Alice walker the color purple

She loves African women writers as much as she loves Virginia Woolf. She worries about the works of women who made their mark in African and African-American literature, the pioneers so easily forgotten because they're not taught in our universities, and because they're not included in 'American Literature. When will egotistical and same-minded university heads get over themselves and allow diversity of thought within our schools by ensuring a diverse faculty and by allowing professors this thing supposedly called "academic freedom," a choice that is antithetical to the infamous and stale 'required anthologies' used in some schools?

I won't go into the personal insults I, or my colleagues of color, have endured within academia; the kind we sit and discuss over coffee, or while at a conference, marveling at the similarity in wording and tone. When pressed, some argue that their literary studies did not include a concentration in African American literature. I won't go into discussion about the professors who want to teach African American literature as a part of their literature course offerings, but who are told by their department chairs and deans that they cannot.

I won't discuss the absence of African literature on most World Literature course offerings. I will say that when I quietly offered an educator a solution like the one Walker offers in the following quote, it was seen as ludicrous, that a student should even consider these things: I realized sometime, after graduation, that when I studied contemporary writers and the South at this college --taught by a warm, wonderful woman whom I much admired -- the writings of Richard Wright had not been studied and that instead I had studied the South from Faulkner's point of view, from Feibleman's, from Flannery O'Connor's.

It was only after trying to conduct the same kind of course myself -- with black students-- that I realized that such a course simply cannot be taught if Black Boy is not assigned and read, or if "The Ethics of Jim Crow" is absent from the reading list. In reading her works, like her I've had a newfound love for the strength of Camus' style, I've remembered why I love O'Connor's dark and layered prose, and I'm reminded that I need to explore Faulkner more.

Yet I'm also mindful of Emecheta, she who sits on my bedside table, and of Petry, she who waits from my shelf. Walker admires the works of Chopin, the Brontes, Simone de Beauvoir, and Doris Lessing, yet unlike some writers of her generation, her admiration for women writers know no racial or cultural lines, for she also admires the works of Margaret Walker, Frances Ellen Harper, and Nella Larsen; as well as African women writers like Buchi Emecheta, Ama Ata Aidoo, and Bessie Head.

To her, the importance of exploring women writers was not about simply making a feministic point about male versus female, but at its core, it was about preserving the history and richness of our literary culture, about unearthing truths and humanity through literature. It was because they wrote "on the condition of humankind from the perspective of women.

In terse, non-accessorized prose, she writes of the Harlem Renaissance, the Women's Movement, and the conflict in Cuba. With imagery, she lets the reader enter her travel through the life and work of the woman who inspired her: Zora Neale Hurston. In lucid yet simple strokes, she paints the portrait of herself as a mother and daughter; her trajectory as a wife, writer, and activist.

Most importantly, she speaks of what it means and feels like to be a woman, a black woman, in America and in the world. The women of China "hold up half the sky. The women of Cuba, fighting the combined oppression of African and Spanish macho, know that their revolution will be "shit" if they are the ones to do the laundry, dishes, and floors after working all day, side by side in factory and field with their men, "making the revolution.

The enemy within is the patriarchal system that has kept women virtual slaves throughout memory. Published inIn Search of Our Mother's Gardens is composed of 36 separate pieces essays, articles, reviews, statements, and speeches that were written by Alice Walker between and It is incredible how many different facets of Walker's life and thought are packed into this one collection.

The pieces speak of Black womanhood and creativity, but there are also more "political" musings on anti-Semitism, Palestine, the Civil Rights Movement, as well as dissections of fellow and former Black literary artists such as Jean Toomer and Zora Neale Hurston. The collection is split into three parts. In the first part, she talks a lot about Black womanhood and creativity, going in search for lots of Black womanist writers such as Rebecca Jackson whom I was formerly completely unfamiliar with.

My favorite essays of this section were the two on Zora — "Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and a Partisan View" and "Looking for Zora" — in which Walker reflects on how she was first made aware of Zora through her research of the practice of voodoo by rural Southern blacks in the thirties, which led to her discovery of Hurston's Mules and Men and what she chose to do with that knowledge.

We are a people. A people do not throw their geniuses away. And if they are thrown away, it is our duty as artists and as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children and, if necessary, bone by bone. In "Looking for Zora," Walker speaks about her trip to Hurston's hometown of Eatonville, FL to discover the life of her ancestral teacher.

Despite Hurston's notoriety, when she passed inshe was buried in an "unmarked grave in a segregated cemetery". Walker decides to search for the grave and have it marked by a tombstone. It is an incredibly powerful and inspirational essay because it shows us how important it is to uplift under-appreciated authors. In the bookish community, people are quick to shit on authors who are deemed problematic, whilst failing to realise that by focusing on these authors nonetheless, still only makes them all the more popular.

