Author alice walker biography roselily

“Roselily” is the opening story of Alice Walker’s debut collection, In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women.

It was published in 1973, ten years before Walker became the first Black American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel The Color Purple.“Roselily” is a stream-of-consciousness narrative that intercuts incomplete, italicized phrases from marriage vows with the title character’s expansive reflections on her life, her impending marriage, and the sociopolitical tensions that exist between her rural Christian upbringing in the South, her own atheism, and her groom’s life as a devout Muslim in a Northern city.

The action of the story takes place in the span of a few short sentences spoken by the officiant of the wedding, while the conflict and drama of the narrative play out in Roselily’s internal debate over whether she accepts the changes the wedding will cause in her life.

Roselily, a single mot