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

    The Color Purple

    By Alice Walker

    4/5

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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
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    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.

    Read more from Alice Walker

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    Reviews for The Color Purple

    4/5

    6,300 ratings155 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title to be an awesome, fantastic, well-written, heartbreaking, and beautiful read. It is highly recommended and resounds in the heart of the reader. Some parts are fascinating and others are disturbing, but overall it is a powerful book. It is better than the movie adaptation. However, there are some readers who find no point in blaming people for what their ancestors did. The book has a wide appeal and is a must-read for all."

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    • 5/5

      May 7, 2019

      Powerful, serene, and equal parts tragic and uplifting, it is undeniable that The Color Purple deserves its place among the greatest American books.
    • 4/5

      May 7, 2019

      After a slow start, I really enjoyed this book. I had no idea what to expect as it is usually not the type of novel I would read, but it surprised me with how interesting the story was. The novel is basically two stories. The first is about a black family in the South during the 1930s. The second is about a black missionary in Africa during the same years. I really enjoyed the parts set in Africa, and came to enjoy the parts set in the South as new characters were introduced. The issues of love and the treatment of women were very well done and I felt immersed in the story by the time the novel came to an end. I would certainly read more by this author.
    • 4/5

      May 7, 2019

      This was a really good book. I would definitely recommend this book to others, and wish I hadn't waited so long to read it. I have to admit that it started out pretty slow for me, but once I got past the first several chapters I was hooked. The Color Purple delved into some pretty serious issues such as child abuse, racism, missionary work and relationships people develop over time among the many in here. I think Ms. Walker did a good job of covering these topics, too. She didn't really sugar coat them or throw them in your face. They were simply there, and the characters had to decide how to deal with them (or survive them). What really made the book, though, were the characters far more than the world they lived in. They seemed very real to me. Not only did the book cover a rather long span of years, but the characters came and went as you would in real life. They also changed. They were not static creatures whose values and ideas remained perfectly still. They lived and learned with each new year and new situation. My favorite line from the book: "Time moves slowly, but passes quickly."
    • 4/5

      May 7, 2019

      This was my second epistolary novel in as many weeks and again a good read. Celie is a poor, black girl, barely literate and writing letters to God. Be warned that the story contains some pretty shocking events, including, in the opening chapter, the rape of Celie by her father. Sad and brutal for a large part, but ultimately hopeful Walker explores many themes including love, gender, race, religion, marriage, family, and sexuality. A worthwhile read and although I can't agree with Walker's ideas about God there is plenty to think about in this novel.
    • 5/5

      May 7, 2019

      All the feels. Seriously. I'm scared to even review this book because I doubt I'll do it justice, it's heartbreaking on like a billion different levels. It's the story of two sisters living two vastly contrasting lives on different continents. Celie, the older and more pliant of the two, learned from an early age that it's best to just obey. Men wield the power and it's easier to get on with life if you just accept your place in it, she admires strong women, but she doesn't think she could ever become one. Nettie on the other hand, knows what she wants and that is education and escape. Years pass but they always remain faithful to each other in their own way. Nettie as an African missionary and Celie as an abused wife and stepmother. A hauntingly captivating story that will have readers sucked in from the first page.
    • 3/5

      May 7, 2019

      When I have a ho-hum attitude about a well-received book that I expected to like, I have to wonder what I missed. The Color Purple was supposed to be great. Many reviewers I tend to agree with gave the novel their highest accolades. Typically, I agree with these sorts of books--Beloved and Ruby are two books with similar themes that also tackle issues both horrific and relevant. So what did I miss with The Color Purple?I wonder if much of the praise centers around the original publication of the novel. Was The Color Purple the most honest novel regarding the post-Civil War life of the southern black? Was it the first to focus on primarily women characters? One would have to ignore the four Toni Morrison novels that had already been published by 1982 to assume this fact, not to mention novels that had been published during the Harlem Renaissance and in the subsequent years.Perhaps the likability is the result of the philosophical musings the story captures. Questions of theology and the African woman's relationship with God abound. Yet, this doesn't seem to be enough to sustain the average reader. What else could it be? The bond between the sisters? The misandry? The happy ending? Frankly, all I can do is guess.Personally, I didn't hate the novel, by any means, but I did find it rather uneventful. Perhaps the hype had crushed it for me. Perhaps the warnings of “graphic content” seemed excessive when compared to the likes of Ruby—a novel with truly excessive graphic content. In the end, however, what left me least impressed was the story itself and its delivery: two sisters, divided, telling two different stories through unreceived letters.The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that what draws people to this story are the joys. Yes, it's a sad story with all kinds of horrors, but the focus is the color purple, the pleasure of the world. It's about a love between sisters that conquers all. Through my many years of reading, I've seen that many readers like to feel a range of emotions throughout a book, but that the feeling they want to be bowled over by in the end is joy. I cannot be counted as one of these readers and that is perhaps why I was underwhelmed by The Color Purple. I felt for Sethe in Beloved. I felt very strongly for Ruby, Ephram, and many characters in Ruby. Yet, for Celie and Nettie, I felt little. They seemed strong enough to not need my pity. They found beauty in the world around them and strength within their selves, and there was nothing anyone could do to completely crush them. As a weak and frail human, I cannot relate; therefore, I surmise, that it is because of my own weakness I could not identify with this story. What a humbling experience.
    • 5/5

