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.

The Role of Self-discovery in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 2218-2224
Author(s):  
Arpita Sawhney
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Black People ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
American Book ◽  
Color Purple

Alice Walker was an American writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are noted for their insightful treatment of African American culture. Her novels, most notably The Color Purple (1982), are focused on the struggles of black people, particularly women, and their lives in a racist, sexist, and violent society. Walker’s Pulitzer prize and American Book award-winning novel, The Color Purple, marks the apex of her career. It gained international prominence, as the writer did herself. Her novels, short stories, poetry and essays are all about a search for truth. The Color Purple is unique in its pre-occupation with spiritual survival and with exploring the oppressions, insanities and triumphs of black women.

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.

scholarly journals Reading The Color Purple from the Perspective of Ecofeminism

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 965
Author(s):  
Lianghong Wu
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Harmonious Society ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Black Literature ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
Human And Nature ◽  
Color Purple ◽  
The Relationship

Alice Waker is one of the most influential black female writers in modern America. The summit of her literary achievements, The Color Purple, wins her three awards since its publication and becomes a milestone in the black literature. This paper sums up the three stages of the relationship between human, women in particular, and nature---fragmentation, over-sewing and wholeness. In this novel, Walker attempts to arouse black women’s self-consciousness by showing the fragmentation state of black women and nature under oppressions. She looks for ways of oversewing the broken souls to realize the wholeness of survival. Advocating people to attach importance to the problems of women and environment, Walker expresses her ecofeminist consciousness to establish a harmonious society where human and nature, men and women could co-existent peacefully.

Para uma sociolinguística do texto literário traduzido: um olhar sobre ‘The Color Purple’ e sua tradução

Gragoatá ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (13) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maristela Cury Sarian
Keyword(s):  
Alice Walker ◽  
Black English ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
Color Purple

Este trabalho tem por objetivo estabelecer uma relação entre a tradução e a sociolinguística, a partir da análise da tradução do romance epistolar The Color Purple, da afro-americana Alice Walker, A cor púrpura, realizada por Peg Bodelson, Betúlia Machado e Maria José Silveira, a fim de investigar como a heterogeneidade linguística da obra original, associada, sobretudo, à maior ou menor frequência de uso de inglês padrão e de Black English Vernacular pelas personagens, foi construída na tradução. Nessa análise, verifico quais foram os recursos utilizados na caracterização da linguagem das personagens e como estes podem ser associados aos diferentes graus de escolaridade e de letramento de Celie e Nettie, valendo-me, como instrumental para essa análise, de descrições da variação sociolinguística, das teorias do letramento e dos processos de aquisição de língua escrita.

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.

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