Bibliographic Information
Publisher: Harcourt
Publication year: 1982
ISBN: 978-0151191536
Reader’s Annotation
Growing up poor in the 1930’s south, Celie goes from her father’s house to her husband’s. She lives in quiet subservience until she realizes life can be enjoyable and full of love.
Plot Summary
Celie is fourteen, poor, black, and pregnant for the second time by her father. He took her first baby, and when she gives birth to her second he takes that one as well. In her abusive and poverty-stricken home, Celie’s only confidante is her younger sister, Nettie. When a man in town expresses interest in marrying Nettie, their father offers Celie instead because Nettie has to finish school. Marrying the man she only refers to as Mr. ____ means cleaning his filthy house, taking care of Mr. ____ and his unruly children, and meeting his needs in the bedroom, all of which which Celie does on autopilot while trying not to feel. Her world is brightened temporarily when Nettie comes to stay with them, but after Mr. ____ tries to rape Nettie and is rebuffed he kicks her out. Celie’s days turn to years with little deviation, until she meets her husband’s mistress, Shug Avery, who comes to stay while she recovers from an illness. Nursing Shug back to health is the first time Celie has felt love for anyone since Nettie left. Getting to know Shug, a club singer and liberated, single woman who loves sex, Celie starts to believe there is more to life than being subservient to a husband she does not love. With the help of Shug and other strong women, including the revelation that Nettie has been writing her for years from Africa where she works as a missionary, Celie begins to break out of her shell and enjoy her life.
Critical Evaluation
The voice in which The Color Purple is written is arguably the most important aspect of the novel. Not only is the book narrated from Celie’s first person point of view in the form of letters she wants to write to God, Walker chose to use the authentic voice of an uneducated African American in the 1930’s south. The words are sometimes difficult to decipher, for example when a phrase like “us is surprise” is used instead of the grammatically correct “we are surprised,” but the meaning is clear. This effect is steady throughout the novel no matter who is speaking, and draws the reader into the world of the novel from the first page. This gives a genuine feel to the book as a whole when it is coupled with the racial undertones and demeaning events experienced by not just Celie, but most of the characters, as was common in this era of American history.
Author Information
Alice Walker is an internationally celebrated writer, poet and activist whose books include seven novels, four collections of short stories, four children’s books, and volumes of essays and poetry. She won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1983 and the National Book Award.
Walker has written many bestsellers; among them, The Temple of My Familiar (a wisdom tale that originates in prehistory); By The Light of My Father’s Smile ( sexuality and forgiveness as paths of healing); Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), which explores the effects of female genital mutilation on one woman’s psyche as well as her body (she becomes a patient of a fictional Carl Jung). This novel led to the 1993 book and documentary film Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women, both collaborations with British-Indian filmmaker Pratibha Parmar, and We are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness.(Meditations on spiritual and political issues).
Her other novels are: The Third Life of Grange Copeland (one family’s struggle to survive the sharecropping system – slavery under another name – in the South), Meridian (a spiritual biography of The Civil Rights Movement), The Color Purple (liberation from enforced, male dominant, religion and thought; also poses the question never asked by societies in which they occur: what becomes of the children whose parents are lynched/assassinated?) and Now Is the Time To Open Your Heart (a couple on the verge of separating decides to live together, fully in the present, despite awareness of the universal unraveling of societies around the globe).
Her short story collections include: In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women ( poor and marginalized women of color make choices reflecting their status in life) and You Can’t Keep A Good Woman Down (the spirit of woman rises with the smallest encouragement; one of our most valuable human contributions) and The Way Forward Is With A Broken Heart (after a painful divorce, a woman opens herself to the heartbreak offered by the world, and loves the world enough to persevere).
There are seven volumes of poems. Among them: Once, Revolutionary Petunias, Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful, Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You In the Morning, Her Blue Body Everything We Know, Absolute Trust In the Goodness of the Earth, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing, and The World Will Follow Joy: Turning Madness Into Flowers.
In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose examines the creative inheritance of one’s maternal line, and how our own contributions,whether political, activist, or poetic connect on this foundation. Essays in Living By the Word reflect Walker’s Earth and Womanist based spirituality. Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer’s Activism ( explores activism as a source of inspiration), The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult chronicles the adventure of having a film made of her novel The Color Purple and weathering storms of censorship, banning, criticism, and verbal attack.
