The Color Purple

By Alice Walker

Diana Montes de Oca

Alice Walker

• Born on February 9th, 1944

• Eatonton, Georgia

• Spelman College 1961-1963

• Sarah Lawrence College 1963-1965

• Married Melvyn R. Leventhal in 1967, at the age of 23

• Divorced 9 years later, 1976

(Alice)

(1983 National Book Awards )

Career & Awards

• Co-founder and publisher in the Wild Trees press (Navarro, California) 1984-88 (Alice)

• Teacher of Black Studies at Jackson State College, 1968-69, and Tougaloo College, 1970-71 (Alice)

• Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference scholar 1966 (Alice)• First prize in the American Scholar essay contest 1967 (Alice)• National Endowment for the Arts grant 1969 & 1977 (Alice)• Nation Book Award nomination for Revolutionary Petunias 1973 (Alice)• Lillian Smith Award from the Southern Regional Council for

Revolutionary Petunias 1973 (Alice)• Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award in the American

Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters for In love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women 1974 (Alice)

• National Book Critics Circle Award nomination for The Color Purple 1982 (Alice)

• Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award for The Color Purple 1983 (Alice)

• Best Books for Young Adults citation, American Library Association for In Search of Our Mother’ Gardens: Womanist Prose 1984 (Alice)

Books by Alice Walker

*Why War Is Never a Good Idea

*There Is a Flower on the Tip of My Nose Smelling Me

*We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For

*Now Is The Time to Open Your Heart

*A Poem Traveled Down My Arm

*Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth

*The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart

*Sent by Earth

*Anything We Love Can Be Saved

*By the Light of My Father’s Smile

*The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult

*Warrior Marks

*You Can’t Keep A Good Woman Down

*The Color Purple

(Alice W.)

(AfriPOP!)

Poems by Alice Walker

*Desire

*What do I get for getting old? A Picture Story for the Curious!

*Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit

*The Tree of Life Has Fallen

*To Change the World Enough

*Our Martyrs

*This is a story of how love works

*When You See Water

*Word reaches us

*The Answer is: Live Happily!*Torture

*I Will Keep Broken Things

*Be Nobody’s Darling

*You Want to Grow Old Like the Carters

*She

*What Makes the Dalai Lama Lovable?

*The Ways of Water

(Google Images)

(Alice W.)

The Color Purple

How The Color Purple

Fits Into African

American Literature

The Color Purple is a piece of text that includes very touchy subjects. Unlike many other books at the time, the Color Purple brings these issues into the spotlight rather than sweep them under the rug. As Cornish argues, “Walker was always aware of the problems of personal relations of her men and women and sought to understand rather than excuse or ignore, them.” The Color Purple touches on hardships many African Americans encountered, such as sexism, lesbianism, rape and religion. This book is also unique in its characteristic that racism isn’t as dominating as several other works categorized as African American Literature. Here , the characters confront one another, all of the same race. It is a very feministic novel and is written to not only show the hardships of African Americans, but African American women specifically.

How does the rejection of African Americans within African tribes relate to the rejection of African Americans in the United States? What about internal racism?

DISCUSSION QUESTION O

NE

Internal racism causes for the black community to not be able to move forward as a whole and only more as individuals. In Lipsky’s punlished journal titled “Internalized Rascism”, she touches on the psychological effects on the black community as a whole cause by racism amongst on another. “It has proved to be the fatal stumbling block of every promising and potentially powerful black liberation effort that has failed in the past. Patterns of internalized oppression severely limit the effectiveness of every existing black group… . Some patterns of internalized racism have become so familiar that we, ourselves, accept them as part of our "black culture." We attribute them to "the way we are.” It is also very ironic for racism and oppression to be an issue among African Americans when their ancestors were forced to come to this country facing these same issues. The suffering the enslaved Africans received was so damaging that the effects are still seen to this day.

What is the impact of each of the following female relationships in Celie’s life? Think about Motherhood. Sisterhood. Love.

*Nettie

*Shug

DISCUSSION QUESTION T

WO

Nettie

ShugQun Wang argues that it is through Shug that Celie ultimately discovers herself and her voice. She learns to grow into her skin and fight for herself. “Under Shug's influence, Celie has matured into a person who has developed enough self-awareness and self-confidence to challenge tradition's hegemonic impulse: if her decision to leave her husband demonstrates Celie's determination to break away from the old mold of life, her starting a business to make pants for women suggests her readiness to create a new life for herself, regardless of what social norm dictates (women were not supposed to wear pants in the 1930s).”

Nettie helps develop Celie’s mind by educating her and basically going to school for the both of them. Living in Africa and caring for her children, Nettie lives for both herself and her sister. She writes Celie about God and religion and stirs a different belief in Celie. As Qun Wang writes, “Celie's achievement of knowledge and understanding of herself is paralleled in The Color Purple by her sister Nettie's newly developed religious beliefs… Nettie had a better education and lives a better life than Celie does.” It is the thought of her sister that keeps Celie alive and makes her put one foot in front of the other every morning

DISCUSSION QUESTION

THREE

What is your opinion on the religion represented by Nettie? Shug? What are the similarities and differences? Do you see any irony in what they believe in?Transformation?

Scott Simon and Juan Williams analyze African Americans and Christianity. They speak of the Africans who were enslaved and came here with their own African religions and tribal rituals and they eventually adopt the religion of their oppressor.

