A teacher in Austria, I had finally given myself permission to indulge in English language reading when I ran across a paperback of The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart by Alice Walker in a Swiss bookstore. It was the title that convinced me to the purchase the book as I had never read Alice Walker before.
The opening stories are a fictionalized reflection of Alice’s marriage to civil rights lawyer Mel Leventhal. Even though the reflections are weighted with the heaviness of a broken heart, I admired this couple in Jackson, Mississippi, Alice teaching and writing, birthing and raising their only baby girl, Mel working late nights all across Mississippi to prosecute civil rights violations. Alice also worked for the Legal Defense Fund, documenting cases of blacks who had been evicted from their homes because they had tried to register to vote.
When I first read Alice Walker’s work in Austria, I never ever would have imagined that I would find myself living in Jackson, Mississippi–since at that time I had no connections in Jackson. It was some time after I moved here that I picked The Way Forward off the bookshelf and was amazed that this book and I were here.
Since then I have read Alice Walker’s biography and was saddened to read the details of how Alice was unhappy and often felt her creativity to be stifled in Jackson. Obviously, she moved on as need be and has long felt Mississippi’s imprint.
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