scholarly journals “You better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy ”: The Violence of Language in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-87
Author(s):  
Kouadio Germain N’Guessan
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Black Girl ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
Patriarchal System ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
Epistolary Form ◽  
Color Purple

Abstract Alice Walker’s The Color Purple dramatizes African American women’s plight through the experience of a black girl, Celie, caught in the turmoil of the patriarchal system of her community. Leaning on the epistolary form and also choosing to address the black woman’s oppression first within the black community itself, the author detaches herself from the mainstream African American literary tradition to create a personal style. One of the characteristic traits of the novel is language as a communicative tool in the characters’ interrelation. In the narrative, this tool is mostly used to oppress the female protagonists, demonstrating thus its violent aspect. But sometimes, even though very rarely in the novel, it helps the oppressed subject to claim a voice. Finally, the epistolary form serves to create more emotion in the readers and consequently produces more reaction in them.

scholarly journals A Discourse Stylistics Analysis on the Regularities in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mardliya Pratiwi Zamruddin ◽  
Burhanuddin Arafah
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Alice Walker ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
National Language ◽  
African American Vernacular English ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Writing Style ◽  
Vernacular English ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
Color Purple

The purpose of this study was to describe the regularities of the American Postmodern Novelist: Alice Walker with a focus on a character’s and/or narrator’s mind style in a stylistic and narratological approach. This study aimed to attain the regularities from the American novelist’s literary work and how the regularities/irregularities occur in the novel to frame the style of the novelist in producing her literary work. This study was a descriptive qualitative by taken into account of stylistics categories and mind style which were applied to the Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. The data of this study were taken from Alice Walker’s novel entitled The Color Purple. The result of the study showed the occurrences and the forms of regularities in the novel The Color Purple by Alice Walker which represented the style of the novelist in creating her literary work. The bold character of African-American Vernacular English that were found in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple showed that the novelist poured their mind style in their literary works by showing their stylistic options in producing the novel. By showing their writing style the novelists were contributed to the development of national language in America.

Reversal of Stereotypes in Alice Walker's The Color Purple: God, Gender, Narrative and Sexuality

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-21
Author(s):  
Morshedul Arifin ◽  
◽  
Shah Ahmed ◽  
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Alice Walker ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
African American Authors ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Color Purple ◽  
American Authors

Unlike most African-American authors, who constantly mirror the repressive effects of racism, classicism and gender discrimination, Alice Walker (1944–) in her The Color Purple (1982) compulsively deals with sexism that was still pervasive within African American communities during the early twentieth century. She argues that just as black groups are relegated to an underclass due to the colour of their skin in a wider milieu of white society, in the same way the black women are reduced to a more inferior class due to their sex in their own community. For women’s self-emancipation from such an inhibitory patriarchy, the novel gives an overarching emphasis on the formation of language, execution of voice, review of sexual preference and redefinition of identity of her female characters, the protagonist Celie in particular. This paper examines how, by a fusion of the bildungsroman and epistolary conventions, the novelist melds a unique way for her women creating a God for their own and carving out a niche in social and economic concerns. It assesses the strategic reversal of gender stereotype as well as sexual orientation in order to establish the independence and equality of women on a par with men. The paper ends up with the claim that the novel is predicated upon the theoretical prism of womanism, previously premised by Walker herself, which puts extensive emphasis on a deeper, empathetic relationship and camaraderie of women.

Making the Invisible Visible: Black Lesbianism in The Color Purple

Transilvania ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 58-63
Author(s):  
Ana Maria Basarabă
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Black Men ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Multiple Factors ◽  
Heterosexual Relationship ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
Black Lesbians ◽  
Color Purple ◽  
The Invisible

The paper aims to disclose the factors behind Celie’s preference of transition from an involuntary heterosexual relationship to a homosexual one. I pursue this path due to multiple factors that occur in the novel and which nevertheless lead to Celie’s final homosexual identity. Homosexuality is far too often regarded as a mental illness and people have far too many times misjudged people with other sexual orientation than what the society perceives as “normal”. The findings of my research intend to show that homosexuality implies a variety of psychological, emotional and physical issues and that it is nothing to be ashamed or afraid of. Since racism has always been associated with Black men and sexism with White females, the paper brings the invisible Black lesbians to light.

scholarly journals CELIE: A PORTRAYAL OF AN AFRO-AMERICAN WOMAN'S REJECTION OF TRADITIONAL VALUES

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Ekawati Marhaenny Dukut ◽  
Nuki Dhamayanti
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
Alice Walker ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
American Women ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
The World ◽  
Color Purple

The world of literature can be a medium of expressing the writer's expressions and ideas. Universal topics such as, love, death, and war often become subject mailers in the world of literature. In the novel, of The Color Purple. Alice Walker describes the oppression experienced by Afro American women in the female characters of Celie, Nellie, Shug Avery, Sofia, and Mary Agnes who faced sexual discrimina!ions in a patriarchal society. Womanhood, education, and lesbianism are factors that help the Afro American women to free themselves from traditional values. The Color Purple puts into words the process of its main character, Celie, who tries to reject and escape from the male domination of her world. The other Afro American women characters that help Celie to find her selfidentity represent the manifestation of the rejection of the traditional values. This article. which uses the socio-historical alld feminism approach. is intended to analyse the Afro-American women's rejection of traditional values by focusing on the major character of' Walker's The Color Purple. Celie. as she develops from being a victim of traditional values to the rejoiceful discovery of her selfidentity.

