Book Review

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Submitted by Evil Auntie Peril

Bio:I wanted to send you my non-review of The Color Purple for banned books week, just in case it could be squeezed in, because no one’s done it yet, and I think it’s an incredible book. If it counts, I re-read it and started writing about it during banned books week…

It’s a non-review, mainly because I don’t really go into characterisation, prose style, craft or any of those book-review-related matters. I just wanted to get on my soapbox about why the only reason anyone should ever remove this book from a library shelf is to read it.

Take care,
EAP (as of 10 o’clock this morning, a real auntie, excitedly plotting evil as I type)

The Color Purple isn’t an easy book. The writing is stark and uncomfortable, slashed with moments of piercing beauty and incredible pain. It’s been called a novel of sisterhood, of womanhood, of redemption and it is all of these things, but it’s also a book that fearlessly tackles hard and painful ideas about race, the cycle of abuse, identity, family, religion and sexuality. It’s the kind of book for which anti-censorship legislation was made.

So no, it’s not an easy book. The first letter (it’s an epistolary novel — a collection of letters) is like a fist in the gut. We learn that the narrator and main protagonist, Celie, is 14 years old, has been repeatedly raped by the man who she believes to be her father (Alphonso) and is now pregnant with her second child by him.

Over the next few letters, all likewise addressed to God, Celie’s mother dies in childbirth, cursing her, and we learn that both of Celie’s babies have been taken away, either killed or sold by Alphonso. Shortly thereafter, Alphonso marries her off to an older man who Celie calls “Mr. ____”. Abused, called ugly, fat and stupid by her husband and his children, Celie continues writing her letters to God.

At the start of the novel, these letters reveal Celie as someone who is unable to make sense of what happens to her. To endure, she has become numb. She starts to write her letters to God in order understand her life and express her fears for the future, and they become her salvation.

While the film made much of the power of sisterhood, the novel also stresses the importance of narration as the key to Celie’s personal growth and empowerment. By telling her own story, Celie becomes self-aware and gains the power to redefine her relationships with everyone in her life: her friends, her sister, her abusive husband and even God. From addressing a distant, paternalistic figure as “Dear God” in her first letter, Celie’s final letter starts, “Dear God. Dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, dear peoples. Dear Everything. Dear God.” This line makes me cry every time I read it. Her transformation shines — it’s overwhelming.

It’s impossible to compress The Color Purple into a few hundred words. Every time I read it, I find new ideas and layers of meaning. It’s an incredibly powerful and rich book, whose many themes cry out for discussion, which is probably why it’s a set text for many literature courses.

So why ban it? Well, in addition to the rape, incest, abuse and unorthodox ideas of God mentioned above, there are also things I haven’t touched on at all, including: woman’s sexuality, graphic language, racism, poverty, and discrimination. It has also been heavily criticized for its portrayal of black men as abusers. And above all, perhaps, The Color Purple is a profoundly disturbing book.

But we need to be disturbed. We need people to ask uncomfortable questions and shake our complacent certainties. Banning The Color Purple on the grounds that it might upset readers, even teenage readers, is exactly the wrong response. It completely goes against the very soul of this book. By telling her own story, Celie becomes self-aware, and thereby empowered. She saves herself. Silencing voices perpetuates the very cycles of oppression, discrimination and abuse she describes so harshly.

No one should ever ban this book. We should read it, share it and discuss it. It needs to be made personal. If its contents make us uncomfortable, upset or angry, we need to understand why.

Comments are Closed

  1. lisabea says:

    One of the best. I haven’t reread this in a few years. Thanks for reminding me to go dig it out of my box in the basement….

  2. Robin says:

    But we need to be disturbed. We need people to ask uncomfortable questions and shake our complacent certainties. Banning The Color Purple on the grounds that it might upset readers, even teenage readers, is exactly the wrong response. It completely goes against the very soul of this book. By telling her own story, Celie becomes self-aware, and thereby empowered. She saves herself. Silencing voices perpetuates the very cycles of oppression, discrimination and abuse she describes so harshly.

    Amen, sister.

    I know this is a perfectly obvious observation, but your excellent review reminded me of it again, as so many of these reviews have:  as a society (in the U.S., at least) we seem almost pathologically unwilling to contemplate those acts of violence and violation that SHOULD disturb us FOR OUR OWN GOOD, while we celebrate a wide variety of violent images intended to entertain and titillate—without question or contemplation or reflection.  The “why” of this isn’t much of a mystery, which makes it that much more tragic, IMO.

  3. This was one of the most profound books that I’ve ever read. It is one of those rare novels that changes your whole outlook on life. Your review reminded me of what a treasure it was. Thank you.

  4. Chrissy says:

    Lovely review.  The best things in life are hard-won.

  5. Yvonne says:

    I haven’t read this one yet. I will be reading it at my first opportunity.
    Thank you Auntie Peril for giving me a push.

  6. DebR says:

    When I took my short list to the library last week, of challenged books I might read in honor of Banned Books Week, The Color Purple was second on the list, but was one of the books that was unavailable at the time. Your review makes me more determined to keep looking for it.

  7. Josie says:

    Wow, great review. I haven’t read this one either but I will certainly be adding it to my TBR.

  8. bookworm says:

    I don’t think I ever cried so hard over a book as I did this one. An awful, beautiful, terrible, wonderful book. It’s a crime that it should be on a banned books list.

  9. Qadesh says:

    Great review Auntie, this is a story that should be read for exactly the reasons you’ve stated. 

    As for your RL auntieness, congratulations!  You get to spoil and then give them back, sort of like a Grandmother only closer in age.

