Walker sees a parallel to Cuban revolt

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker introduced the Spanish translation of her novel “Meridian” in Havana, telling her Cuban fans there is a direct correlation between the U.S. civil rights movement and the socialist revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power.

“I thought about Cuba a lot when I was writing this,” Walker told a packed audience Sunday at an international book fair. “It has meant very much to me that Cubans have understood what I’m doing. Sometimes in my own country, I am very severely criticized by people who don’t bother to read me at all.”

“Meridian,” first published in English in 1976, explores the private internal and interpersonal struggles of a young protagonist by the same name who is involved in the civil rights movement in the United States.

Walker, a Georgia native, won the Pulitzer Prize for her 1982 novel, “The Color Purple.”