“the close of a magical marriage to an extraordinary man that ended in a less-than-magical divorce”

I tagged this as both “fiction” and “biography/memoir”, because Alice Walker explains that many of the stories are loosely based on her own life. I don’t know enough about her to fully separate fact and fiction (although a little Googling gave me some clues), but either way it’s a wonderful collection of stories.

“We’ve never seen weather like the weather there is today. We’ve never seen violence like the violence we see today. We’ve never seen greed or evil like the greed and evil we see today. We’ve never seen tomatoes either, like the ones being created today. There is much from which to recoil.”

The Way Forward is with a Broken Heart is a collection of short stories, broken into sections that focus on particular characters. I will totally admit that some of the stories went over my head — Walker has a beautiful, dreamy way of writing that can sometimes be hard to follow. The first few stories seem to be the closest to real-life — stories about her marriage and eventual divorce. My favorite story, by far, was about halfway through — it’s about a black woman discovering the lovely qualities of olive oil, both as applied to her hair and body, and to her love life with her husband. It’s very sensual and incredibly well-written.