Tolog Review: The Color Purple

The Color Purple
by Alice Walker
reviewed by Jinan Al-Marayati

The Color Purple, by Alice Walker was a wonderful novel that expressed the issues of racism and sexism, through the lives of two separated sisters, Celie and Nettie. It showed the torment and abuse that a black woman would have to go through, in Georgia. As a child, Celie was harshly mistreated by her father, which scarred her physically and mentally for the extent of her life. About nine months later, she had her first child at the age of 14, and her second child a year after. She was then forced to marry a man much older than her, and lived far away from her home. Unfortunately, she was abused for the majority of the time with her new husband, Albert. She also struggled to keep in touch with her sister, who lived in Africa. Nettie explained in her letters the difficulties of living in the dry lands, and the issues of major sexism. Nettie also shared how much she would stand up to the distraught men in her community. This taught Celie how to defend herself, against her horrid husband. Finally, Celie gained the courage to leave her spouse and began a new life. 

Alice Walker won The National Book Award and the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Award for Fiction in honor of this novel. In time, the novel was developed into a film and a musical, in the same name. Walker has stated that the book was based of off the stories that her grandfather told her. She was also raised in Georgia, in which the novel takes place. Walker bases the affects of racism off of her experience of growing up in the South, as a black woman. In this novel, Alice Walker explained the meaning of true victory: family and feminism.