1967, a white Jewish civil rights lawyer. The couple's daughter was born in 1969. They moved to Jackson, Mississippi, becoming the first legally married interracial couple in the state. Together they faced racism and many threats from the Ku Klux Klan and other whites. She finished her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, in 1969 and it was published in 1970. When her marriage ended in 1977, Alice and her daughter moved to Northern California. He still resides in Northern California and continues to write today. Walker often uses the theme of preserving African-American culture. An example of his theme of cultural preservation is strongly shown in the story “And...... middle of paper ......Alice. "Daily use." Perrine's History and Structure, 13th edition.Ed. Helen Triller. Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012, 2009, 2006. 108-115. Print.(http://theliterarylink.com/flowers.html), original source:Walker, Alice. “The Flowers”. Reading and writing short stories.Ed. Edward Proffitt. NY: Harcourt, 1988. 404-405.Walker's The Flowers.Full text available edited by: Loeb, Monica. Explainer, Fall96, vol. 55 Number 1, p60, 3pTopics: SHORT story (literary form); CRITICISM; FLOWERS, The (short story); WALKER, Alice, 1944-Database: Complete Academic ResearchNational Humanities Center, 2007: nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/. In Alice Walker, In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1967); reprint (paperback) Harvest Books (Harcourt), 2003, pp. 3-9. Permission pending from Harcourt Inc.(http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-998)