Her work has been translated into more than two dozen languages, and her books have sold more than fifteen million copies. Along with the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Walker, in 2006, was honored as one of the inaugural inductees into the California Hall of Fame. In 2007, her archives were opened to the public at Emory University in her birth state of Georgia. In 2010 she presented the keynote address at The 11th Annual Steve Biko Lecture at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where she met the beautiful sons of Steve Biko, and was awarded the Lennon/Ono Peace Grant in Reykjavik, Iceland, where she met John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “beautiful boy” Sean Lennon. (Walker donated this latter award to an orphanage for the children of AIDS victims in East Africa, The Margaret Okari Foundation in Kisi, Kenya). She served as jurist (2010 and 2012)for two sessions of The Russell Tribunal on Palestine. In Cape Town, South Africa, and NYC, New York.
Recent works are: Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the Horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo and Palestine/Israel; Hard Times Require Furious Dancing; The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker; and The Chicken Chronicles: Sitting With the Angels Who Have Returned With My Memories, a Memoir. She also writes regularly on her blog site at www.alicewalkersgarden.com.
Two new books were presented in Spring of 2013: The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm’s Way; and The World Will Follow Joy: Turning Madness into Flowers, poems.
Walker has been an activist all of her adult life, and believes that learning to extend the range of our compassion is activity and work available to all. She is a staunch defender not only of human rights, but of the rights of all living beings. She is one of the world’s most prolific writers, yet continues to travel the world to literally stand on the side of the poor, and the economically, spiritually and politically oppressed. She also stands, however, on the side of the revolutionaries, teachers and leaders who seek change and transformation of the world. Upon returning from Gaza in 2008, Walker said, “Going to Gaza was our opportunity to remind the people of Gaza and ourselves that we belong to the same world: the world where grief is not only acknowledged, but shared; where we see injustice and call it by its name; where we see suffering and know the one who stands and sees is also harmed, but not nearly so much as the one who stands and sees and says and does nothing.”
Alice Walker was awarded the Mahmoud Darwish Literary Prize for Fiction 2016.
Source: http://alicewalkersgarden.com/about-2/
Genre
Epistolary Novel
Fiction
Curriculum Ties
Creative Writing
History
Sexual Education
Social Studies
Booktalking Ideas
Introduce the character of Celie as she is seen in the beginning of the book: young, poor, and completely broken first by her father and then by Mr. ____. Speak briefly about how she grows as a character and uses her gift of turning off her feelings to get through undesirable situations. Read the passage where she finds Nettie’s letters to show there are moments of hope and not everything in the book is depressing. Then give a rating from 1-5 and tell the audience why this is my rating, and take questions.
Reading Level/Interest Age
Unspecified
Challenging Issues
Child Abuse
Death of a Loved One
Depression
Language
LGBTQ+
PTSD
Racial Issues and Stereotypes
Rape and Sexual Assault
Running Away
Teen Pregnancy
Violence
Preparing for Potential Challenges
http://jeselynsminiyacollection.blogspot.com/p/preparing-for-potential-challenges.html
http://jeselynsminiyacollection.blogspot.com/p/preparing-for-specific-challenges-lgbtq.html
http://jeselynsminiyacollection.blogspot.com/p/preparing-for-specific-challenges_6.html
Why the Item Was Chosen
I discovered this book as a junior in high school when it was assigned as required reading. Its subject matter might be considered inappropriate by some, but the story is at its base level about loving yourself and making the life you’ve always dreamed of, whether it is traditional or something brand new. The Color Purple begins when Celie is fourteen and follows her life until her mid-50’s, an age that most teenagers have a hard time picturing. Even if a young adult is not especially troubled, I believe The Color Purple should always be a literary option for them because of the amazing transformation that Celie goes through in her life. It shows that one can go through many evolutions before finding happiness, and that no matter how permanent it feels at the time, pain is not forever. Every teenager will benefit from this message, arguably more than adults because they are experiencing an intense physical and mental shift that often comes with plummeting self-esteem.
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