Alice Walker

A modern classic whose influence can still be felt in contemporary literature, Walker's searing exploration of both white racism and violent Black patriarchy in the first half of the twentieth century is a uniquely powerful reading experience.
'The great irony about The Color Purple is that it transcends colour. To do that you have to be a magician or a genius... Not a word is wasted, every breath accounted for. We all know that this is one of the greatest books of all time.' - Benjamin Zephaniah

The classic, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that made Alice Walker a household name.

Set in the deep American South between the wars, The Color Purple is the classic tale of Celie, a young black girl born into poverty and segregation.

Raped repeatedly by the man she calls 'father', she has two children taken away from her, is separated from her beloved sister Nettie and is trapped into an ugly marriage.

But then she meets the glamorous Shug Avery, singer and magic-maker - a woman who has taken charge of her own destiny. Gradually Celie discovers the power and joy of her own spirit, freeing her from her past and reuniting her with those she loves.

A Novel

The Color Purple

Eli Alvah Huckabee

Helen 

I feel bad sometime Nettie done pass me in learnin. But look like nothing she say can git in my brain and try to tell me something bout the ground not being flat. I just say, Yeah, like I know it. I never tell her how flat it look to me. stay. 

But she keep on. You got to fight. You got to fight. 

But I don't know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.

But I had also parsed ths there was something powerful about blondness, thinness flatness, and gaps between thighs. And that power was the context against which all others defined themselves. That was beauty. And while few young women in high school could say they felt like they lived up to beauty, only the non- white girls could never be beautiful. That is because beauty isn't actually what you look like; beauty is the preferences that reproduce the existing social order. 

Did I mention my first sight of the African coast? Something struck in me, in my soul, Celie, like a large bell, and I just vibrated. Corrine and Samuel felt the same. And we kneeled down right on deck and gave thanks to God for letting us see the land for which our mothers and fathers cried and lived and died– to see again. 

Oh, Celie! Will I ever be able to tell you all? I dare not ask, I know. But leave it all to God. 

The children saw the change in us immediately. I'm afraid my dear, we were radiant. 

You may have guessed that I loved him all along; but I did not know it. Oh, I loved him as a brother and respected him as a friend, but Celie, I love him bodily, as a man! I love his walk, his size, his shape, his smell, the kinkiness of his hair. I love the very texture of his palms. The pink of his inner lip. I love his big nose. I love his brows. I love his feet. And I love his dear eyes in which the vulnerability and beauty of his soul can be plainly read.

Just because I came back with you, don't think I am saying yes to marriage, says Tashi. 

Oh yes you are, says Adamn, heatedly, but through a yawn. You promised your mother. I promised your mother.

Nobody in America will like me, says Tashi.  

I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering bout the big things and asting bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, he say, the more I love.

eileen lee

When it come to what folks do together with they bodies, he say, anybody's guess is as good as mine. But when you talk bout love I don't have to guess. I have love and I have been love.

The Color Purple quotes

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