What do You think about In Love & Trouble: Stories Of Black Women (2004)?
(FROM JACKET)Readers of Alice Walker's "The Color Purple" will find in these stories further evidence of her power to depict black women-women who vary greatly in background but are bound together by their vulnerability to life: Roselily, on her wedding day, surrounded by her four children, prays that a loveless marriage will bring her respectability; a young writer, exploited by both her lover and her husband, wreaks an ironic vengeance; a jealous wife, looking for her husband's mistress, finds a competitor she cannot fight; an old woman, thrown out of a white church, meets God on a highway. These are just a few of the seekers of dignity and love whom Alice Walker portrays in this astonishing collection.
—J
This is from one of the best authors ever, Alice Walker. I read this book in the late eighty's and was inspired by the collection's (of short stories) honesty of relationships and of women being vulnerable. I especially enjoyed the relationships between different women in this book of different races. Think, The Maids, and Women Of Brewster place that came along much later.Alice Walker is in a class with the likes of Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, and Flannery'Oconnor, so need I say more. Each one of these women has a protag that must learn to survive, no matter what the love situation might be and along with all the drama there is also humor, revenge, and revelations.Thank you Alice Walker for the time's spent in your literary presence and for your ability to draw us into those lives.
—Max Nightjar
A collection of thirteen of Walker's earliest stories (published in 1973) and shows her developing maturity and genius. Collections of short stories are always difficult for me to rate because the stories affect and engage me differently. I usually end up with a middle of the road rating, so have decided not to rate the overall book, but talk about stories that I liked. Each story is distinct. A couple felt more like character sketches that Walker would develop later in her novels. Many characters reflected Walker's own experience in the sixties civil rights movement. A few will haunt me. Early on we get "Really, Doesn't Crime Pay?", a story of a pampered, suppressed black woman artist--a cautionary tale for anyone who aspires to be a writer. Walker ends with a particularly sweet story of love, family, and community called "To Hell with Dying." In between we have a desperate mother trying to save her dying child in "Strong Horse Tea," an old woman who meets Jesus in "The Welcome Table," an obsessive wife searching for the woman who stole "Her Sweet Jerome," and a "Diary of an African Nun" reflects on the nun's choice to turn her back on the life-giving culture of people and turn to the sterile life of a bride of Christ. Altogether this was a short, but satisfying collection of compelling characters.
—Faith Justice