      May 7, 2019

      Nobody warned me about the amount of crying I would do while reading this book - sad crying, happy crying, this book just really played on my heartstrings! On the one hand, it was awkward since I brought it as my airplane read for a business trip, but on the other hand I'm glad I had such an immersive, addictive book to take my mind off airport terminals and delays. The one-line summary would be something like "epistolary novel about a poor black woman who is basically traded off into marriage by her father to a terrible guy but who survives through her friendships/romantic relationships with the women in her life" but it really is so hard to capture exactly what it was that made this book so enthralling; the writing was excellent, the characters were excellent and all interesting and easy to relate to even as you watched them hurt each other...it was just one of those books that flew past in a couple of hours but also is still sitting with me mentally/emotionally. It's rare for a book to be so incredible in terms of depth and complexity yet also so incredibly easy to keep reading from page one, almost no ramp-up required before I was totally immersed and invested.
    • 5/5

      May 7, 2019

      How is it I have never read The Color Purple? This classic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a vivid and sometimes heartbreaking portrayal of early 20th century life as seen through the eyes of Celie, a poor black woman. As a young girl, Celie is abused by her stepfather and bears two children who are sent away to be raised by someone else. Her sister Nettie manages to escape before being abused herself, and Celie is married off to a local man who would have preferred Nettie. He sees Celie simply as an object to satisfy his sexual desire. Nettie promised to write, but Celie never hears from her and after many years, assumes she has died. Celie tells her story through letters to God and later begins addressing these letters to Nettie.Shug enters Celie’s life as her husband’s lover. Shug is a singer with a strong flamboyant personality, but she is also kind. Shug helps Celie find her inner beauty and strength, and teaches her how to love. Meanwhile, the reader learns Nettie is still alive, having moved to Africa with the missionary family who took her in when she left home. And Nettie has been writing to Celie all along, but the letters haven't reached her. Nettie's letters show a life very different from Celie’s with its own hardships and pain. The sisters’ stories begin to converge, but the road is rocky for both of them. Celie was a wonderful character with such a strong voice, and I cheered for her as she developed a strong sense of self. Nettie’s voice read more like a standard narrative and she felt a bit less authentic. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed this novel and finished with a lump in my throat -- always a good sign.
    • 4/5

      May 7, 2019

      This was the first time I had read this classic despite it being on my radar for a looooong time. (I haven't seen the film either...) I have quite a few thoughts about this novel. In fact, I ended up taking notes so that I could let the story sink in a little further before I wrote up my final review.This is a story of oppression in a variety of forms. The setting is rural Georgia (although we do jump to Africa for a portion). It's written in journal format primarily by the main character, Celie, a young black woman coming into her own in the early 1900's. There are a lot of themes in this book besides oppression. One of the biggest is sexual awakening and liberation (not just sexual). Also, pants. Pants play a major role and symbolize independence, comfort, and self-sufficiency to name but a few. This book is teeming with powerful women. The strength of women is shown in a variety of forms. There is Sofia who is physically strong but is torn down by the constraints of her race. However, she learns how to build herself back up and to be better than before. There is Mary Agnes who is originally called Squeak but finds her voice in more ways than one. There's Nettie who might be my favorite as she used her chance of happiness wisely. She stayed strong in her faith not only of God but her sister. Good can happen to good people. There's Shug who can be a difficult character to like. She does what (and who) that she wants and she doesn't apologize for it which is probably the point. Women are taught that we should apologize for doing the same things men do. It is through her that happiness (and pants) makes its way into Celie's life. Then there is our main character, Celie, who had the toughest time and experienced the most growth. Spoiler alert ahead! The character goes from a frightened, sexually abused child to a confident woman in a polyamorous relationship. The book has been adapted for film, stage, and radio. Its message is a timeless one. If you haven't had the opportunity (or the inclination) to read this classic I think there's no better time than the present. :-)PS I told you I had a lot to say. XD
    • 5/5

      May 7, 2019

      Celie is a poor black woman who has been wronged since the day she was born. Sexually abused by her stepfather, given to her husband to look after his children and house, with no love involved. She hangs her head and fights to get through every day, unable to understand why this all is happening. You think she is a weak black woman, but really celie is so strong. She quietly fights to stop these dreadful things happening to her beloved sister. Men have done nothing to help her all her life, just being cruel and selfish towards her. women are the ones that have shown her any kindness or compassion, It seems hardly surprising that she is confused by her sexuality. This is a wonderfully uplifting book of Celies life and her eventual acceptance of herself and the people around her. I loved the film and the books is just as good, you really have to read it.
    • 3/5

