The color purple

The Color Purple isn't for the fainthearted reader. If you can tolerate some graphic descriptions of abuse (both sexual and physical), strong language, and sexuality, you'll be rewarded with some poetically beautiful passages.

This is a novel in letters written by sisters Celie and Nettie. Each

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one's voice is distinct, but Celie's seems the most powerful. Celie had little formal education, and her dialect is more unique than Nettie's grammatically correct style. Both women address issues of racial inequality in the Jim Crow South, conflict and violence between husbands and wives/men and women, and poverty. Additionally, Nettie's missionary venture to Africa prompts her to reflect on the differences between African American and African cultures.

Continuity issues always jump out at me, and this book has several. The time line between Celie's and Nettie's letters just doesn't add up. Events that seemingly span several years in Celie's account happen within weeks or months in Nettie's account. I don't think time was an important concern for Alice Walker, though. No dates are mentioned in the novel, although there are vague references to World War II. The story is more important than the details, and readers will do well to turn off their internal calendars and immerse themselves in the flow of the words.

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Because of the brutality of some male characters, and the awful effects on women and children, The Color Purple often is upsetting to read, particularly in the first half of the book. Yet at the same time it is beautifully written by Alice Walker. She convincingly conveys the voices in this rural

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Georgia community, and not only creates many memorable characters, but allows them to learn and grow.

It takes place from the early 1900s to the 1940s. At its center is Celie, a poor, black woman who has lived in a nightmare of abuse from the man she believes is her father. Two children who result are taken from her, and she helps her younger sister Nettie escape before she suffers the same. Celie then is married off to a widower with four children who doesn't love her. He wants a maid and a mother for the kids, and an occasional sexual outlet. Thinking little of Celie, he beats her simply "{c}ause she my wife." Celie accepts everything stoically, but we know her inner feelings from letters she writes to God, and eventually, to her lost sister Nettie. We learn that she and Albert both are entranced by Shug Avery, an attractive, full of life blues singer who won't let anyone tell her how to live her life.

The story is told through Celie's letters, and through Nettie's letters to Celie. Nettie has become a missionary in Africa after escaping, and her experiences there at times are a beatific contrast to what Celie is experiencing. She tells Celie, "try to imagine a city full of these shining, blueback people wearing brilliant blue robes with designs like fancy quilt patterns. Tall, thin, with long necks and straight backs. Can you picture it at all, Celie? Because I felt like I was seeing black for the first time." But the village has a shameful legacy, as ancestors sold other blacks into slavery. And there are problems there, as well, with male domination and the village's unyielding commitment to old ways. Nettie eventually contemplates returning with her husband and children to Celie''s community.

With Shug's help, Celie leaves Albert and relocates to Memphis, where she begins to develop her own business designing and sewing simple, useful clothing. She is emotionally supported by Sofia, Albert's fierce daughter-in-law who stands up to Albert's son, and to the white mayor of the community and his wife. Celie's departure and personal evolution unexpectedly begin to affect Albert as well, as he is forced to take care of himself and reassess his way of living. Shug comes to love Celie, and together they begin to have a healthy, sexually satisfying relationship. Albert eventually says to Celie, "It don't surprise me you love Shug Avery. I have love Shug Avery all my life... I told Shug it was true that I beat my wife cause you was you and not her... some womens would have just love to hear they man say he beat his wife cause she wasn't them. ...But Shug spoke right up for you, Celie. She say, Albert, you been mistreating somebody I love. So as far as you concern, I'm gone."

I particularly liked how the author let the characters develop and mature in the book. Most notably, Celie, who begins with no belief in her own worth at all, comes to a hard-won wisdom and stability. Shug, and Albert, and others, come to more honestly view themselves and how they want to live. After Celie returns to the community, she and Albert even begin to sit out on the porch together, just to talk and pass the time. She tells Nettie in a letter, "I mean when you talk to him now he really listen, and one time, out of nowhere in the conversation us was having, he said Celie, I'm satisfied this the first time I ever live on Earth as a natural man."

How does God fit into their lives? At one point, a disgusted Celie says, "the God I've been praying to is a man. And {he} act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful and lowdown." Shug tries to convince her of a different view, that God just wants admiration: "Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it." As they all gather near the porch toward the end of the book, we see they each in their own way have learned to how to notice.

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This is a multi layered story with themes of slavery and subjugation, unspeakable horrors, loss and despair and yet as I read it the inspiration and hope of the characters shone through despite the dark and bleak experiences that each had in some way undergone.

