<p>''These journals are a revelation, a road map and a gift to us all'' TAYARI JONES, author of <i>An American Marriage</i><br><br><b>From the acclaimed author Alice Walker - winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize - comes an unprecedented compilation of four decades'' worth of journals that draw an intimate portrait of her development as an artist, intellectual and human rights activist.</b><br><br>In <i>Gathering Blossoms Under Fire</i>, Walker offers a passionate, intimate record of her intellectual, artistic and political development. She also intimately explores - in real time - her thoughts and feelings as a woman, a writer, an African American, a wife, a daughter, a mother, a lover, a sister, a friend, a citizen of the world.<br><br>In an unvarnished and singular voice, she writes about an astonishing array of events: marching in Mississippi with other foot soldiers of the civil rights movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., or ''the King'' as she called him;