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    The Color Purple
    The Color Purple
    The Color Purple
    Ebook313 pages4 hours

    The Color Purple

    By Alice Walker

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Written by Scribd Editors

    The Color Purple by Alice Walker depicts the lives of poor African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Celie has grown up abused by her own family. When her sister Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is alone without her best friend and confidante. She is subsequently married off to an older suitor, who becomes a brutal husband.

    Celie begins writing letters directly to God. Written over a twenty-year period, the letters record Celie’s life journey. She is aided by several strong women she meets, including Shug Avery, her husband’s mistress and jazz singer, and her stepson’s wife, Sophia, who challenges her to battle for her freedom.

    Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize and an American Book Award for her novel The Color Purple. She has written numerous poems, essays, and short stories, and lives in northern California.

    The Color Purple addressed the taboo subjects of domestic and sexual abuse, realistically depicting the lives of women through their times of struggle and growth and depicting their bravery under the most trying of circumstances.

    Editor's Note

    An American classic…

    A Pulitzer Prize winner, a film, and a Broadway show, it’s no wonder that “The Color Purple” made it onto the list of America’s favorite books with PBS’s “The Great American Read.” It follows the story of Celie, a poor black woman in rural Georgia, and her attempt to rise above the unlucky hand she’s been dealt.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateSep 20, 2011
    ISBN9781453223970
    The Color Purple
    Author

    Alice Walker

    Alice Walker is an internationally celebrated writer, poet, and activist whose books include seven novels, four collections of short stories, five children’s books, and several volumes of essays and poetry. She has received the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and the National Book Award, and has been honored with the O. Henry Award, the Lillian Smith Award, and the Mahmoud Darwish Literary Prize for Fiction. She was inducted into the California Hall of Fame and received the Lennon Ono Peace Award. Her work has been published in forty languages worldwide.

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    Reviews for The Color Purple

