The Color Purple in Around the World in 80 Books

Feb 14, 2018 Nadine in NY Jones rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: pulitzer-winner, literary-schmiterary, historical-fiction, fiction, classic, womens-day, national-book-award-winners, era-early-1900s

Well, I say, we all have to start somewhere if us want to do better, and our own self is what us have to hand.

This is a modern classic, and I'd never read it, and I'd never watched the full movie, just seen bits here and there. So I sort of knew what this was about, but I mostly didn't know.

It starts off pretty depressing!!

I sure hate to leave you here with these rotten children, she say. Not to mention with Mr. ____. It’s like seeing you buried, she say.

It’s worse than that, I think. I

Well, I say, we all have to start somewhere if us want to do better, and our own self is what us have to hand.

This is a modern classic, and I'd never read it, and I'd never watched the full movie, just seen bits here and there. So I sort of knew what this was about, but I mostly didn't know.

It starts off pretty depressing!!

I sure hate to leave you here with these rotten children, she say. Not to mention with Mr. ____. It’s like seeing you buried, she say.

It’s worse than that, I think. If I was buried, I wouldn’t have to work. But I just say, Never mine, never mine, long as I can spell G-o-d I got somebody along.

But Celie perseveres and things slowly start looking up for her. This is a surprisingly fast read. Walker's dialogue flows so naturally and smoothly, reading it is effortless. I even found myself thinking in Celie's Deep South country dialect.

Eventually, it starts to feel like Walker threw in everything plus the kitchen sink. Think of a social issue, and yes it's in this book. I guess she had so many ideas in her head and was so eager to get them out and on paper, she just couldn't wait for another book, and crammed them all into this one. (I confess, when it got to Europe underdeveloping Africa and FGM and sickle cell disease, I started skimming to get back to the "real" story, Celie's story. How many social issues, controversies, and injustices should exist inside one book?) This wasn't her first book, but this is the one that won the Pulitzer AND the National, so I guess Walker knew what she was doing by adding everything in. Shows what I know. Which is not much.

I'm an atheist, so I worried a little bit when the book starts "Dear God," but it works out okay. According to this book, by going about my regular day, I'm honoring and pleasing god, and god is in everything, including the color purple. I can't disagree, but I still think that's a buncha hooey. If it helps some people feel better, that's fine by me.

I admit I couldn't forget about the estrangement between Alice Walker and her daughter, Rebecca, while reading this. Rebecca alternated a few years living with her mother and a few with her father, and it sounds like a lot of that time, some one else was charged with caring for her. I noticed most of the children in the book are also raised by people who are not their parents. ...more

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