Having read a number of reviews I was

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well prepared for the dark side of this book. The contrast that came when a small ray of light shone for the characters was all the more arresting. For example the simple act of laughing, followed by the quilting that drew women like Celie and Sofia together.

So I appreciated the moments of hope and the inspiration. The centrality of learning was another theme of the book that I was not expecting. Here, I am using education, not in the formal sense but rather in the wider way in which we are all life long learners. In Nettie’s letters the way that education was seen as so important and the revelations it bought – Nettie writes of being so thankful to her teacher for ‘keeping alive in me somehow the desire to know’ (page 119). What a priceless gift that was and remains so today.

I also loved the reciprocity of the learning that struck me in a number of places. For example, Nettie works for Corrine and Samuel and admits that even though she looks after their children she does not feel like a maid. Nettie further explains ‘I guess this is because they teach me , and I teach the children and there is no beginning or end to teaching and working – it all runs together. (page 120)

I enjoyed the challenges to taken for granted assumptions, the close juxtaposition of God, fatherhood, love and relationships that Alice Walkers characters grappled with. The reader cannot help but become engaged with many of ‘the big questions of life’! In conversation with Shug Celie ponders ‘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’s know what you are looking for….’ (page 176) The perseverance and spirit of the women as they grow and learn more of themselves and their spirit was inspiring.

Finally I loved the phrase that made me laugh out loud ‘I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it’ (page 177). After all, as my friends know purple is my favourite colour!

The Color Purple is one of those books that will keep me thinking long after I put it back in my bookcase. I highly recommend it.

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I thought this amazing even though there were several aspects of the novel that would ordinarily be off-putting. First of all, this is very dark--that first page landed like a punch to the gut, dealing with the rape of a child. There's a lot of raw sexual content and graphic violence depicted in

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the novel. I've dropped books with strong styles like Fingersmith and The God of Small Things because I couldn't take similar subject matter.

But I think what helped me through it (besides the sense that after this beginning worse couldn't happen) was the second aspect that ordinarily would put me off--this is an epistolary novel--told through letters (and in dialect and with many deliberate misspellings and no quotation marks to offset dialogue). The text is headed by the words: You better not never tell nobody but God. It'll kill your mammy. Following that are the "Dear God" letters of Celie, who is fourteen-years-old when the novel begins, set in the American South from the early 20th century to World War II (The 1927 Bessie Smith song, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is referenced fairly early on.) Once I started reading those letters I just couldn't stop--they were that riveting. I think it helps the subject matter--imparting a simultaneous intimacy and distance--so that your heart can break for Celie without feeling repelled, and it's easier to take the disturbing content in short bursts--this book flew right past, read in one sitting. The voice is marvelous, making the best use of the epistolary technique, showing Celie and her growth in the very way she writes--spelling, grammar, etc making me feel as if she was whispering into my ear.

There are a host of strong characters such as Shug Avery and Sofia. Well, strong Black women characters. If I have a criticism, it's that pretty much every male and every White character is loathsome, at least through most of the book, although there is a redemptive aspect to one of the worse, and a few positive minor male characters like Samuel and Adam and Jack. There's a strong spiritual theme in the book--as you might guess from a book mostly composed of "Dear God" letters (and ending with "Amen.") It's important--but I never feel it was preachy--and ties in very closely with the title:

But more than anything else, God love admiration.
You saying God vain? I ast.
Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.
What it do when it pissed off? I ast.
Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.

It's a pretty harrowing book for most of its length--but with passages of beauty, glints of humor and strong friendships among women--dark in themes and content but ultimately not depressing. I enjoyed the Spielberg film adaptation too. I think it would be hard to beat his cast. But compared to the book it feels like a Disney production.

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The Color Purple by Alice Walker; (5+*)

I find The Color Purple to be as beautifully written today as it was when I read it for the first time upon it's release. Alice Walker was given a gift to put onto paper for the rest of the world to share with her.

"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the

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color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."
(Shug to Celie)

"What I love best bout Shug is what she been through, I say. When you look in Shug's eyes you know she been where she been, seen what she seen, did what she did. And now she know."
(Celie to Mr.)

The Color Purple is a pure example of great and wonderful literature. Alice Walker proves the hardship of life for those less fortunate. The painful and hard things that Celie had to go through make you feel total compassion for the character.

One of the best qualities of a writer is being able to make the reader feel what the characters are feeling and in writing this book Alice Walker did just that.

I very highly recommend this book.

