Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Pulitzer Prize-winning author, poet, feminist, and activist, best known for the novel The Colour Purple.
On the island
Eight records
AsFavourite
It's really an ecstatic song. It's a song about being so pleased with creation. And I would like to have this when I leave this form and I go into my next whatever it's going to be. I would like this music.
And Archie Roach is an Aboriginal singer who is now probably considered an elder in the Aboriginal community. And he himself was taken away as a child… This song is about that experience.
She is creating the music that I think is so right for our time of understanding that we have to always honour the earth because that is to whom and to what we return.
When I hear Your Precious Love by Jerry Butler, instinctively I think of the earth. I think that that's the love that is so precious to me, that I could not live without.
It is an amazingly soothing, calming meditational chant, and I tend to put this on when I have been travelling and I've seen just unbelievably vicious and horrible things done to people, rivers, mountains.
This is one of the most beautiful songs about longing and about trying to be true to someone when you have to be away. And I love it, it's a wonderful song.
There is a way in which the longing for the mother remains no matter what. And as much as I adored my own mother, I missed her terribly when she had to work and I had to be in school. So John Lennon… he hit just that place of pain and sorrow when the mother leaves, you know, whether it's your mother, whether you're the mother.
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 'Choral' (Ode to Joy)
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti
Strong admirer and lover of Beethoven because of his life of struggle and suffering… One of my favourite pieces is Ode to Joy because I think that that is a place humans can come to after great suffering.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:06What is it that you have that you value so much?
I'm actually a happy person. And I love being on this planet. I love this place that we somehow miraculously arrived at. It just seems incredible to me. And I feel that uh almost every moment, but you know, at least once or twice a day.
Presenter asks
3:43How long did it take you to write The Color Purple?
The actual writing took almost exactly a year. But I had to transform my existence. I was living in New York City. I was married. I had to change all of that. I had to move from the city to [a] tiny town called Boonville. And I was able to write it there because that is where the people in it felt most at home.
Presenter asks
4:58There were a lot of African Americans who said this book [The Color Purple] is an outrage. It misrepresents especially black men. That must have had a huge impact. It was your creation, and it had taken you a year of your life. It mattered to you.
It had taken all of my life to understand what I was writing about. The censure and the abuse went on for about ten years. It was a long time, but during that period I started a publishing company. And I wrote other books and I learned really that creativity is the best answer to that kind of ostracism.
The keepsakes
Presenter asks
12:59When you were eight, one of your brothers shot you in the eye. A very traumatic thing to happen to any child, and a pivotal moment for you.
Well, I love the way you said 'I guess', because that was the pivotal point. He was actually shooting at me. So it was always very confusing to have it passed off as just an accident… And to make matters worse, my other brother, knowing that my parents would be very angry if I said what had happened… said you have to tell them that you were hit in the eye by a piece of wire… The consequences were so terrible. That's one of the places where I learned how important it is to tell the truth and not lie for any reason.
Presenter asks
16:41You left home with three gifts from your mother – a suitcase, a typewriter, and a sewing machine. Was she right?
Yes, she was. With the typewriter I could write and I could travel with my little blue suitcase and I could make my own clothing. I made my own prom dress, and it was taffeta and net, and it was quite stunning.
Presenter asks
19:19You once said, 'activism is the rent I pay for living on the planet'. You've never felt a sense that you could be defeated by these great institutions?
I wanted to write poetry, and when I was at Spelman College I could have gone to Paris. But I knew that I needed to go to Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi. I saw that if we keep abandoning our own people and moving to Paris symbolically, we would never be able to be free.
“I'm actually a happy person. And I love being on this planet. I love this place that we somehow miraculously arrived at. It just seems incredible to me.”
“It had taken all of my life to understand what I was writing about.”
“It taught me that I was born to be an artist who would help people to see that people change.”
“I never trusted the media ever, and part of that was because it had lied always about black people. So there was no reason to think it would tell the truth.”
“I never planned to marry. The only reason I married was that it was illegal. I proposed to him.”
“What I'm learning is that life always gives you a gift from every disaster if you survive.”