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The Color Purple: A Novel Paperback – December 10, 2019
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Celebrating its fortieth anniversary, The Color Purple writes a message of healing, forgiveness, self-discovery, and sisterhood to a new generation of readers. An inspiration to authors who continue to give voice to the multidimensionality of Black women’s stories, including Tayari Jones, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Jesmyn Ward, and more, The Color Purple remains an essential read in conversation with storytellers today.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award
A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early-twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence. Through a series of letters spanning nearly thirty years, first from Celie to God, then from the sisters to each other, the novel draws readers into a rich and memorable portrayal of Black women—their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery.
Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, The Color Purple breaks the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, and carries readers on an epic and spirit-affirming journey toward transformation, redemption, and love.
“Reading The Color Purple was the first time I had seen Southern, Black women’s literature as world literature. In writing us into the world—bravely, unapologetically, and honestly—Alice Walker has given us a gift we will never be able to repay.” —Tayari Jones
“The Color Purple was what church should have been, what honest familial reckoning could have been, and it is still the only art object in the world by which all three generations of Black artists in my family judge American art.” —Kiese Laymon
- Print length304 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin Books
- Publication dateDecember 10, 2019
- Dimensions5.29 x 0.75 x 7.98 inches
- ISBN-100143135694
- ISBN-13978-0143135692
- Lexile measureHL670L
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A woman's journey of self-discovery and empowerment, spanning twenty years and guided by the light of strong women, as she overcomes a harsh and brutal husband and fights for independence.Popular highlight
I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.6,944 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
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.5,687 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking 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.5,056 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you’ve found It.5,028 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
But I don’t know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.4,597 Kindle readers highlighted this
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Editorial Reviews
Review
—Tayari Jones
“The Color Purple was what church should have been, what honest familial reckoning could have been, and it is still the only art object in the world by which all three generations of Black artists in my family judge American art.”
—Kiese Laymon
“A novel of permanent importance.”
—Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek
“Indelibly affecting … Alice Walker is a lavishly gifted writer.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“A story of revelation . . . One of the great books of our time.”
—Essence Magazine
“A work to stand beside literature of any time and place.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Places Walker in the company of Faulkner.”
—The Nation
“Remarkable expressiveness, color, and poignancy . . . not only a memorable and infinitely touching character but a whole submerged world is vividly called into being.”
—The New York Review of Books
“Richly evocative . . . a vibrant fugue of devotion and search for love.”
—Los Angeles Herald Examiner
“A national treasure . . . A rare and lovely book.”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“A saga filled with joy and pain, humor and bitterness, and an array of characters who live, breathe, and illuminate the world.”
—Publishers Weekly
“My go-to comfort novel is The Color Purple, by Alice Walker. Even though it touches on difficult subject matter like child abuse and forced marriage, this story believes that human kindness, courage and love can defeat any challenge. Its big, beautiful happy ending is heartfelt and hard-won. Every single time I read this book, I walk away as a slightly better person than I was when I picked it up.”
—Tayari Jones, The New York Times
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Penguin Books; Reprint edition (December 10, 2019)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0143135694
- ISBN-13 : 978-0143135692
- Lexile measure : HL670L
- Item Weight : 8.7 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.29 x 0.75 x 7.98 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #9,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #29 in Black & African American Historical Fiction (Books)
- #378 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #1,111 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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Forgot how good this Classic is! The Color Purple
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About the authors
Alice Walker (b. 1944), one of the United States’ preeminent writers, is an award-winning author of novels, stories, essays, and poetry. In 1983, Walker became the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction with her novel The Color Purple, which also won the National Book Award. Her other books include The Third Life of Grange Copeland, Meridian, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy. In her public life, Walker has worked to address problems of injustice, inequality, and poverty as an activist, teacher, and public intellectual.
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Most of us agreed that the language is tough and off-putting for the first few letters, but you both get used to the odd spellings and grammar and also the writing gets better at Celie writes more. After eight or ten letters, it all seems pretty normal.
The violence and cruelty is also tough and off-putting in the first part of the book but again, it gets less violent and you get used to it (what a horrifying thought!) as the novel continues.