    4.5/5

    1,020 ratings172 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I liked this book a lot more than I expected to. It was quite a heartbreaking story all around. I loved Nettie (who was my favorite character) and I really enjoyed hearing about her trip to Africa. I thought it was interesting how the village held the roof plant as a sort of deity. I had a harder time getting through the other chapters because of the way that it was written. It was a good way to create a voice for the character but it was just not my style.
    • 5/5
      Great book. Horrible movie.
    • 5/5
      One of my favorites
    • 3/5
      Ik heb de film nooit gezien, dus kon ik dit boek onbevangen lezen. Een brievenroman, dat beviel me al meteen; het genre was vooral populair in de tweede helft van de 18de eeuw, en ik vind het nog altijd een heel sterke methode om én een verhaal te vertellen (in stukken en brokken en vanuit verschillende invalshoeken), en vooral de perceptie en de introspectie van de betrokken figuren mooi in de verf te zetten. En dat gebeurt in deze roman zeker ook op een geslaagde manier. Bovendien zijn de thema's best veelzijdig: vrouwenmishandeling, slavernij, racisme, minderwaardigheidscomplex. Walker beperkt zich niet tot een illustratie daarvan, maar toont ook hoe je daar volgens haar mee om kan gaan: groeien door vertrouwen en liefde, de moed om op te staan tegen onrecht, berusting in de wisselvalligheid van het leven, openheid voor al wat mooi en goed is. Een nevenspoor is de relativering van de "terug naar Afrika"-rage onder zwarte Afrikanen. Walker probeert aan te tonen dat dezelfde scheefgroei (racisme, vrouwenverdrukking, achterlijke tradities) even goed onder Afrikanen terug te vinden is.En zo komen we uit bij de belangrijkste schaduwzijde van dit boek: geregeld is Walker iets te belerend, te moraliserend, te educatief, alsof ze haar 'volk' (Afro-amerikanen) wilde heropvoeden. Maar het blijft een mooi verhaal (al had het happy end echt niet gehoeven).
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this one.
    • 5/5
      Powerful, serene, and equal parts tragic and uplifting, it is undeniable that The Color Purple deserves its place among the greatest American books.
    • 5/5
      This was a book that I had to put down from time to time -- to think about what I had read and "inwardly digest" it. I don't think Walker has ever produced anything close to how good this book is.
    • 3/5
      Re-read this book, after having read it for the first time when it first came out. The story is written in the form of letters, at first to God, then to the protagonist's sister Nettie. The vernacular language adds a lot to the tone. Good book, disturbing details, but overall a good read.
    • 3/5
      A moving story about the life of an African American living in pre-war South. Celie narrates the story of her life and all the hardships that encompass her. Alice Walker maintains the Southern flavor with the rural grammar of Celie and the other characters. The setting evolves beautiful scenes with flowers and marvelous fragrances. Food shines throughout the story, even though the families seem dirt poor. The friendship of the women cement the story, with their protection of one another. Alice Walker shows sub-human, mostly crazed animals as the men in the story. No man stands as a likeable character. The story concludes with all the loose ends sweetly tied.
    • 5/5
      What can I say about THE COLOR PURPLE? Wow. It's the ultimate story of survival, even when everything in life is stacked against you. When Celie tells her sister Nettie to write, and Nettie responds "Nothing but death can keep me from it!" well, that's when the tears start flowing. I've loved this book for 25 years, and just recently did I get a chance to listen to it on audio. It's narrated by the author herself, Alice Walker, and her voice was perfect for Celie. I enjoyed it so much, and I think everyone should give this book a read or listen. Powerful!
    • 4/5
      Compelling reading for the challenging subjects of child sexual abuse, desertion of children, genital mutilation, African American livesin the rural South, Africa after slavery, and more -Alice Walker deals with all of this while unfolding Celie's existence and awakening in many beautiful and unexpected ways.She does not flinch from delivering no decent males until Samuel and Adam, with God and Love in their hearts, step up.Book would flow better if "Mr. ___________" was simply replaced by "Mr. (any name or letter)."
    • 3/5
      This book is written as a series of letters. First, Celie, a poor black girl is writing letters to God, then later, she writes them to her sister Nettie. Shen never gets replies to the letters so they are more narrative than conversational. Celie is raped and abused by her stepfather, then later married off to a man who also abuses her. She meets and falls in love with Shug, the woman her husband loves, and Shug helps Celie learn that she is a worthwhile person. Later in the book, we learn that Mr._____, Celie's husband, has been hiding Nettie's letters and when she finds them, she begins reading them and we learn her sister's story as well. The stories intertwine and through them we see all the characters in the story grow and change and go through a lifetime of hurts and healings and emotions.I like that the characters are neither all good nor all bad, but rather just human.
    • 3/5
      I didn't get on with this book as well as I thought I would.It reads like a monologue, and seemed to take a long time to say a few things.The good bits for me were when the characters spoke about the wrongs that had been done to them. This seemed to capture the feelings quite well, and better than other stories like The Help that I've recently read.Other that that though it's not terribly memorable for me.
    • 5/5
      This is a book about a black woman who had suffered serial rape by a man called himself as her father , then had two children who were taken away from her. Then she ran into a bad marriage , her husband treated her as a slave. This is very sad, but she never gave up, found out someone who truly loved her and had happy ending.
    • 4/5
      Great book, great story, amazing characters.I really liked the diary and letter style that the book uses; it really helps you to get to know Celie and her sister very closely, and let's you share in their troubles and emotions. I found the beginning very touching and very convincing, but thought the ending wasn't as strong.
    • 5/5
      "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 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.
    • 5/5
      This book was so incredibly moving, that I was actually crying through the last few chapters. It is a very sad, very heartbreaking book, but it is also very hopeful.

      I really liked the discussions Celie had with her husband about God and the purpose of life towards the end of the book, especially this exchange:

      "Anyhow, he say, you know how it is. You ast yourself one question, it lead to fifteen. I start to wonder why us need love. Why us suffer. Why us black. Why us men and women. Where do children really come from. It didn't take long to realize I didn't hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don't mean nothing if you don't ast why you here, period.

      So what you think? I ast.

      I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering bout the big things and asting 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 wonder, he say, the more I love."

      That to me is just beautiful and dead on.

