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Castaway guests share the soundtrack of their lives.

Eight tracks, a book and a luxury: what would you take to a desert island? Guests share the soundtrack of their lives.

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Kirsty Young

Alice Walker

Cathy Drysdale

Desert Island Discs: Alice Walker

19/05/2013

BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs, Alice Walker

Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, is interviewed by Kirsty Young.

Alice Walker, Pulizter prize-winning author of The Color Purple, is interviewed by Kirsty Young.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the Pulitzer Prize winning writer Alice Walker.

Author, poet, feminist and activist, it was her novel The Color Purple that brought her worldwide attention and acclaim. The story of a poor black girl surviving in the deep American south, between the wars, it is a landmark work, disturbing and exhilarating in equal measure.

If one subscribes to the idea that "art is a wound turned to light", then Alice Walker's early life proved crucial to her future creations. Shot and blinded in one eye by her brother's BB gun it was through the isolation of her injury that she began to write. She once described poetry as "medicine".

She has also said, "I know the world's a mess, but there's so much that's gorgeous in it. I wish everybody could have what I have."

Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

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