Writer feels a kinship with her fans in Cuba

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker debuted 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."

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