Lesser known authors are drowned by that noise. Walker consciously explored and sought out books that were underrepresented in the American mainstream: When Toni Morrison said she writes the kind of books she wants to read, she was acknowledging the fact that in a society in which 'accepted literature' is so often sexist and racist and otherwise irrelevant or offensive to so many lives, she must do the work of two.

Walker joined her in that work, thereby becoming a model for a future generation of writers and readers herself. For Walker, literature is a conversation, an exchange of ideas. The texts and their writers speak to us. Therefore, she saw it as her alice walker the color purple to find as many Black women who wrote but were forgotten, but who still had so much to say through the work they left behind.

I felt very connected to her and her efforts, and shared her frustrations in regards to how many of the works of Black women have become out of print and are not accessible to a broader public. A notion which Walker vehemently fought against. In the essay, she explains that it was just the white mainstream which turned away from the movement, because it didn't faze them, their privilege allowed them to turn their backs on it, whereas Black people were lastingly shaped and influenced by that enduring struggle which exploded in the 60s.

It gave us history and men far greater than presidents. It gave us heroes. Selfless men of courage and strength, for our little boys and girls to follow. It gave us hope for tomorrow. It called us to life. Because we live, it can never die. In some of the other essays, she reflects on the very personal effects that Dr. King and his wife Coretta had on her life, how much they inspired her: "At the moment I saw his resistance I knew I would never be able to live in this country without resisting everything that sought to disinherit me, and I would never be forced away from the land of my birth without a fight.

He gave us home. The third part of this collection addresses how Black women cope with self-worth and self-respect. It is probably the most personal section of the three, and offers great encouragement to future generations of Black men and women. Again, she uses a lot of literary examples from the works of Black poets and authors to illustrate her point.

The titular essay "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens" talks about how Black alices walker the color purple throughout history have created masterpieces from the scraps they were afforded, often in a different manner than what was seen as respectable or usual, and therefore, haven't their work be delegitimized. Walker proceeds in showing how oppression has caused many talented Black women to go unnoticed or unheard of, citing the labours of Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Roberta Flack and Aretha Franklin.

I also found it interesting how Walker compared Woolf's essay A Room of One's Own to the work of Phillis Wheatley, since all of Woolf's fears were Wheatley's reality, and yet the latter kept alice walker the color purple out her creativity in her poetry. And yet, it is to my mother-and all our mothers who were not famous-that I went in search of the secret if what has fed that muzzled and often mutilated, but vibrant, creative spirit that the black woman has inherited, and that pops out in wild and unlikely places to this day.

Furthermore, I like how she didn't just stress the achievements of published writers and artists, but also saw the beauty in the struggle and efforts of everyday women. For Walker, her mother's ability to continue gardening despite her poor living conditions is a confirmation of her strength and her ability to strive even in hardship. One of the most interesting essays was "From An Interview".

In it, we learn that Walker's eye was disfigured when she was a young girl and that she was teased and bullied because of it. Walker reflects on how that took a toll on her self-worth, reaching a point where she felt so worthless and miserable that she wanted to commit suicide. It is an incredibly personal piece which speaks a lot about the path of self-destruction and how girls and women are often reduced to their beauty, and therefore linking their worth to their looks.

Writing poems is my way of celebrating with the world that I have not committed suicide the night before. I found it interesting that she stressed the fact that only Malcolm X, among the popular Black leaders of the time, had a dark-skinned wife and loved her openly. I never thought about that but it was very touching to hear how much that meant for Walker and reassured and reaffirmed her.

They are affirming themselves and remarking on the general condition of Black life as they know it, which they are entitled to do. So, overall, In Search of Our Mother's Gardens is an incredibly rich and multi-layered essay collection that I would recommend to everyone who wants to go on the journey of unburying some forgotten about souls and marvelling at the genius and craft of Alice Walker.

It took me about a month to finish this incredibly powerful and convicting collection it's dense and contains a lot of essays, speeches and statementsbut I am so glad to have read it. Walker covers so much! From her search for Zora Neale Hurston's grave to reflections on female writers who walked before us and more. One thing that is impossible to ignore in this wholesome collection is Walker's devotion to black female writers- a deep appreciation for them and a reverence for their work.

A book of essays by Ms. Walker, who is one of my favorite authors. My favorite ones are the ones with reference to Zora Neale Hurston. This if full of ideas that may usually be linked to feminism, but Walker instead coins the term "womanism" as she feels black women were left out of the feminist movement dominated by white women. Some of these feel a little dated now, but many of them are still so relevant, and that was actually kind of depressing.

