The Color Purple in Retro Chapter Chicks

Oct 11, 2020 Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾

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Mar 17, 2025 Brina rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, coming-of-age, african-american, pulitzer-winner, letters, gender-relations

Purple is royalty. Purple is luxury. It is ambition, creativity, and independence. Purple is also wisdom, spirituality, and magic. Purple is peace. From the time she started writing, Alice Walker emerged as an activist for black women long before the emergence of today’s movements. Walker chose to live by the pen, and in 1982 wrote her treatise on the treatment of black women during the Jim Crow years. It was not enough for society to hear of these womens’ plight from white men and women or even Purple is royalty. Purple is luxury. It is ambition, creativity, and independence. Purple is also wisdom, spirituality, and magic. Purple is peace. From the time she started writing, Alice Walker emerged as an activist for black women long before the emergence of today’s movements. Walker chose to live by the pen, and in 1982 wrote her treatise on the treatment of black women during the Jim Crow years. It was not enough for society to hear of these womens’ plight from white men and women or even from black men. Walker wanted all to know of the treatment of black women from a black woman’s perspective. In doing so, she would bring to light the unique position of black women in this society while also pointing to their womanhood as wisdom, spirituality, creativity, ambition, independence. In essence, the color purple is the black woman’s experience. When all was said and done, The Color Purple won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in 1983 and then got made into a movie starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey. It has since been updated to become even more magical and creative. Needless to say, The Color Purple is my featured book of women’s history month 2025.

Walker admits to not believing in G-D from a male deity’s perspective and yet begins her opus with the words “Dear G-D.” I view these epistolaries as G-D being the recipient of Celie’s letters when she had no one else in the world and needed someone to pour out her feelings to. Celie and her sister Nettie came of age in rural Georgia sometime around 1900. I pinpoint this year due to events that occur later in the book. Beginning with Celie and Nettie, Walker traces three generations of powerful women over the course of fifty years. Celie and Nettie were the product or domestic abuse and later rape. Celie bore her stepfather’s children, who were then taken from her against her will and then forced into marriage to a widower who she had no desire or inclination to marry. Mr —-, who later we find out is named Albert, had his eyes on Nettie because she was the prettier of the two sisters. Celie being the eldest married Mr ——, and Nettie fled before he could rape her, repeating a cycle of oppression. Although Nettie would write to Celie over the course of decades, Mr —- withheld this correspondence due to Nettie’s betrayal of him. It would be a lifetime before the sisters would reunite and both remained strong knowing of the other’s existence. Nettie would go on to have a somewhat better life than Celie’s, but over time hers would be enriched as well.

Celie never knew love, not from her stepfather or from Mr - -. The one love of his life was a woman named Shug Avery, a product of the roaring twenties. Those readers who enjoy history can trace the novel’s main events to the 1930s because Shug notes her friendship with Bessie Smith. Shug is a touring jazz musician who has nothing but love for her fellow humans. Shug is the one who teaches Celie to love, and she becomes the one love of Celie’s life as well. Walker writes of open homosexuality during the early 1980s about a time period when it just was not done. There were always female friendships but not like today’s society. I give Walker credit because I am sure that awards voting panels also reflected their eras, and Walker’s voice was entirely new. Shug flat out tells Mr - - to respect Celie regardless of how she looks or seems to him. She is a human who happens to be an excellent seamstress, baker, and keeps an impeccable home, raising children who are not even her own. Celie shows an infinite capacity to love but had no one to share it with before Shug. Together they challenge societal mores by starting a business, sewing pants for people of every shape or form. Men during this time were unused to women wearing pants, but the male characters admit that Celie had talent and lauded her for her work. By running her own business, Celie earns independence so she would not have to pass the cycle of rape, field worker, and mammy on to the next generation.

Two women who benefitted from Celie’s presence in their lives were Sofia and Mary Agnes (known as Squeak). After her own upbringing and subsequent forced marriage, Celie imparts to Sofia and Mary Agnes that they should not have to be tied to a man if they are in a poor situation. Sofia bares Harpo six children yet she is the one who works the fields, repairs the roof of their home, and keeps home. Harpo learned from his father Mr - - that men do not work in the home or outside of it. Sofia became embittered and wanted to leave but her people were not much better, at least at first. The separate roles for genders meant that a woman’s work never finished; however, given her station, Sofia separated from her husband of ten years. Being a man, Harpo immediately took up with Mary Agnes and expected her to work. All Mary Agnes wanted to do was sing. It was both Celie, one with acquired life knowledge, and Shug, an accomplished singer, who encouraged Mary Agnes to go in the direction of her dreams. They told her to use her name because that is her G-D given one rather than the diminutive of Squeak. After some pitfalls in her own life, Sofia agrees to raise Mary Agnes’ child so she can chase these dreams. Throughout the description of this middle generation of strong women, purple comes to symbolize ambition and independence. It should also symbolize dreams because this generation was oblivious of a coming depression and war and attempted to better itself so that subsequent generations would be free of both the white man and the patriarchal structure of society.