      This book was really, really incredible. I can really see why it won all the awards it did.
    • 4/5
      The Color Purple is about a black woman named Celie who goes from being abused and raped by her father to abused by her husband, a man she hardly knows. Her story is told by herself through letters to God or, occasionally, her sister. When she meets a singer named Shug, Celie has a sort of coming-of-age and learns how to find joy in life.My favorite part about this book is how uplifting it is, despite all the horrible situations these characters face. Even though Celie is abused by her father, and then later her husband, Shug helps her to find things to be happy about. For me, this helped the story become more complex and realistic. The books I've previously read about abuse are generally negative and have nothing positive to bring a balance to it. And really, I think that's what makes The Color Purple such a classic: it's an important cultural story about African-American life, and everyone can benefit from reading about how Celie transcends her circumstances to become a happy and fulfilled person.The one thing that bothered me a little bit is that I thought the ending was rushed and tacked-on. It was a bit over-the-top happy-go-lucky, which is fine, because I like happy stories, but I think that a little more time could have been spent in resolving the issues.Other than that, it was a great read with a lot of ideas to think about and reflect on, especially those dealing with religion and feminism. As a student teacher, I'm constantly evaluating my personal reading choices to see if they can fit in a classroom, and I definitely can see myself teaching The Color Purple. (Many people do, I know, but now I see why.) I think that everyone needs to read this at least once in their lives. It's beautiful, moving, and full of interesting ideas about how we currently live and how we should live.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic! An absorbing story. Read it in one day and could start re-reading again right this minute.
    • 4/5
      I stayed up all night reading this. I mean, literally. I also cried and cried and cried. It's wonderful and powerful.
    • 5/5
      I have no good reason as to why it has taken me so long to read this book. I kept putting it aside because I saw the movie several times. I thought there would not be much difference between the two. I was totally wrong. The movie was not a total shot in the dark but like in most cases the book is much better. Walker presents her characters with so much clarity. Disappointment and misery were Celie's companions early in life. She was molested repeatedly, forced to marry as a teenager, and torn away from her children and sister. All these tragedies were forced upon her by men which led to her life long disdain for them. There was a certain inner strength that Celie possessed that would not allow you to pity her. The same was true for Sophia. Shug was the most celebrated of the women. She could be likened to a strutting peacock. Behind all that show and celebrity was a weak woman. Of all the characters my opinion of Mr. changed the most. Contrary to how the movie depicted him, Mr. did not remain a lazy, abusive, self centered individual. When faced with severe loneliness, he began to examine his life and made the necessary changes. Mr. and Celie were able to build a friendship later in life which was a true test of the human spirit. Walker did not allow the reader to lose touch with Celie's sister, Nettie. Lives were taking shape and new relationships blossoming in America and Africa all while each sister thinks the other is dead. Even though Nettie and Celie were separated for years and unsure of the other's plight they never gave up hope. Their love saw no end. The Color Purple demonstrated how love will cover a multitude of faults. Walker's writing style reminded me of J. California Cooper. Celie held this story together because she refused to be broken.
    • 2/5
      I don't really understand the hoopla surrounding this book. The blurb on the back was totally misleading. Maybe the movie is better....
    • 4/5
      outstanding; brutal then rewarding
    • 5/5
      One of the best banned books ever.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book about a black girl, Celie and her life struggle with separation from her sister and how she is mistreated by first her father and then her husband and stepchildren. Always a good book to recommend.
    • 5/5
      For those who haven't read the book...There may be a spoiler or two...


      When it came out in the 1980's, like most others, I watched it and fell in love with the movie.

      It wasn't until last year that I picked up this book and attempted to read it. Again, this was a book I wasn't quite sure how I'd feel about it. It took me a bit to get into it because the beginning of the movie was always hard for me to deal with. But once I got past that part, and got further into the story, I really began to love it. And of course, I loved it more than the movie.

      Of course, there were details in the book that wasn't in the movie. And it answered some questions I had...Like, what happened to the man Shug Avery married.

      And what type of relationship Shug and Cellie actually had. And Cellies True feelings for her.

      And I found out that Cellie & Mister actually became friends in the book. {Which they didn't show in the movie}.

      I fell so in love with this book I didn't want it to end. I found myself not really even wanting to watch the movie any more because of it...lol...

      But I still do love the movie....

      Anyone who loved the movie, and maybe even love Alice Walker books but haven't read this one...It's very much worth reading. Or even if you don't like her books and haven't read this one...Its worth reading. I don't like Alice Walkers other books {I've tried reading them and couldn't get into them} but this one will always be on my top 10 favorite books I believe.
    • 3/5
      Aww, I'd love to give this book more stars. I really enjoyed the writing style, and I LOVED the characters. Even the awful ones, because none of them turned out to be one-dimensional in the end. Sign of a great writer, IMO.