The ones from the '60s and '70s, talking about what were then still fairly new movements for racial and women's justice, in light of all the advances that the neo-cons and patriarchal and racist fundies made from Reagan one, and now with the ignorant racist teabaggers, ugh, just soooo depressing. Nope, the assholes are always waiting to take back whatever little amount of privilege they lost.

So powerful. Walker's prose continues to be an inspiration to me and speak to me long after I've left it. Thirty-some years ago, I heard or remember her saying that our foremothers were both blocked from realizing their abilities, and redirected their creative urges toward gardening and quilt making. That was a useful insight, one that I've held through the rest of my life.

I reread books with different eyes, though. While Walker did talk about redirected creativity, she also described the consequences of having few models, of how black women's work was ignored relative to that of white and black men, and even white women. While Walker's anger practically walks off the page in some essays, it also includes beautiful and hopeful essays — sometimes the same ones, although I generally preferred the quieter essays I would, wouldn't I?

While she worked a single theme here — how her race and gender influence art and how both are perceived and influenced by an unjust society — her thinking is like a diamond, taking different perspectives and tones by turns. Nettie and Samuel marry and prepare to return to America. Before they leave, Adam marries Tashi, an African girl.

Following tradition, Tashi undergoes female genital mutilation and facial scarring. In solidarity, Adam undergoes the same facial scarring ritual. As Celie realizes that she is content without Shug, Shug returns, having ended her relationship with Germaine. Nettie and Celie reunite after 30 years, introducing one another to their respective families.

The book received greater scrutiny amidst controversy surrounding the release of the film adaptation in Though the novel has garnered critical acclaim, it has also been the subject of controversy. The American Library Association placed it on the list of top hundred banned and challenged books in the United States from to 17[ 13 ] to 17[ 14 ] and to 50[ 15 ] as well as the top ten list for 6 and 9.

The novel was adapted into a film of the same name in Though nominated for eleven Academy Awardsit won none. This perceived snubbing ignited controversy because many critics, including Roger Ebert, [ 18 ] considered it the best picture of the year. InWarner Bros. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history.

Alice walker the color purple: In her public life,

Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikidata item. This article is about the novel. For the film, see The Color Purple film. For other uses, see The Color Purple disambiguation. Dewey Decimal. Plot [ alice walker the color purple ]. Critical reception [ edit ]. Censorship in the United States [ edit ]. Adaptations [ edit ].

Boycotting Israel [ edit ]. Editions [ edit ]. This list is incomplete ; you can help by adding missing items. March See also [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Notes [ edit ]. From to in National Book Awards history there were dual hardcover and paperback awards in most categories. Most of the paperback award-winners were reprints, including the Fiction.

Citations [ edit ]. National Book Foundation. Retrieved American Library Association. March 26, Archived from the original on November 2, Retrieved April 22, Retrieved April 12, People awarded this preeminent author of stories, essays, and poetry of the United States. Inthis first African woman for fiction also received the national book award.

In public life, Walker worked to address problems of injustice, inequality, and poverty as an activist, teacher, and public intellectual. Write a Review. Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book! Community Reviews. Search review text. Displaying 1 - 30 of 28, reviews. I give this book 5 stars to spite the myopic David Gilmours and the V.

Naipauls of the world who think books written by women are irrelevant. And I award this 5 stars, symbolically on Banned Books Week as an apology for all the cowardly sentiments of the ones who misuse their power by banning books, thereby shutting out many powerful voices which demand and need to be heard. In my eyes, an author's merit lies not only in their sense of aesthetic beauty, but also in the scope and reach of their worldviews which must reflect in their craft.

Alice Walker's is the voice of one such African American writer that recounts a story which not only breaches the boundaries of an issue like emancipation of women but tries to detect a common pattern in problems plaguing civilizations across continents. She gives us one horrifying glimpse after another into the lives of women ravaged by unspeakable brutalities like rape and abuse, lives searching for meaning and connection and seeking out that elusive ray of hope amidst the darkness of despair.

And by the end of the narrative, she brings to light with great sensitivity, that misogyny, sexism and blind patriarchal prejudices are as rampantly in vogue in the urban, upscale sphere of American cities as they are in the intractable, untameable African landscapes. Celie and Nettie. Shug Avery, Sofia and Mary Agnes. Tashi and Olivia. All these are but different names and many facets of the same disturbing reality.

