The Color Purple

Alice Walker's The Color Purple ranks fairly high on a lot of peoples' book lists. It won a Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into an award-winning movie. I had very much been looking forward to pulling this book off our bookshelf to read.

The Color Purple tells the story of Celie, a black woman from 1930s Georgia. The book follows a series of letters she writes at first to God and then to her sister, Nettie. Celie's lives a rough life. Her father rapes her, she is married to a cruel man who regularly beats her and forces her to work hard on the farm they own. Celie is surrounded by other woman in similar situations. After her husband finds a lover, a local jazz singer, things begin to turn around.

Celie falls in love with her husband's lover, Shug, and the two soon become close friends. Shug keeps Celie's husband (at first referred to as Mr. ______, but later Albert) from beating her, and when she's ready to move on to another man, she takes Celie with her. Celie's life brightens considerably from there as she finally finds her life's calling.

There's a second story told throughout the book. Celie's sister Nettie gets hired as a maid for a pastor and his family, which happens to contain two children who are very connected to the characters in the book (don't want to give away any major spoilers). This family becomes missionaries to a small African village and they take Nettie along with them. Nettie recalls her adventures there in letters written to Celie.

Walker weaves a complex story through these pages. She fills them with plenty of emotion, particularly in Celie's tale. Readers should be aware that there is a lot of sexuality in the book, as well as violence (though not terribly graphic), profanity, and some potentially poisonous comments about God. The book can be read fairly quickly, but with Celie's letters written in her dialect, it's worth taking your time so you don't miss anything.

My personal feelings about this book are mixed. It's a well written book, and I really enjoyed Nettie's adventures in Africa. On the other hand, I was very annoyed by Walker's hidden agenda. It's no accident that nearly every male figure is borderline evil, and nearly every female figure a saint or a victim. But I could look past that if it wasn't for Walker's constant negative commentary about the Juseo-Christian God. She's really sneaky about it, but it's everywhere and completely unnecessary. It stuck out like a sore thumb.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

62/100, still ahead of schedule