'The Color Purple' by Alice Walker is a compelling story that exposes the evils of racism, sexism, domestic violence, trauma, and abuse especially as it affects African-American people.
The novel centers on Celie, a fourteen-year-old African-American girl who is constantly raped by her father but has no one to help her or to confide in and so resorts to writing letters to God as her only outlet. She is later married off to an older widower who continues to rape and abuse her. The abuse and travails Celie suffers render her numb to life but she eventually begins to heal and triumph over her adversities through support from a strong woman named Shug Avery and the loving words of her sister Nettie who shows her different places in the world through her letters.
Alice Walker is a versatile writer who has written and published many collections of poems, memoirs, essays, short stories, and novels. The Color Purple is Alice Walker’s best-known work. It is the third novel written by Alice Walker and it won her a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983 and a National Book Award for Fiction also in 1983.
According to Walker, The Color Purple is a manifestation of her desire to bring to the human consciousness the evils of division across gender and racial lines and hopefully liberate humans from these evils.
Although not a true-life story, Alice Walker in The Color Purple reflects some true-life struggles, some of which she experienced directly, and others that she heard were experienced by others. For instance, the character Anna Julia that was murdered by an obsessed lover was inspired by the story of Alice Walker’s grandmother, who was murdered by a man that wanted to be her lover. The character Sofia who gets blinded in one eye, is reminiscent of Alice Walker herself, who is blind in one eye. The character Nettie’s experiences in Africa were inspired by Alice Walker’s time as an exchange student in Africa. In all, Alice Walker makes a wonderful blend of fiction and reality, which makes The Color Purple a captivating and relatable story.
Alice Walker has used the publication of The Color Purple to reinforce her stance on some global political issues. For instance, she declined the translation of The Color Purple into Hebrew as a way to show her lack of support for Israel, a country she claims practices apartheid.
Alice Walker continues to foster the legacy of The Color Purple through her other writings. For instance, one of her subsequent novels, published in 1992 with the title Possessing the Secret of Joy, features characters from The Color Purple like Tashi and Adam.
There are some other books written by renowned black female writers that are similar to The Color Purple in showing the struggles of colored women and in addressing the themes of violence, injustice, violation, and abuse of women and the girl child in society. Let’s take a look at some of these works.
The Color Purple has made a notable mark in African-American Entertainment and pop culture as a whole. It had a successful reception after its publication, becoming a bestseller and winning its author Alice Walker both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction in 1983. It is a timeless story that inspires both admiration and controversies and brings about conversations on various social issues across the world.
A film adaptation of The Color Purple with the same title was released by Warner Bros Pictures in 1985, directed by Steven Spielberg, and starring a cast of iconic figures in Black Entertainment such as Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, and Oprah Winfrey. The film grossed over a hundred million dollars at the box office and got eleven Oscar nominations in 1985, although it sadly did not win any.
In 2003, The Color Purple was listed on BBC’s The Big Read poll as one of the UK’s most-loved novels. The Big Read is the biggest single survey of public reading taste to date. It was a year-long survey that got responses from over seven hundred thousand members of the public.
A musical adaptation with the same title ‘The Color Purple’ premiered on Broadway in 2005 and ran through the year 2008 with over nine hundred performances. It was written by Marsha Norman with music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allie Willis, and Stephen Bray. It got eleven Tony Award nominations in 2006.
In 2008, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a radio adaptation of the novel, which ran in ten 15-minute episodes as a Woman’s Hour serial. The radio adaptation won a Silver Drama Award in 2009 at the Sony Radio Academy Awards.
In 2015, there was a Broadway revival of The Color Purple musical, which ran through to 2017. This Broadway revival won two Tony Awards in 2016, a Drama League Award for Outstanding Revival of a Musical in 2016, and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album in 2017.
As an object of controversy, The Color Purple ranked 17th on the American Library Association’s list of 100 Most Challenged Books of 1990-1999 and 2000-2009. The novel has been banned severally from schools and libraries across America.
Currently, in 2022, over forty years after the novel’s first publication, The Color Purple is trending on social media because of another film adaptation set to be released on 20th December 2023. It is under work by Warner Bros Pictures and Amblin Entertainment. It has a star-studded cast and crew like Marcus Gradley as screenplay writer, Blitz Bazawale as director, Fantasia cast as Celie, Danielle Brooks as Sofia, Taraji P. Henson as Shug Avery, Corey Hawkins as Harpo, Colman Domingo as Mister, Halle Bailey as Nettie, Ciara as older Nettie, and H.E.R to make her acting debut as Squeak.
The novel has sold over 5 million copies to date and is an internet sensation as celebrities and media houses keep talking about it. It is a powerful story whose impact has come to stay in the sensibilities of people and sociopolitical conversations in the United States and all over the world.
‘The Color Purple’ is one of the most famous stories of struggling African-American women told by an African American woman herself. The novel brought the attention of the mainstream world to the struggles of economically disadvantaged black people from the perspectives of those affected directly.
Some of the issues in ‘The Color Purple’ are still relevant in the present day. However, the dynamics of the society in the setting of the novel are different in some ways from the present-day society. The historical context of the setting puts the story into better perspective.
‘The Color Purple’ by Alice Walker is a great novel with powerful stories and themes that are relevant across continents and generations. The novel also has inspirational symbols like the phrase of the title which symbolizes beauty in nature.
Just like the title, ‘The Color Purple’ is a novel that is embellished with colorful quotes and messages.
From Celie, the protagonist who will have you feel her pain as you root for her; to Tashi, the eccentric African girl who battles with identity; and everyone else in between, ‘The Color Purple’ has an array of characters that will interest every reader.
The plot of ‘The Color Purple’ is anchored on Celie’s life struggles as a black girl in America who is subjected to abuse and deprivation.