      The reason it wasn't a 4 or 5 star-er for me was the chunk in the middle with all the F-words and the fact that it was sexually graphic in places. I'm not even talking the beginning--I was OK with that.... I just hate feeling like I'm a spectator in someone's bedroom. Makes me feel squicky. Had it not been for my awkwardness with all that, I'd be giving this 5 stars, but in the end, I came away feeling like about 3.5.
    • 3/5
      I was much too young when I read this (sixth grade) and it completely traumatized me. Looking back, there were many themes I just didn't understand, but the writing was compelling. The sense of the main character feeling trapped in a situation she didn't know how to get out of was overpowering. It would get more stars, but it was simply excruciatingly sad; even the end couldn't compel me to feel better about this one.
    • 4/5
      This was pretty good book. I found the dialect difficult to grasp at first, and I couldn't connect emotionally with Celie until about half way through the book, which is when the story really picked up. I adored the story of Nettie's journey, and it definitely enhanced the plot. I found the names hard to keep track of at times, and the family connections were insanely complicated, but for the most part, it was good. I expected it to focus a lot on racism, but it was more about the family relationships than anything else. It was a very interesting read, and I thought the ending was very fitting.
    • 5/5
      I don't know where I was the first two times I read The Color Purple, it seems that a lot of the stuff going on just flew right over my head. Maybe I wasn't ready to read Celie's life story. So horrifying what people can do to each other. And uplifting that we all manage to survive and even find a way to thrive.Celie's letters to God, and then her sister Nettie and Nettie's letters to Celie (which are hidden from her by Mr.) tell of a harsh lifetime of rape, incest, misogyny, racism and bullying. Celie thinks that's all she deserves because it's been made clear to her she's not pretty and she better do what the men tell her.It isn't until she meets Shug Avery, the blues singer Mr. is gaga over, that Celie begins to understand that life doesn't have to be that way. Over the years, she begins to understand what love can be, what good sex can be, and eventually, independence and happiness.Nettie's letters from Africa are heartbreaking in so many ways, mostly because we (the readers) know that Celie isn't getting them in a timely fashion. Nettie, too finds love, independence and happiness.In the end, I wept a little to see the end of their struggles and the happiness they find in each other.

    Book preview

    The Color Purple - Alice Walker

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    The Color Purple

    Alice Walker

    To the Spirit:

    Without whose assistance

    Neither this book

    Nor I

    Would have been

    Written.

    Show me how to do like you

    Show me how to do it.

    —STEVIE WONDER

    Tsunamis and Hurricanes: A Book About God vs. the God Image

    In the North American South where I was born, some years after the events in The Color Purple might have ended, it is still a bit of a risk to question people about their idea of God. It is a given that God is God. Everyone knows what that means—what He (always masculine, of course), looks like, what he thinks, and what he is capable of doing. But in fact, what does He look like, what does he think, and what is he capable of doing? For answers to these questions people in the South, and in many parts of the globe, turn to the Bible. There we are informed that He is the father of Jesus, who we invariably see depicted as a white man. He thinks we are born of sin and embody it; he thinks man should have dominion over the earth, which includes land and water, women, animals and children. He is capable of inflicting extraordinary punishment and suffering on those he wishes to wound or destroy, while giving every conceivable support and spoil of war to those he adores. He treats the adored badly at times also, but at least they seem in a position, having been chosen by God Himself, or so the story goes, to attain audience.

    It is no mystery how and at what point in time African Americans, like the characters in this novel, began believing in a God designed to guide and further the desires of another people, a God who thought of blackness as a curse. Captured in Africa, beginning in the fifteen hundreds, they were marched for months across savannah and rainforest to the coast where slave ships waited to transport them to the New World. At the notorious slave castles that dotted (and still dot) the coast of Africa they were forced to kneel before a statue of Jesus, have water sprinkled over their shaven heads by a priest, and have their old names taken from them. They were given Christian names that went with their new summarily acquired (with the help of the lash and the threat of annihilation) religion, and then, having been branded on face or body, they were prodded onto the ships, packed, as the cliché goes, like sardines in a can. We will never know how many died of grief, or disease, or starvation. Or how many made the despairing leap into the sea.

    The New World as envisioned by its creators—who wanted Washington, DC, with its swamps and mosquitoes, to look like an instant Paris, and New York to be a bigger and better London—could not be built without slave labor. Not even my home state of Georgia could be built without such labor. Immigrants from Europe sickened and died in their thousands, trying to eradicate Indians (others of our ancestors) and drain swamps, fell forests and outlive malaria. All in livid heat that seemed more like the hell described in the Good Book they brought with them than the Heaven unscrupulous land merchants had lured them across the water to enjoy.

