The Color Purple
Alice Walker, 1982
Historical fiction Literary fictionContemporary fictionMystery, thriller & crime
A young Black woman in the Jim Crow South writes her way from abuse toward love, sex, and a God who looks like everything.
Feels like hope, tenderness and grief. About identity, faith and family.
A page from the book
Where do you look for God when prayer stops working?
God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit. It? I ask. Yeah, It. God ain’t a he or a she, but a It. But what do it look like? I ask. Don’t look like nothing, she say. It ain’t a picture show. It ain’t something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. Alice Walker.Alice Walker coined the term 'womanist' in 1983, a year after The Color Purple; she also helped revive Zora Neale Hurston's work.
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Questions readers ask
- What is The Color Purple like?
- Feels like hope, tenderness and grief. About identity, faith and family.
- What should I read after The Color Purple?
- If you liked The Color Purple, try Redeeming Love (Francine Rivers), The Kitchen House (Kathleen Grissom) and The Hate U Give (Angie Thomas).
A taste of the feed
The difference between being someone’s partner and someone’s god.
No, you won’t. And I won’t be enough for you, Amanda. I don’t want to be the center of your life. I want to be part of it. I want to be your husband, not your god. People can’t always be there for you, no matter how much they want to be. And that includes me.
Redeeming Love · Francine Rivers
How a father explains race to a child using nothing but the chickens.
Could I be your girl, too?“ I asked quickly. The large, broad-shouldered man looked away before he answered. ”Well, now,“ he said, as though he had given it deep thought, ”I sure do think I would like that.“ ”But,“ I said, concerned that he hadn’t noticed, ”I don’t look like your other girls.“ ”You mean because you white?“ I nodded. ”Abinia,“ he said, pointing toward the chickens, ”you look at those birds. Some of them be brown, some of them be white and black. Do you think when they little chicks, those mamas and papas care about that?
The Kitchen House · Kathleen Grissom
The distance between tweeting outrage and speaking it out loud.
I’ve seen it happen over and over again: a black person gets killed just for being black, and all hell breaks loose. I’ve tweeted RIP hashtags, reblogged pictures on Tumblr, and signed every petition out there. I always said that if I saw it happen to somebody, I would have the loudest voice, making sure the world knew what went down. Now I am that person, and I’m too afraid to speak.
The Hate U Give · Angie Thomas
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