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"The Color Purple" is one of the strongest statements of how love transforms and cruelty disfigures the human spirit that this reviewer has ever read. Alice Walker gives us Celie, 14 years old when the book opens, who has been raped, abused, degraded and twice impregnated by her father. After he

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takes her children away from her without a so much as a word, he marries her off like a piece of chattel to her husband, who is so cold, distant and inhuman to her that she can only refer to him as Mr; and this person deprives her of her sister Nettie, the only one who ever loved her.

Celie manages to survive by living one day at a time. Her life is a series of flat, lifeless panoramas painted in browns and grays. Into this existence, if you can call it that, comes Shug Avery, her husband's mistress, who shows Celie her own specialness and uniqueness. A lot has been made about lesbianism in this book and all of it is beside the point. Celie isn't a lesbian, she is a human being in need of love and Shug Avery helps Celie realize that she is somebody worth loving and caring about. When Celie hurls her defiance into Mr's face -- "I'm poor, I'm black, I may be ugly... but I'm here", she is making an affirmation not only to him, but to the whole world; the reader can only say, along with Shug Avery, "Amen".

When Celie finds the strength to leave Mr, he is left to face the reality of himself and what he sees isn't pretty; his transformation humanizes him and allows Celie to call him Albert, recognizing him as a person, as he finally recognizes her as one. The last chapter makes many readers go through half a box of Kleenex (Stephen Spielberg once said in an interview that he "cried and cried at the end" of the book), but Walker doesn't play cheap with the reader's emotions; she has a powerful story to tell and she tells it with such consummate skill and sensitivity that she brings us into it and makes it ours. This is a book to be treasured and read over and over again.

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There is something truly poignant about this novel. It explores the harsh reality of life in the 1930's. But at the same time it manages to explore something much deeper and more meaningful. This novel deals with how a woman, who appears to have so little, can become truly rich. Celie's discoveries

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about family, love, and God shape something new and different for her and her life. This is a book that will definitely stick with me.

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"But sleep remain a stranger to this night." - Thoughts on The Color Purple by Alice Walker

I can’t beleef I’s took long to read this book. But then again, books have they way of coming to your life when’s you need them most.

I first hear of The Color Purple back when’s my friends taking up

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class in Film and Litratur. They was made to read it before them teacher show the movee to class. Sure was curios, them says it about poor black womans with lesbian tendesis. Plus the fact that Oprah had somethings to do with the film. Hear the book was famous. Felt likes I the only one who not read the book yet, but then forgots it until I pick it up on my book pile on New Year’s.

Book’s thin, not much to read, wudda have read it in one sitting if I’s wanted, but you know me, I likes to make good things last. Instead made myself not read it until night, before sleep, but then spent first three nights of the year with insomya. Thank the good Lord for this book or I’s have chewed sleeping pills like candy.

Do I’s got to tell you what it story for? Maybe I shudnt. Maybe you go and git a copy and read it yourself. I’s know what I tell you, tho. I’s tell you how nice it was, reading The Color Purple. Reminds me of Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon – them some of last year’s reads – more of the late one than that before, really. Celie’s a good bloke, not very bright, but her dumb she makes up for character. Her sister Nettie was the smart one, went off as a mishunary to Africa, sent letters to Celie that wudnt have been read because Celie’s husband dint givem to her. Damn Mr. __________ – good thing’s there Shug to help Celie out.

Oh, Shug. She be fine and dandy as hell. Feisty woman at a times when womans not supose to be. She like the version of Anna in Leo Tolstor’s Anna Karenina in somes way, and Kitty be Celie – they’s fall for the same man at the start, Vronsky. But Anna and Kitty dint git no lesbians with each other.

And there’s be everyone else: Harpo, his wives stubborn Sofia and singing Squeak; Celie’s childrens Olivia and Adam, born when Celie’s Pa raped her before he marry her off to Mr. __________; mishunarys Samuel and Corrine, who welcomes Nettie to the family when she ran away. They’s such a band of misfits they form a family that be perfect.

Damn. I’s said I aint telling you nothing. Now I’s must have spoiled you something.

The Color Purple git funny some, git really sad, too. There even be surprise bits. Mostly it thoughtful book, makes you think about lotsa things. Best part I read that make me pause and let things sink in, when Shug and Celie talk about God. Celie always write to God her letters, but then she stop. Shug ask her, then they’s talk about God.

Here’s the thing, say Shug. 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.

That Shug. She may be a sinner, but she knows God better than them some churchgoers.

PS. Writing like this, it git hard to keep up. Miss Walker ma’am, you’s one hell of a writer to keeps this up for an entire’s length of a book. Dang.

Originally posted here.

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