The words that readers used to describe the events and language in the novel are "epic," "biblical," "powerful," and finally "beautiful."
The story seems huge and the family tree is complicated with parents, step-parents, unacknowledged parents, forced marriages, lovers and mistresses, as well as two dead unnamed mothers. But the major characters are clearly defined and change during the novel and, unlike many novels, the changes are clearly explained and well motivated by events in the novel.
Celie is so desperate to be loved that she loves everyone else without thinking of herself. The men are largely evil (this is probably a valid criticism of the novel) who are forced to learn and change by the strong and far more admirable women who shape them.
We enjoyed discussing butch and femme women (as well as the stupidly masculine men as compared to the loving and generous men), the open lesbianism, and the alternate Christian theology presented largely by the openly sexual Shug.
I thought that the African letters from Nettie were a bit dry and anthropological compared to Celie's personal and emotive letters. And a few of the readers thought that the ending was perhaps too happy with everyone turning out to be a better, more evolved character.
But these are quibbles compared to the well-drawn characters, the wide scope, the emotional fulfillment, and the positive changes that most of the characters undergo.
There are so many great quotes from the book, but one of the many that made me laugh hard was Sofia responding to white men calling her “Aunt.” As Celie explained, Sofia ast one guy “which colored man his mama sister marry?”
The Colored Purple is a gem of a book to be treasured throughout time and so well deserving of the Pulitzer Prize awarded to its author. I highly recommend it.
I wanted to go back to the source material - Alice Walker herself.
Told through a series of letters, I was never more engaged in a person’s life, in the heartbreaks, the love, the family, the friends who become family.
So thank you Celie for leading such a FULL LIFE that I was reminded of what it feels like to openly sob at the end of a book as you see your family. You are a life well lived - vulnerable, strong, unapologetic. “What if we be just friends?” has so much more meaning now.
Worthy of Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and every other prize.
I now also appreciate how brilliant the screenplay was to pull the most important words fo the book and get those moments on screen. I will say Marsha Norman’s book for the musical seems to have used the movie for a LOT of inspiration. I am surprised Spielberg wasn’t given credit in her adaption.
We are in Costa Rica celebrating my boyfriends’ 60th birthday and this was the perfect book to close with.
“But I don’t think us feel old at all. And is so happy. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt. AMEN.”
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I didn't think much about it until recently until I heard about the musical. This confession done with , let's move forward to the novel.
The Color Purple ,to me, is a novel of redemption
and forgiveness, it's also about how we see God and the relationship we have with our faith.
Through Miss Celie, we see life in all it ugliness and beauty. She takes us on a hell of a ride.
From a battered 14 year old child , who is a baby ,having babies to an unappreciated wife . She goes through the wars,and eventually finds love . It's an arc, we've seen before , ( i.e ' The Book of Job, The story of Ruth, ...etc),the difference with Miss Celie, is that as she begins to rise and rediscover her humanity, her enemy Mister finds his too.
Job is run through the mill, miraculously,his faith survives. Miss Celie loses hers again and again, but then it sparks, walking with Shug. Bit by bit ,she finds herself beginning again. As her life changes,so does Mister's.
They have been at odds with the same unforgiving old testament God,it s not until
Shug comes into their lives and leaves them in their later years, that Miss Celie and Mister(Albert), understand how much they've
Suffered and what they 've endured.
This does not mean I m excusing Mister for being a serial batterer or a rotten spouse. I just saying that as Celie rises and regains her humanity, so is Mister(Albert). It should be noted his redemption isn't initiated until Celie nearly kills him; but it is observed by this reader, that said incident fast tracks to a road of changing his point of view .
I never saw that in the 2 movies that were based on this novel. His Redemption is equally as important as Celie 's. Like " The Kitchen God", Mister changes, thus Celie ' s faith and humanity is returned to her , when she forgives him.
This is why " The Color Purple" remains an award winning and significant novel. It's also why I will recommend it, to other readers.
Forgiveness is powerful, it frees us and let's us soar. Thank you for " The Color Purple."
Reviewed in Spain on May 7, 2024