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.

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 GOD IN ALICE WALKER�S THE COLOR PURPLE; A PARADOX OF THE DIVINE

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Nailil Muna Yusak
Keyword(s):  
Alice Walker ◽  
Black Churches ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Black Literature ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Major Shift ◽  
Color Purple

Over time, as secularization took root in Black churches during the CivilRights era, the prevalent framework in understanding African Americanspirituality discourse has shifted from theology to sociology. This paper triesto discern this major shift from the black literature perspective. It aims todiscuss the main charachers� paradoxical state of mind in understandingGod in the novel The Color Purple. The 1982 Pulitzer Prize for fiction winneris organized around an intimate conversation between two femalecharacters, Celie and Shug Avery, whose understanding of God werechallanged by complexity of sexism and racism in the black family.Sociological approach is adopted to understand the characters� dynamicconcept of God. Discussion in this paper suggested that Alice Walker�snaturalist theology is embodied in Celie and Shug Avery�s conceptualizationof God in the novel.Keywords: Black Theology, The Color Purple, God in Black Literature.

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.

scholarly journals In Search of Self : Analysis of the Character Celie in the Color Purple

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (12S) ◽  
pp. 485-487
Keyword(s):  
Alice Walker ◽  
The Novel ◽  
True Self ◽  
Her Family ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
Main Protagonist ◽  
Color Purple ◽  
Real Self

This article focuses on the theme of alienation in the novel Color Purple by Alice Walker. The main protagonist of the novel is Celie. Celie has been alienated from her family, husband, step children, society and also from herself. It is understandable of the colored people’s situation in a white dominated society. Celie was not only ostracized in the society because of her race but because of her gender and physical appearances. The trauma that she had to undergone from her childhood causes her to change radically. Though she is alienated from everyone and did not receive love until she met with Shrug Avery, she never did lose her real self and at the end she finds her true self

scholarly journals Extolling Blackness: The African Culture in The Color Purple

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Lei Sun
Keyword(s):  
Alice Walker ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Spiritual Power ◽  
African Culture ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Epistolary Novel ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Color Purple

Alice Walker, advocates African cultures in her epistolary novel The Color Purple. Underscoring the fact that quilt-making has an ancient history in the black community and presents the African tradition of folk art and the rich legacy of visual images in African culture, Walker employs the image of quilts and quilt-making to associate with the symbolic meaning of sisterhood, family history and self-creation. Also, she depicts Shug as the most popular character as a blues singer in the novel, to indicate that she acknowledges her mode of thinking that blues as one secular African tradition can deliver its spiritual power to African Americans.

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 An ecocritical reading of flowers in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Arda Arıkan
Keyword(s):  
Seasonal Changes ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Epistolary Novel ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
Color Purple

<p>Flowers are one of the most popular motifs in verse as well as in prose. Many critics have noted that nature is at the core of Alice Walker’s epistolary novel <em>The Color Purple</em> (1983) in which depicting or writing about flowers requires special attention. However, in Alice Walker’s <em>The Color Purple</em>, flowers are depicted and written about to convey strong negative emotions as well as positive ones. In this study, how flowers are depicted or written about in the novel is studied through an ecocritical lens. I argue that Walker’s use of flowers provides examples of the vitality of a hopeful existence especially when various flowers mentioned in the novel are considered along with the seasonal changes organically affecting such floral richness. I equally argue that Walker uses flowers to show the change experienced by the major character, Celie. In that sense, Walker’s flowers are in direct coexistence with the major character, Celie. </p>

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 Measuring Gender Role Conflict, Internalized Stigma, and Racial and Sexual Identity in Behaviorally Bisexual Black Men

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Homero E. del Pino ◽  
W. Neil Steers ◽  
Martin Lee ◽  
Jason McCuller ◽  
Ron D. Hays ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Gender Role ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Role Conflict ◽  
Gender Role Conflict ◽  
Internalized Homophobia ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Race And Sexuality ◽  
Simple Factor ◽  
Sex With Men

AbstractBlack men who have sex with men and women (BMSMW) experience pressure to fill hypermasculine ideals and may not identify with “gay” cultural norms. Existing measures of gender role expectations and internalized homophobia are not culturally appropriate for BMSMW. Researchers generally measure categorical identification with race, gender, and sexual orientation groups separately, whereas BMSMW may identify with multiple categories. We modified the Gender Role Conflict Scale to create the M-GRCS and the Internalized Homophobia Scale to include biphobia (Internalized Bi/Homophobia Scale, IBHS). To examine identification at the intersection of race, gender, and sexual orientation, we created 11 Integrated Race and Sexuality Scale (IRSS) items. With data from 429 BMSMW, we conducted exploratory factor analysis of the 59 items using categorical principal axis factoring with unweighted least squares extraction and Promax factor rotation. We created simple-summated multi-item scales and evaluated their construct validity. The rotated solution yielded four factors with 47 items and a simple factor structure: M-GRCS defined two factors (α = .93 for restricted emotionality/affection; .87 for success/power/competition); the IBHS (α = .89) and IRSS (α = .74) each defined a single factor. The IRSS factor was positively correlated with the Lukwago Racial Pride Scale, r(417) = .40. The IBHS factor was negatively correlated with the IRSS factor, r(414) = − .22. The two M-GRCS factors suggest that the construct of hypermasculinity impacts BMSMW. The high IBHS reliability indicates that homophobia and biphobia were positively correlated in this sample. These three scales have potential for future studies with BMSMW.

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