At the time, Atlanta was a hotbed of civil rights activism, but like the young women of Saxon, Spelman’s students were viewed as ladies in training, too refined and upstanding to throw themselves into the fray of social protest. In Meridian, young activists attempt to break with tradition by bringing an end to the racism and segregation that had overshadowed black Americans for centuries. Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman were missing for over a month until their bodies were found murdered and buried in early August 1964. Walker's language is incandescent, her story incendiary, her characters thoughtful and deeply provoking. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

I especially loved the writing, clear and sparkling, and the treatises on women and child bearing and relationships and race were point blank and heart breaking, displaying a kind of progressiveness far beyond most women I know. The relationship between Meridian and her mother, Meridian's adolescence and the sexual abuse at the hands of Daxter etc, the concept of black family, sexuality, and citizenship, and the way black women know white men have perceived them and acted on those perceptions. The man in her life, Truman, who also evolves over the decade, abandons her after a heated affair for a long-term relationship with a white woman, Lynne, whom he also ultimately abandons in the hopes of rekindling his life with Meridian, who by then has found her voice and her mission. While visiting the girl Meridian's sympathies are not with the girl's murdered child but rather her sympathies are with the young mother who killed her child.

Meridian has been passionately in love with Truman, who leaves her for Lynne, whom he later abandons along with their daughter Camara. Truman and Lynne, now married, are living in Mississippi, where her whiteness begins to endanger them and the movement when a fellow rights worker, Tommy Odds, has the lower half of one of his arms shot off. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH).

It is harrowing, gritty and extremely deep, in a most unpleasant way yet disguised by the beautiful writing of Alice Walker. Item despatched quickly and as described, but damaged in transit due to plastic wrap packaging being inadequate protection. In Alice Walker's "Meridian", the theme of motherhood is very prevalent but is not highlighted in the traditional way. It was Meridian who had led them to the mayor's office, bearing in her arms the bloated figure of a five-year-old boy who had been stuck in the sewer for two days before he was raked out with a grappling hook.

The questions he raises are at the heart of “Meridian,” a story about the civil-rights movement, and a spiritual and political biography of the character for whom it is named—Meridian Hill, a black woman who determines to live out the movement long after it has faded away. All this, along with the connections that her parents have made and the connections that Meridian is being asked to make—connections to the grace of gospel music, to damnation by the crimes of history, to the purgatory of committing oneself to murder—is out of her reach. Although the 1976 novel would not reach the heights of popular success that The Color Purple would six years later (having Oprah make her film debut in the adaptation certainly doesn't hurt), Meridian touches on the same ideas that made that novel so famous. We peek into glimpses of her various trials and tribulations in relationships in the ever changing world around her. for her people and herself, and that she believes she could kill if she must to prevent more martyrdom.

I also was told a lot I didn't know or just don't bother to consider and was grateful for the lesson. Toward the end of the novel, Meridian continues to risk her health and her own happiness to continue working in grassroots activism, long after the Civil Rights Movement, torn apart by differing ideas within the movement regarding the practice of non-violence, is declared over.Alice Walker’s second novel, “Meridian” (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), appears twenty-five years after Albert Camus’s “The Rebel,” a book that grew from Camus’s conviction that in the modern world every political act leads directly to murder. The second novel written by Alice Walker, preceding THE COLOUR PURPLE is a heartfelt and moving story about one woman’s personal revolution as she joins the Civil Rights Movement.

Meridian is energized by a younger generation coming into its full power and raising its voice in dissent against the institutional racism that prevailed through the 1960s.After the death of Camara, Lynne visits Meridian, whose illness has advanced and claimed most of her hair. This is definitely a book I will have to read multiple times to catch all of the hidden themes and messages so I cannot give a complete review of my thoughts quiet yet. Alice Walker menggambarkan perasaan ketiganya dengan hebat, pergumulan dalam hati Meridian -yang merasa dirinya sangat kompleks dan simpel di satu sisi dibanding hidup yg dijalaninya- , Truman -yang mencintai Lynn tapi INGIN mencintai -dan sebenarnya membutuhkan dan mencintai- Meridien dan emnjadikannya pasangan hidup, dan Lynn -wanita kulit putih yang merasa dirinya sangat cocok dengan kehidupan kulit hitam, dan membiarkan dirinya terbuang dari keluarganya atas pilihannya tersebut tapi akhirnya juga merasa kecewa pada teman kulit hitamnya.