Page "Charles R. Johnson" Paragraph 12

In a 2007 interview, Johnson described the controversy this way: " I ’ ve met Alice Walker.

We met in the ‘ 70s at a New York book party for her novel Meridian.

While I have artistic and intellectual problems with The Color Purple, I think the author is addressing a legitimate problem: namely, the pain many black women have felt, historically, from not being able to rely on their men being men ( reliable, supportive, there to help raise the babies they make ) in a society and culture that since the 17th century has tried to emasculate black men.

( See my discussion of her novel in Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970 ).

Walker has never said anything to me about that statement in the preface to Oxherding Tale.

But there are, I know, some black ( and white ) feminists who probably hate me, but that ’ s their problem, not mine.

( As a buddy of mine always says, “ Hate kills its host first .”)"