If the lives of Celie and Nettie are torn apart by sexual abuse and humiliation from childhood, then Tashi and other unnamed young African girls of the Olinka tribe are victims of genital mutilation and other forms of psychological and physical torture. If the men of African American families dehumanize the female members to the point of treating them as mere care-givers and sex slaves, then the objectification of African women by the men of their families is no less appalling.

And contrary to accepted beliefs, white families in America are just as easily susceptible to misogyny as the African American families are. But Alice Walker doesn't only stop at opening our eyes to the uncivilized aspects of our so-called civilized world, but also shows us how knowledge of the world and people at large, self-awareness and education can help exorcize such social evils, how it is never too late to gain a fresh perspective, start anew and how empowerment of women eventually empowers society.

Dear David Gilmour, if I were a professor of English literature I'd have taught Alice Walker to my students without a shred of hesitation, because here's an author who may not possess the trademark sophistication of Virginia Woolf's lyrical prose but who, nonetheless, fearlessly broaches subjects many masters and mistresses of the craft may balk at dealing with.

Alice Walker: 5 David Gilmour: 0. I read The Colour Purple in my early teens, was traumatized by the graphic abuse portrayed, and vowed to never read it again. I was curious about why so many of my GR friends rated it so highly and was eventually convinced to give it another go. Celie is the protagonist of the tale. Her story is told through a series of letters written firstly to God, and then to her sister Nettie.

Alice walker the color purple: A powerful cultural touchstone of modern

As an abused, uneducated woman abused by her father, husband, and step-children who was only ever shown love by Nettie, the letters are very telling, and are the only means Celie has of expressing her feelings. I adored Celie. It really amazed me how a woman who was abused so much sexually, physically, verbally could still have so much love in her heart, and not be bitter.

Look at you. You black, you pore, you ugly, you a woman. Goddam, he say, you nothing at all. The book has strong female characters, which is another plus. Celie is a wonderful character and proof of the resilience of the human spirit. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident.

But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I alice walker the color purple, the more I love. Educating Drew. I mean. You know how there are some books and their words wrap around you like a comforting blanket? The Color Purple rips the clothes right off of your skin, leaving you bare and vulnerable.

From the first freakin' moment opening the page. Even when you're not. Have you seen the movie? I had. I thought I was prepared. Because the movie was devastating. I remember vividly being in the house that me and a couple of college friends rented, sitting there in the dark, all of us sitting on our furniture, chain smoking, drinking wine and crying.

The movie didn't prepare me. Walker's words are music. Sometimes a sweet melody, but mostly a cacophony of pain and sorrow. Oh and how the characters change and grow with time, how they eventually find peace. And the dichotomy of the South and Africa? It makes me yearn to find pieces of literature that can show me the mysteries of that continent.

I am incoherent and refuse to speak of the summary. It's The Color Purple! It doesn't need a summary. It is alive. It is life. Gotta tell you, I don't really know what to say. They say there's a first time for everything but I, as a member of the never shuts up community, doubted this day would ever come. So I will keep this quick! Lately I've had a hard time feeling books - as in actually have them impact me emotionally - so I've read increasingly crazy lit fic to attempt to undo it.

This just shattered all of that and fixed it no problem. I teared up. I'm not ashamed, even if this wrecks my badass image. This book is emotive and touching and I care about the characters so, so much. But enough yearning on main. Bottom line: A book so good it broke me! You can't curse nobody. Long before women began speaking up about their different experiences in the metoo movement, Alice Walker's Celie and her sisters resist the violence and power of the men around them and go on living through the pain and frustration, only to find life worth fighting for in the end.

Rarely these days do I finish a book within one sitting, but this novel was impossible to put down. In a voice genuinely her own, Celie begins to tell her story of rape, loss, and forced marriage.

Alice walker the color purple: The Color Purple is a

Her loneliness is so painful that she can't even think of a recipient for her letters - except for God, which she imagines to be an older, white man, the very symbol of patriarchal power. Wherever her life takes her, she is surrounded by men who are taught from the cradle to mistreat and look down on women in order to establish their own fragile egos.

While they claim to be the stronger sex, they leave it to their mothers, sisters, daughters and wives to make a living, to work for food and shelter and education. Celie's world - based on submission - changes when she encounters two women who refuse to bow their heads, who fight for their right to individual pride and happiness. In Shug, her lover, and Sofia, her alice walker the color purple, she sees the true colour of female power: the purple of queens!

A mix of the passionately hot blood-red colour of happiness and the deeply painful and dark blue, purple is the essence of nature, the expression of the divine principle of life beyond the Christian God of the bible who is mainly catering to the white male authority that makes women suffer. The day Celie discovers that her long lost sister is still alive, she can finally drop the patriarchal god figure as a recipient of her letters written to reflect on the painful experience of her life and share her thoughts with somebody she loves truly and unconditionally.

