We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness

By Alice Walker

A “stunningly insightful” essay collection from the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple (Publishers Weekly).
 
From the prolific writer, poet, and activist Alice Walker, comes a compilation of writing and speeches on advocacy, struggle, and hope. A New York Times–bestselling “collection of righteous speeches and essays . . . is Walker the cultural pioneer back on top form” (The Guardian).
 
Drawing equally on Walker’s spiritual grounding and her progressive political convictions, each chapter concludes with a recommended meditation to teach us patience, compassion, and forgiveness. We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For takes on some of the greatest challenges of our times and in it Walker encourages readers to take faith in the fact that, despite the daunting predicaments we find ourselves in, we are uniquely prepared to create positive change.
 
Walker’s clear vision and calm meditative voice offer “wise thoughts for a troubled world” and strike a deep chord among a large and devoted readership (Dallas Morning News).

• Language: English
• Publisher: The New Press
• Release date: Jul 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9781595585899

Alice Walker

Alice Walker is an internationally celebrated writer, poet, and activist whose books include seven novels, four collections of short stories, five children’s books, and several volumes of essays and poetry. She has received the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and the National Book Award, and has been honored with the O. Henry Award, the Lillian Smith Award, and the Mahmoud Darwish Literary Prize for Fiction. She was inducted into the California Hall of Fame and received the Lennon Ono Peace Award. Her work has been published in forty languages worldwide.

Reviews for We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For

[addict_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Often rambling and occasionally pedantic, the essays in Walker's latest collection can also be stunningly insightful. Mixing prose with poetry, she discusses Martin Luther King, feminism and meditation, among other subjects, always circling back to themes of integrity and activism. The most substantial entries are based on live lectures. In a speech to the graduating class of the California Institute of Integral Studies, Walker urges that we not fear the pause that "wisdom requires" when "something major is accomplished," despite our eagerness to rush into "The Future." She manages to show how this "moment of reflection" is natural and necessary, whether the defining event is college graduation, menopause or the buildup to a military invasion. Her 2002 lecture, "I Call That Man Religious," argues that Fidel Castro is a "truly religious man" because he "speaks out for the rights of the poor," in contrast to the Catholic Church, which hid its priests' abuse of children for so long. More contradictory is "Crimes Against Dog," in which she describes a visit to buy a labrador retriever and her discomfort at the similarity between dog breeders and slaveholders, but doesn't consider getting a mutt. Despite the annoying inclusion of homework-like assignments at the end of most essays, this book will inspire hope