While Celie pined for her sister, Nettie lived freely as a missionary in Africa keeping an eye on Celie’s two children. Readers find out that Nettie and the missionaries Samuel and Corrine are the only black missionaries in Liberia, a country established so African Americans could return to their roots and live freely. Nettie always had brains and established a school for the Olinka people in their village. Even as late as the 1930s, the Olinka were oblivious to western culture and believed that only boys should go to school. Corrine wanted Olivia to learn so Nettie taught her much to the astonishment of the villagers. One Olinka girl named Tashi also wanted to learn, but her parents did not allow it, so Olivia taught her what she learned at home. The girls became as close as sisters, and Nettie told both of them that one day that they would become teachers or nurses, the highest professions that women could espouse to at the time. Over the course of thirty years, Nettie wrote to Celie to tell her of life in Africa and her children’s progress. After Shug discovered this cache of letters, Celie began to write to Nettie instead of to G-D. The sisters could feel each in the air despite being separated by an ocean and decades. One day, when the children would need to attend college such as Spelman or Morehouse, Nettie would return them to Georgia. The family would be reunited and a new generation of women would become empowered through education. Purple here is wisdom but it is also the peace of being surrounded by one’s loved ones. By not giving up the hope that Nettie would return, Celie achieves this peace later in her life. Black people were still looked down upon by society as a whole, but the strong women in this novel overcame this station in life to achieve great things.

Purple symbolizes many things but by the end of the novel I viewed purple as magic. Purple has always been my favorite color, although I prefer the bluer hues to Celie’s reds, the colors she chooses to decorate her room in her home. I prefer purple because I always knew that it symbolized royalty, a color befitting a queen. The colors of international women’s day are lemon, white, and violet, which is close to purple in nature, for let women vote, which, as we know, took place over one hundred years ago. Alice Walker’s The Color Purple could symbolize different things for its myriad of readers from all over the globe. When she wrote this, she brought many atrocities to light, allowing people from different stations to revisit history. The Pulitzer Prize is awarded each year to the book that best expresses American society or expresses a facet of society in a unique way. Forty plus years ago The Color Purple was in a category of its own, one of one, and merited all the accolades that it garnered. This year the theme of women’s history month is play it forward for future generations. In her exploration of strong women over three generations, Alice Walker played it forward in her award winning book. It is this focus on the strength of women from disparate backgrounds that The Color Purple is still widely read as an enriching novel today. Purple here is truly magical.

5 stars ...more

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Sep 16, 2013 Candi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction, book-i-own, favorites

Heart-stirring and powerful, The Color Purple is truly inspiring - I don’t know what took me so long to get around to reading this novel! Most readers will know the background to this one, either through the book or the movie. So, I won’t rehash the plot here, but I will share some quick thoughts. My feelings were all over the place with this one. Sometimes outraged, often saddened, occasionally amused, but ultimately I felt joyful as I reached the final page. When I initially started this book, ...more

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Nov 03, 2008 Book Concierge rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: concierge, strong-women, women-writers, library, southern-lit, lgbtq, africa, own, book-club, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you

Book on CD read by the author
5***** and a ❤

Review updated on 4th reading, March 2024

Writing the book as a series of letters (or diary entries) really gives the reader the chance to hear Celie. There are moments of despair, of sorrow, and a very few of joy. Celie is an extraordinary woman and watching her grow from a scared girl to a confident, in-charge woman is fascinating and uplifting.

I've read it four times now, and each time I get something more from it. On my most recent re-reading I'm st ...more

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Jan 16, 2018 Kelly rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, classics

When I finished reading this book yesterday, I wanted to tell my husband all about it. But all I could get out was, "It was an experience!" After sleeping on it, I still feel that way; I can't really describe how I feel about it. I loved it, that's for sure. It was a tough read, a deep read, but also a freeing read. To see the evolution that the characters go through is to have hope. Plain and simple. No matter what life throws at us, with God and faith (no matter matter how small...) and love a ...more

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Feb 11, 2015 Kris (My Novelesque Life) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

4 STARS

"Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close ...more

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