  10. fiveandfour says:

    The Color Purple is my husband’s favorite movie and yet I’ve been unable to convince him to read the book.  It’s just so much more than any movie could portray and every time he re-watches it (about once a year) I can barely stand it because I know all he’s missing out on. 

    The story breaks your heart.  And puts it back together again in a new way.

  11. cheryl bites says:

    Hm. No offence, but you haven’t even mentioned the lesbian relationship that is a key part of the book. Indeed, in the whole review, you don’t touch on homosexuality at all, which seems to defeat the point of celebrating “banned books” – what’s the point of unbanning them if the dykes still get brushed under the carpet?

    Unless you’re trying not to give away the plot for potential readers, in which case, fair enough – except that lesbians won’t know from your review that this is a book they might find interesting.

    Actually, you haven’t mentioned that all the characters are Black, either; so you’ve left out pretty much all the vital information! Were you just assuming that everyone already knew this book was about Black lesbians?

  12. Thank you, SB Sarah, for posting this even though I was late, and thanks to everyone else for commenting. And apologies, because I’m now going to post the comment that ate the world because I simply don’t have time to edit, but Cheryl raised several important points.

    Cheryl’s right (no offense taken at all, btw), I didn’t specifically mention that all the main characters were black or the key role played by lesbianism in the book. Mainly because I wanted to keep my commentary brief and focussed on an aspect of the novel that doesn’t get included in a lot of reviews.

    A brief mention before or after moving on to the narrative aspects seemed to trivialise (to my mind) the importance of both lesbianism and Walker’s themes on race in the novel, but discussing them in the depth they deserve was spoilerific and made my piece about four times as long.

    If leaving this out seems to be sweeping anything under the carpet, that wasn’t my intention. I was also (lazily) assuming that most people are either familiar with the book and race of the characters or could find this out quite quickly from other reviews and the back cover.

    I also wanted to focus on the book itself in my review. There’s an extensive related discussion about how the lesbian scenes were left out of the film that I felt would need to be included to do this subject justice.

    So why focus on narration in particular rather than sexuality or race if they are so important? Well, since they are critical and controversial aspects of the book, there is already a lot out there on the interweb and other sources about them. I wanted to try to be a little bit different, rather than summarise the reviews I found. (that’s my ego at work, I’m afraid).

    Also, because Celie’s (and Nettie’s) narration is central to the way we connect to Celie’s experiences and life – her frankness coupled with her lack of self-awareness is what I find most disturbing about the book.

    It’s only lately that I’ve made this connection between the importance of narration to Celie’s creation of identity in the novel. This resonated strongly with my belief that voices like hers which disturb us need to be heard, not silenced. Celie needs to tell her story to become self-aware, and we need to hear it. I liked the idea of using this topic in a book commentary written in honour of Banned Books Week.

    (Ohmigodwillsheeverstop?) Finally, when I was making the final chop, I decided to leave out these (and other) aspects completely in the hopes that someone might call me on them. I wanted to be able to write about them in a way that could stress their importance and also explain why I left them out, but felt that an explanation in the post would have made it too long and detracted from the main topic.

    So thank you, Cheryl, for giving me the excuse to elaborate a bit more. And I may use this as a justification for posting chunks of the terrifyingly long first draft (tidied up – but not much, be afraid) at my place next weekend.

    Finally, I’d really love to read what other people think about race and sexuality in The Color Purple. I think Alice Walker sometimes doesn’t get the credit she deserves for her nuanced approach to these. Just lately, I’ve been particularly trying to do a better job of relating these to Nettie’s experiences in Africa. Also, has anyone read the sequel?

  13. Robin says:

    I HATE that this book can so easily be seen as the “Black Lesbian” book, because IMO that can marginalize it in a potentially more damaging way than by not focusing on those elements.  I think I understand the difficult line, though.  OTOH, you don’t want to erase the racial and sexual aspects of the novel and simply try to sell it as a “universal” read on the human condition (which does tremendous disrespect to the very important role race, especially, plays in the novel). Nor do you want to ignore the importance of different types of sexuality in the novel.  But OTOH, you don’t want to reduce this incredibly complex novel to two words, both of which might mistakenly suggest to readers who are not both or neither that the book holds no interest or importance to them.

  14. asrai says:

    I’m reading “The Same River Twice” by Alice Walker, which is her account of the happenings of making the book into a movie and what happened after. She’s so freaking amazing. Very open and honest and non-judgemental about her sexuality, neglecting her daughter while she was working on the movie, and the ending of her marriage.
    I’m going to hit the library sometime soon and get all of the books they have of hers.  But foremost, I think I will purchase “The Colour Purple”.

  15. The Diving Belle says:

    OK, now I have to go find my copy of “The Color Purple”—I read it years (centuries?) ago and vividly recall finishing the last line and bursting into loud, sobbing, hiccoughing tears—one of the best.

    And you’re so right—we should all read disturbing books, not superficial titillating scandals, but stories that move you, educate you, change you.

    Brava, Bitches, Brava A Walker!

    Which way to the revolution?

  16. I agree, it’s an incredibly powerful and important book. Not a happy or comfortable one, but one I’d recommend without hesitation. It made a lasting impact on me.

  17. Gwendy says:

    This is one of those books that gets you through life by making you a little stronger, brighter. When I read it all those years ago – it really did lift me up and keep me going. I wanted to add that Alice Walker’s essays also had a profound effect on me. I remember one book in particular that I read over and over called “In Search Of Our Mothers Gardens”. I haven’t read it in years but i’m going to take it down from the shelf and dip into it’s well worn pages.

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