“When they come here, they're told in order to be civilized, literally, they have to become Christians, and as Christians they must be, therefore, subservient, accepting of their role, their status in life, and their reward will come in heaven. And somehow African-Americans take to this word and say, `Wait a minute. Christ identifies with those who are oppressed, with the least among us, those who've been shunned, and we make Christ and Christianity as liberation theology.”- Juan Williams (Co-author, "This Far by Faith")

(Analysis)

Nettie, although she is working as a missionary, in her letters she never talks of anyone converting. Nettie mentions taking pictures down of Jesus because they don’t look right in her hut. “An important part of any Protestant mission would be religious instruction, church services and converting unbelievers to Christianity. Soon after her arrival in Africa Nettie writes that 'the people...are sunk in spiritual and physical confusion. They believe in the devil and worship the dead” writes Alan MacColl.

(MacColl )

DISCUSSION QUESTION F

OUR

How is Alice Walker’s way of structuring her novel reflective of the personal growth of the main character Celie?

The way Walker formats her book with so many different and individual conflicts among and within the characters is a metaphor for how Celie is not just herself but connected to all those around her. Walker is showing us through Celie that although we may be our own individual selves we are also part of a bigger circle and who we are is transformed on who’s path we cross in life. Shanyn Fiske argues that “this formal destabilization of a dominant narrative emphasizes that an individual cannot be considered apart from the matrix of his or her relationships and that it is through integration into a collective identity that he or she defines the boundaries of his or her own being. Thus, like the scraps of cloth sewn into Celie's patch work quilt, characters' lives in The Color Purple are stitched together into a unity whose strength and vibrancy depend on each individual's identification with and distinction from the others around him or her”.

DISCUSSION QUESTION F

IVE

Those named and not named.

What do you think is Walker’s reason for using or not using last names? In general as well as specific to characters.

In general Walker uses blanks instead of the male characters’ last names to draw attention to male dominance. In specific, for Mr. _______, Walker is highlighting the dark side of this character, “an identity too dangerous to reveal” as Heglar argues. You can see his character start to transform when Walker begins to refer to him as Albert. In the case of Reverend Mr. _______ whom Nettie later marries, you see his transformation happen faster than Albert’s because of his change is perspective once he moves to Africa. As Heglar continues to argue, “Celie, Harpo, Corrine, Nettie, and other relatives by blood or marriage have their surnames withheld because of the erasure of Albert's and Samuel's surnames; thus, Celie and Nettie, for example, do not have married surnames because of the ------ for both Albert and Samuel. Withholding is also notable in Nettie's account of her and Celie's true origins; rather than identifying their parents by name, Nettie emphasizes their familial relationship.”

Works Cited1983 National Book Awards %u2014 Infoplease.com. Photograph.

Infoplease: Encyclopedia, Almanac, Atlas, Biographies, Dictionary, Thesaurus. Free Online Reference, Research & Homework Help. %u2014 Infoplease.com. Web. 06 July 2011. <http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0154623.html>

AfriPOP! Briefs: Alice Walker to Honor Steve Biko - AfriPOP! Photograph. AfriPOP! - Global African Culture. Web. 06 July 2011. <http://afripopmag.com/culture/afripop-briefs-alice-walker-to-honor-steve-biko/>.

"Alice Malsenior Walker." Contemporary Popular Writers. Ed. Dave Mote. Detroit: St. James Press, 1997. Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 July 2011. <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CK1632000267&v=2.1&u=tall85761&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w>

Alice Walker |The Official Website for the American Novelist & Poet. Web. 05 July 2011. <http://alicewalkersgarden.com/>.

"Analysis: African-Americans' use of Christianity during the civil rights era." Weekend Edition Saturday 8 Mar. 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 July 2011. <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CA162136200&v=2.1&u=tall85761&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w>

BANNED! Books Week: The Color Purple. Photograph. Points of Claire-ification. Web. 07 July 2011. <http://aclairedawn.blogspot.com/2010/09/banned-books-week-color-purple.html>.

Cornish, Sam. "Alice Walker: Her Own Woman." The Christian Science Monitor 76.49 (3 Feb. 1984): B1. Rpt. in Poetry Criticism. Ed. Ellen McGeagh and Linda Pavlovski. Vol. 30. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 July 2011.<http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1420033136&v=2.1&u=tall85761&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w>

Fiske, Shanyn. "Piecing the patchwork self: a reading of walker's the color purple." The Explicator 66.3 (2008): 150+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 July 2011.<http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CA189711328&v=2.1&u=tall85761&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w>

"Google Images." Google. Web. 06 July 2011. <http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.nativevillage.org/International Council of 13 INDIGENOUS GR/Other Women Elders/Alice Walker/AliceWalker.jpg>.

 Heglar, Charles J. "Named and Nameless: Alice Walker's Pattern of Surnames in The Color Purple." ANQ 13.1 (Winter 2000): 38-41. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 167. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 July 2011. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1100046003&v=2.1&u=tall85761&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w

Lipsky, Suzanne. "Internalized Racism." Re-evaluation Counseling - Home Page. Web. 07 July 2011. <http://www.rc.org/publications/journals/black_reemergence/br2/br2_5_sl.html>.

MacColl, Alan. "Religion and Romanticism in The Color Purple: Alan MacColl unearths the roots of the natural spirituality celebrated in Alice Walker's novel." The English Review Apr. 2007: 8+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 July 2011. <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CA160926134&v=2.1&u=tall85761&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w>

Wang, Qun. "The Color Purple: Overview." Reference Guide to American Literature. Ed. Jim Kamp. 3rd ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 July 2011. <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1420008351&v=2.1&u=tall85761&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w>