    Enter (dragged in) my African ancestors, many of them skilled at growing cotton, indigo and rice. Brick-making and laying. Cooking, weaving and raising animals. Many of them artists and healers, musicians and dancers. Visionaries and philosophers. Scholars. Teachers. Merchants. None of them easily overwhelmed by heat. And, also, really smart. They questioned everything, at least for a few generations. How could they not? They found themselves among people who considered them to be objects to be ordered about and used, with no regard for their physical well-being or their feelings. They were assumed, like women and cats, to have no souls. Seven years was about as long as most of these ancestors lasted. Used up, their heads were then bashed in and they were buried without fanfare. Their remains can be found all over the South; in the North, some of their bones have been discovered in unlikely places—for example underneath what would later be known, in New York City, as Wall Street.

    They lived among demons. Separated from kin and tribal members so that no one could speak intelligently to anyone else, life became nothing more than labor, unpaid and un-praised. Life was having to bear the lash. Life was giving birth to children—who could have no memory of anything other than brutal enslavement—then dying and being tossed into a ravine or buried at the edge of a swamp or field. Where was there likely to be any sign of relief?

    If my ancestors were like the Africans I know today, and like me, they would have held on to their common sense for a long time. But at some point, being able to sit down for half an hour on Sunday morning—after working for someone else’s profit all week long—seemed worth believing the unbelievable. Could someone die and actually rise from the dead? If they were to be used up after seven years and then murdered, perhaps resurrection was worth considering. Would they teach this new idea to their children if it meant they might experience a trace of humanity from their captors? Yes. Why did the Master smile as he watched the decline of spiritual, as well as physical, resistance to enslavement among his captives?

    This must have chilled them. The first Africans to give in, to be broken in spiritually, must have suffered unimaginably. They would have remembered their own Gods. And Goddesses. They would have realized that, in essence, the one God/Goddess that proved sturdy enough to be in Africa with them, on the slave ship, and also with them in Mississippi and New York, was Nature. This thought, however, the essence of Paganism, was anathema to the new God. And to his henchmen.

    The brilliance of enslaving the spirit is that it is an invisible prison from which the inmate appears to derive some comfort. For African Americans even that small comfort had to be fought for. I can imagine some wily ancestor pointing out to his master or overseer that, if the God of the Bible had created slaves as well as everybody else, surely He would want them to know how to read about it for themselves. I’m sure this was a conversation—master astride his horse, slave on his knees or surely with face downcast and hat in hand—that took at least a century. Finally, a handpicked slave, perhaps the master’s son by an enslaved woman he’d raped, was permitted to read an edited version of the Good Book. Interpreted by the master, of course. A recurring sentence was bound to be slaves obey your masters.

    In Putnam County, Georgia, where I was born, the mistress of the plantation during my great-great-grandfather’s time loaned the black community a small plot of land on which to build a church; though badly neglected, it is still there. Recently the grave of my great-grandmother, Sallie Montgomery Walker, was found not far away. She was born in 1861, enslaved. She died in 1900 and was buried with four of her children. What had happened to her? We will never know. That she might have had status in the Montgomery household could account for her having a headstone (most slaves did not) and for the fact that her father, who outlived her, is buried nearby. It is also probable she and her father were related to their owners by blood. In fact, Miss May Montgomery, for whom my father worked, having nearly been turned off her large estate for asking to be paid twelve dollars a month for unending service as field-hand, dairyman and driver, made a comment that has been passed down in our family of Montgomerys and Walkers. On hearing that one of my siblings abhorred the eating of chicken skin, she exclaimed: that’s a Montgomery all right. You can never get a Montgomery to eat chicken skin!

    This is the means by which descendents of slaves have tried to piece together our identities, on the European side, from scraps thrown by relatives who, out of hypocrisy and cowardice, have failed to honor connection to their own kin. I know this to be true, and yet it remains difficult to imagine.