      May 7, 2019

      Other reviewers have summarized the plot of this book, so I won't repeat the plot. My first reaction to this book was that it dealt with far more troubling family and sexual issues than I had expected. I don't usually enjoy books like that, but I couldn't put this one down. The book is presented as a series of letters from Celie, the protagonist, to God and to her sister Nettie, with some letters from Nettie to Celie. Again, I often do not enjoy epistolary novels, but that style really worked here. I find it hard to say that I liked a book that involves people doing such horrible, mean things to each other (although there are examples of tremendous kindness and love as well). It is well-written, though, and thought-provoking. How does Celie just go on with her life after being sexually abused, having her sister and children taken from her, and being forced into marriage with an older man? How is she able to make peace with him in the end? Why are the men so abusive? How does the racial oppression that pops up occasionally in the book affect her choices? I think one of the best compliments a reader can give a book is to care about the characters, their motivations, and what happens to them, and that certainly happened for me with this book.
    • 5/5

      Oct 5, 2019

      I started reading a few pages out of boredom, then couldn't stop reading.
    • 4/5

      Oct 12, 2023

      Keep forgetting this and Woolf's Mrs Dalloway kind of helped me figure out my sexuality in college. Wish I was more out then though. Might have to reread this book at some point.
    • 5/5

      Jan 30, 2021

      ¿por que no está disponible en México? No me parece.
      ?
    • 5/5

      Jun 15, 2020

      Heartbreaking and beautiful. A must read for all. Thank you for your words Alice Walker.
    • 4/5

      Apr 24, 2020

      A well-written book, if you can get around Celie's primitive way of writing English. Some parts are fascinating, others disturbing. I again see no point in blaming people for what their ancestors die.
    • 5/5

      Oct 23, 2015

      Better than the movie
    • 5/5

      Nov 5, 2019

      This is an epistolary novel with letters written by Celie, to God, asking about her condition. The story takes place in rural Georgia from about 1900-1936. African-Americans weren't officially slaves anymore, but times were tough and things for women really hadn't changed too much. The book focuses on growth, change, redemption and forgiveness. Very graphic as to both physical and sexual abuse. A very moving book. The title of the book comes from a line near the ends of the book, "God gets pissed when you walk by a flower and don't notice it's beauty." (It was a field of purple flowers) 295 pages

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5

      Sep 9, 2015

      Awesome!!
    • 5/5

      Jul 8, 2015

      awesome read very highly recommend for reading also the film is recommended
    • 5/5

      Jul 10, 2024

      This is beautifully told, perfectly capturing the tender relationship between two women over time. The letters to her sister were some of my favorite.
    • 5/5

      Jun 1, 2024

      Novel using letters written by Celie to God and then between Celie and her sister Nellie.
    • 4/5

      Jun 1, 2024

      When I started this novel, I wasn't sure I could get into it due to the dialect and the pacing, but the emotions of the characters shone through to me until I couldn't put it down. The multifacetedness of all the relationships really struck my heart, and I loved Walker's handling of deep abstract topics such as love, God, and spirituality in a framework that was very true to her characters' lives.
    • 3/5

      May 14, 2024

      An epistolary story illustrating the mistreatment and abuse of black women but also the incredible strength people can find within themselves. The main character writes letters to God but discovers her faith outside of traditional religion.
    • 5/5

      Apr 22, 2024

      This is a spectacular book, isn't it? As a white Australian reading this in 2016, I am so far removed from the world of the novel for it to be an anthropological text. Walker's literary skills are superb, leading the reader on despite the often disheartening subject matter. And I can't even explain the thrill that ran up my spine reading sister Nettie's letters about her intellectual awakening in Africa. A classic.
    • 5/5

      Feb 17, 2015

      Cool
    • 5/5

      Jan 18, 2015

      This book is great, it was a fantastic read!
    • 5/5

      Feb 6, 2024

      I love books where the author is the narrator. Walker's voice made me think I was really listening to Celie and Nettie. So good.
    • 4/5

      Dec 19, 2023

      I first read The Color Purple back in the 1980s. I had forgotten how crowded this novel is. It is not just about Celie and Pa, Mr. —— and Shug Avery. Rather, it contains many different characters and stories of African-American life in the 1930s-1940s. Some narratives work better than others. Nonetheless, the novel is well worth revisiting.
    • 5/5

      Apr 9, 2021

      It was surprising to me that I'd lived in the world this long without ever having read this book or seen the movie it was based on, but I honestly was glad I was induced to doing so at this point in my life, and in this era of our country. It is interesting what messages Spielberg chose to take from this novel and depict onscreen, and it's fascinating to look at both the book and movie through the lens of what stories could be told in the 1980's versus now.

    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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