“I think Americans generally are not used to working very hard, in terms of working for the collective. I think in our country we have taken individualism to its farthest reaches, possibly.”

Alice Walker is an American writer and activist of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. She gained prominence for her novel *The Color Purple*, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983 and became a landmark in Black women’s literature. Her work spans poetry, essays, and activism, particularly on issues of racial and gender justice.