    I came into the world loving God. By which I mean the All Present and All Magical. It was so apparent that this was the case that my parents and siblings entered me in numerous baby contests because I never seemed to encounter an expression of the Divine, in human form, that I did not appreciate. It is because of this love that racism as evidenced by belief in superior and inferior looks and mentalities failed to impress me. I could not understand it. It seemed blind. I accepted people in my community joyfully, whatever they looked like, whatever their peculiarities, savoring the wonder of them. They responded to my delight in them by helping me win every contest I was ever in, thereby raising funds to build benches for the church or a roof for our school. By then, for most people, God as the All Present and All Magical had disappeared into the God image (as Carl Jung would call it) that they worshiped every Sunday at church. This was the God image they’d first glimpsed, after being captured, beaten and starved, shackled and branded, the day they left their homeland of Africa. A God image that, in fact, was someone else’s image of God, and not a reflection of the people forced to worship it. It is possible to visit black churches in the South, even now, and find the object of devotion to be a very pale Jesus Christ, blue eyes raised toward his adored (assumed bigger and whiter) father in heaven. This was the same adoration of himself that the slave master drilled into his slaves. I was born at a time that permitted me to see remnants of this baffling and soul murdering behavior, and to join the Movement of Black people in the Sixties whose goal was to eliminate it.

    When I began thinking, in the late Seventies, about writing the novel that would become The Color Purple, I felt the greatest need to do so surrounded by Nature. I was living in New York City. After many changes—a divorce, selling my house, and leaving my editorial job at Ms. Magazine—I set out for San Francisco. From there, I traveled North until I came to a tiny settlement called Boonville where I rented a one room cottage that faced a meadow and whose backyard was an apple orchard. A towering linden tree offered shade. Seeking guidance, I spent days at the river and among the redwoods. Nights looking at the stars. This was the experience of Heaven in Nature I had so missed while living in New York, the ever present magical All to which my soul and my creativity aspired.

    More than thirty years later, it still puzzles me that The Color Purple is so infrequently discussed as a book about God. About God versus the God image. After all, the protagonist Celie’s first words are Dear God. Everything that happens during her life, spanning decades, is in relation to her growth in understanding this force. I remember attempting to explain the necessity of her trials and tribulations to a skeptical fan. We grow in our understanding of what God/Goddess means and is by the intensity of our suffering, and what we are able to make of it, I said. As far as I can tell, I added. Fortunately we had just finished discussing two natural disasters (a devastating tsunami and hurricane) that had recently afflicted Southeast Asia and the Gulf Coast of the United States: Think of Pa as Celie’s Tsunami, I said, and Mister as her hurricane.

    In fact, a Pa and/or a Mister are likely to turn up in anybody’s life. They might be wearing the mask of war, the mask of famine, the mask of physical affliction. The mask of caste, race, class, sex, mental illness, or disease. Their meaning to us, often, is that they are simply an offering, a challenge, provided by God i.e., the All Present and All Magical, that requires us to grow. And though we may be confused, even traumatized, as Celie is, by their historical, social, and psychological configuration, if we persevere we may, like her, eventually settle into amazement: that by some unfathomable kindness we have received just the right keys we need to unlock the deepest, darkest dungeons of our emotional and spiritual bondage, and to experience our much longed for liberation and peace.

    The core teaching of the novel appears on page 176, and is delivered by Shug Avery, who is not only Celie’s beloved but also her spiritual mentor:

    I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you’ve found it.

    Shug also shares her understanding that the God in whom she delights, a God she feels delights as well in her, is far too all-encompassing to have a gender. This is why, at the very end of the novel, Celie’s definition of God has changed radically. When she addresses God toward the sunset of her life, her Dear God includes not only people and sky and trees and stars, but Dear Everything.

    Three years after publication, The Color Purple, which won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, was made into an internationally popular film by Steven Spielberg. Five years after publication it had sold over six million copies worldwide. Ten years later that number had doubled, as The Color Purple became one of the five most re-read books in America. In 2005, The Color Purple became a phenomenally successful Broadway musical, playing to packed houses every night for over a year. In the process it transformed the Great White Way into a place where people of all colors, orientations and identities gathered to experience the show and to celebrate God as Life and Love, Perseverance, Hope, Creativity and Joy.

    Alice Walker is the author of more than thirty books and was inducted, along with Amelia Earhart, Cesar Chavez, John Muir, Sally Ride, Billie Jean King and Clint Eastwood into the California Hall of Fame.