Life is not only red happiness or blue sadness, it is purple! Therefore Celie's lover Shug is convinced that "God is pissed" whenever someone ignores the beauty of the colour purple in nature whereas he is completely absent from church. Finding spiritual support within the loving human heart is at the centre of this powerful hymn to women across the world, and while telling the story of Nettie and Celie, of Sofia and Shug, it approaches the difficult political topics of misogyny, repressed sexuality, colonialism, missionary endeavours, racism, domestic violence and poverty.

Rarely have I felt a colour expressing itself so strongly in emotions! Despite the terrible circumstances of life in the Deep South in the s and s, it is a book about the joy of living. Confronted with the hatred of the man she is about to leave to embark on her first attempt at independent life, Celie answers: "I am pore, I'm black, I may be ugly and can't cook, a voice say to everything listening.

But I'm here. Gender roles are not static, and there are moments of peace and friendship for anyone who dares to move out of the pattern of dominance that destroys the freedom of choice for both men and women. Recommended to the world, over and over! Michael Finocchiaro. Author 3 books 6, followers. The Color Purple is an absolute masterpiece about love and redemption.

Shug, Celie, Sofia, and Nellie are some of the strongest women characters in American fiction. I am literally writing this with tears streaming down my cheeks. There is so much to unpack here as Alice Walker deals holistically with the fate of African Americans from the perspective of Africa and the tribes who sold their kinsman to white slavers, the devastation of Africa by European colonizers particularly after WWI leading to WWII, the violence of in the South particularly aimed towards women, female sexuality There is an infinite depth in this book that can reveal itself more and more with each successive read.

The first half of the story is told through letters to God by Celia who is married, against her will, to Mr. We learn that his first name is Albert, but we never learn his last name. Perhaps, this anonymity is symbolic of the widespread rape and spousal abuse in impoverished communities - and yet we also see that in the white mayor's family, through her sister-in-law Sofia's eyes is no more sane and no less violent.

Celia was raped by her stepfather and bore two children that subsequently disappeared. Her sister refuses Mr. Sex for her is a burden and a torture without end: You know the worst part? The worst part is I don't think he notice. He git up there and enjoy himself just the same. No matter what I'm thinking. No matter what I feel. It just him.

Heartfeeling don't seem to enter into it. She snort. The fact he can do it like that make me want to kill him. In fact, Albert loves the singer Shug who, ailing, comes to their house and incidentally name drops legendary blues singer Bessie Smith as a friend - thus dating the story to the 30s. As Celie nurses Shug back to health,the two women develop a deep, lasting love for each other that is both physical and spiritual and the first love that Celia has ever felt from another person: She say my name again.

She say this song I'm bout to sing is call Miss Celie's song. Cause she scratched it out of my head when I was sick First time somebody made something and name it after me. Through Shug, Celie learns about her body and that she can have pleasure via her breasts and her sex p. The book has many characters that transform completely during the book.

In fact, at the end of the book, there is a beautiful reunion which is somewhat prefigured back on p. What the world got to do with anything, I think. Then I see myself sitting there quilting tween Shug Avery and Mr. Us three together gainst Tobias and his fly speck box of chocolate. For the first time in my life, I feel just right.

She and Shug have a spiritual transformation as well, evolving from the white-borrowed religion of a white God which has born no good for Celie: Yeah, I say, and he give me a lynched daddy, a crazy mama, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won't ever see again. Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man.

And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful, and lowdown. Shug expresses her beliefs this: The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don't know what you looking for.

Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit. I ast. Yeah, It. God ain't a he or a she, but a It. The next two pages are a beautiful eloge to this form or Emersonian deism, a powerful arugment for a more personal and less judgmental religion. Yes, Celie, she say. Everything alice walker the color purple to be loved.

Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees to everything to git attention that we do, except walk? From this point on, she addresses her letters directly to Nellie The letters written back to Celie from her sister Nettie are hidden for years by a pre-repentant Mr. In this letters, we learn of Nettie's voyage to Africa as a missionary.

Nellie also has a spiritual transformation as she sees European Christianity's utter disregard for villagers and their traditions with the complete destruction and near elimination of the Olinka culture that she traveled to Africa to help. There is just so much depth in this masterpiece, that I will stop my review here and just urge you, beg you to read this book if you have never done so.

It is a rare, raw look at humanity and suffering but with a powerful, compelling message of redemption and hope.