African American Queer Cinema

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Evans
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Queer Cinema ◽  
Hiv Epidemic ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
Academy Award ◽  
Black Queer ◽  
Color Purple

African American queer cinema was born as a reaction to the AIDS/HIV epidemic as well as the blatant homophobia that existed within the Black community in the 1980s. It began with the pioneering works of queer directors Isaac Julien and Marlon Riggs and continued during the new queer cinema movement in the 1990s, particularly including the works of lesbian queer director Cheryl Dunye. However, these works were infinitesimal compared to the queer works featuring primarily White lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) protagonists during that time. That trend continues today as evidenced by looking at the highest-grossing LGBTQ films of all times: very few included any African American characters in significant roles. However, from the 1980s to the 2020s, there have been a few Black queer films that have penetrated the mainstream market and received critical acclaim, such as The Color Purple (Spielberg, 1982), Set It Off (Gary, 1996), and Moonlight (Jenkins, 2016), which won the 2018 Academy Award for Best Picture. The documentary film genre has been the most influential in exposing audiences to the experiences and voices within the African American queer communities. Since many of these films are not available for viewing at mainstream theaters, Black queer cinema is primarily accessed via various cable, video streaming, and on-demand services, like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO.

scholarly journals Achiever of Higher Self: A Humanistic Study of Celie’s Character in the Novel, Color Purple

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 373
Author(s):  
Qurratulain Sardar ◽  
Rafique A. Memon
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Alice Walker ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Hierarchy Model ◽  
Humanistic Study ◽  
The One ◽  
Color Purple

A. Maslow in his book Motivation and Personality (1954) presents the five-stage hierarchy Model, emphasizes on the fulfilment of needs to achieving higher self. Based on textual analysis, the study demonstrates how the protagonist Celie, from the novel Color Purple written by Alice Walker, follows the gratification of needs in edict to connect the higher self. The evolution of character’s personality has been appraised thoroughly at each level, gives an equal attentive of new visions into her conduct and relationships with other characters. The Colloquial African-American dialect of the text is taken metaphorically, formulates the scarcity of needs created by external milieu. It is inimitably distinguished to identify the one of the major forces after her unusual, capricious and incoherent behaviors are usual social human drives.

Race Leaders, Race Traitors, and the Necropolitics of Black Exceptionalism in Paul Beatty’s Fiction

2019 ◽  
Vol 91 (3) ◽  
pp. 619-647
Author(s):  
Roberta Wolfson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Black People ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Urban Neighborhood ◽  
Social Death ◽  
The Social ◽  
Basketball Court ◽  
Black Agency

Abstract This essay examines two oppositional figures in Paul Beatty’s debut novel, The White Boy Shuffle (1996), and most recent novel, The Sellout (2015): the exalted race leader and the excoriated race traitor. Positioned at extreme ends of the spectrum of exceptionalism, these figures function to perpetuate a phenomenon that the essay’s author terms the necropolitics of black exceptionalism, the paradox of justifying the violent oppression of the majority of black people by celebrating or censuring a single black figure. In exploring the absurd dimensions of these extreme figures through the lens of satire, both novels denounce black exceptionalism as a necropolitical tool of oppression that entrenches the social death and civic exclusion of black people in a modern US society that purports to be color-blind and postracial. Emerging within the postmodern turn of the African American literary tradition, these novels take on a nihilistic tone to raise questions about how the black community might effectively (if at all) achieve civil progress in the contemporary age. Ultimately, these satirical novels reimagine historically necropolitical spaces, such as the basketball court, the plantation, and the segregated urban neighborhood, as potential, albeit vexed sites of black agency, empowerment, and community building.

The Color Purple and the Wine-Dark Kiss of Death

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Current Model ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Political Understanding ◽  
Color Purple

Alice Walker's 1982 novel The Color Purple was published six months after AIDS was first described in medical literature. This chapter reads The Color Purple as an AIDS narrative by looking into the surrounding details of its publication to uncover what may have been an accidental narrative for Walker as she wrote her masterpiece but that proves nonetheless as important for our current moment as the novel was, in the moment of its publication, for second-wave feminism. A close consideration of the details of the novel reveals a subnarrative with devastating relevance to the lives of black women living in the Southeastern United States in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. By considering the sexual economy, the emphasis on illness and sexual contact, the postcolonial interests (which is to say, considering Africa), and the time and place of its writing, it is argued that The Color Purple should be read as the first AIDS narrative in American literature. Such a reading is a profound revision of our current model of AIDS literature and bears implications for our current political understanding of HIV/AIDS, a disease long associated with forgotten and unwanted populations.

scholarly journals Domestic Violence and Psychological Oppression in Alice Walker’s the Color Purple

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4S4) ◽  
pp. 66-67
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Slave Narratives ◽  
Alice Walker ◽  
Langston Hughes ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Epistolary Novel ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
Color Purple

African-American literature is otherwise known as slave narratives. The popular African-American writers are Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Frederick Douglass, Alice Walker etc. The Color Purple is a well-known epistolary novel written by Alice Walker in 1983. The novel brought her a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in 1983. This is a novel about a young fourteen year old black girl. She is tortured physically, emotionally, sexually by her step father and her husband. Later on she develops an intimate relationship with Shug. It has changed her life topsy-turvy. The poor, ugly, innocent, oppressed, inferior woman tremendously changed as a woman of self confident, beautiful and proud human being.

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