    Alice Walker

    30 December 2006

    Casa Madre

    Costa Careyes, Mexico

    Preface

    WHATEVER ELSE The Color Purple has been taken for during the years since its publication, it remains for me the theological work examining the journey from the religious back to the spiritual that I spent much of my adult life, prior to writing it, seeking to avoid. Having recognized myself as a worshiper of Nature by the age of eleven, because my spirit resolutely wandered out the window to find trees and wind during Sunday sermons, I saw no reason why, once free, I should bother with religious matters at all.

    I would have thought that a book that begins Dear God would immediately have been identified as a book about the desire to encounter, to hear from, the Ultimate Ancestor. Perhaps it is a sign of our times that this was infrequently the case. Or perhaps it is the pagan transformation of God from patriarchal male supremacist into trees, stars, wind, and everything else, that camouflaged for many readers the book’s intent: to explore the difficult path of someone who starts out in life already a spiritual captive, but who, through her own courage and the help of others, breaks free into the realization that she, like Nature itself, is a radiant expression of the heretofore perceived as quite distant Divine.

    If it is true that it is what we run from that chases us, then The Color Purple (this color that is always a surprise but is everywhere in nature) is the book that ran me down while I sat with my back to it in a field. Without the Great Mystery’s word coming from any Sunday sermon or through any human mouth, there I heard and saw it moving in beauty across the grassy hills.

    No one is exempt from the possibility of a conscious connection to All That Is. Not the poor. Not the suffering. Not the writer sitting in the open field. This is the book in which I was able to express a new spiritual awareness, a rebirth into strong feelings of Oneness I realized I had experienced and taken for granted as a child; a chance for me as well as the main character, Celie, to encounter That Which Is Beyond Understanding But Not Beyond Loving and to say: I see and hear you clearly, Great Mystery, now that I expect to see and hear you everywhere I am, which is the right place.

    You better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy.

    DEAR GOD,

    I am fourteen years old. I am I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me.

    Last spring after little Lucious come I heard them fussing. He was pulling on her arm. She say It too soon, Fonso, I ain’t well. Finally he leave her alone. A week go by, he pulling on her arm again. She say Naw, I ain’t gonna. Can’t you see I’m already half dead, an all of these chilren.

    She went to visit her sister doctor over Macon. Left me to see after the others. He never had a kine word to say to me. Just say You gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t. First he put his thing up gainst my hip and sort of wiggle it around. Then he grab hold my titties. Then he push his thing inside my pussy. When that hurt, I cry. He start to choke me, saying You better shut up and git used to it.

    But I don’t never git used to it. And now I feels sick every time I be the one to cook. My mama she fuss at me an look at me. She happy, cause he good to her now. But too sick to last long.

    DEAR GOD,

    My mama dead. She die screaming and cussing. She scream at me. She cuss at me. I’m big. I can’t move fast enough. By time I git back from the well, the water be warm. By time I git the tray ready the food be cold. By time I git all the children ready for school it be dinner time. He don’t say nothing. He set there by the bed holding her hand an cryin, talking bout don’t leave me, don’t go.

    She ast me bout the first one Whose it is? I say God’s. I don’t know no other man or what else to say. When I start to hurt and then my stomach start moving and then that little baby come out my pussy chewing on it fist you could have knock me over with a feather.

    Don’t nobody come see us.

    She got sicker an sicker.

    Finally she ast Where it is?

    I say God took it.

    He took it. He took it while I was sleeping. Kilt it out there in the woods. Kill this one too, if he can.

    DEAR GOD,

    He act like he can’t stand me no more. Say I’m evil an always up to no good. He took my other little baby, a boy this time. But I don’t think he kilt it. I think he sold it to a man an his wife over Monticello. I got breasts full of milk running down myself. He say Why don’t you look decent? Put on something. But what I’m sposed to put on? I don’t have nothing.

    I keep hoping he fine somebody to marry. I see him looking at my little sister. She scared. But I say I’ll take care of you. With God help.

    DEAR GOD,

    He come home with a girl from round Gray. She be my age but they married. He be on her all the time. She walk round like she don’t know what hit her. I think she thought she love him. But he got so many of us. All needing somethin.

    My little sister Nettie is got a boyfriend in the same shape almost as Pa. His wife died. She was kilt by her boyfriend coming home from church. He got only three children though. He seen Nettie in church and now every Sunday evening here come Mr. _____. I tell Nettie to keep at her books. It be more then a notion taking care of children ain’t even yourn. And look what happen to Ma.

    DEAR GOD,

    He beat me today cause he say I winked at a boy in church. I

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