The Color Purple is a 1985 American period drama film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Alice Walker. It was Spielberg's eighth film as a director, and was a change from the summer blockbusters for which he had become famous. Filmed in Anson and Union counties in North Carolina,^[1] the film tells the story of a young African American girl named Celie and shows the problems African American women faced during the early 1900s, including poverty, racism, and sexism. Celie is transformed as she finds her self-worth through the help of two strong female companions.^[2]

The film is one of only two of Spielberg's films for which John Williams did not create the score.

Plot[link]

Taking place in the Southern United States during the early 1900s to mid-1930s, the movie tells the life of a poor African American woman, Celie Harris (Whoopi Goldberg), whose abuse begins when she is young. By the time she is fourteen, she has already had two children by her father (Leonard Jackson). He takes them away from her at childbirth and forces the young Celie (Desreta Jackson) to marry a wealthy young local widower Albert Johnson, known to her only as "Mister" (Danny Glover), who treats her like a slave. Albert makes her clean up his disorderly household and take care of his unruly children. Albert beats her often, intimidating Celie into submission and near silence. Celie's sister Nettie (Akosua Busia) comes to live with them, and there is a brief period of happiness as the sisters spend time together and Nettie begins to teach Celie how to read. This is short-lived, however; after Nettie refuses Albert's predatory affections once too often, he kicks her out. Before being run off by Albert, Nettie promises to write to Celie.

Albert's old flame, the jazz singer Shug Avery (Margaret Avery), for whom Albert has carried a torch for many years, comes to live with him and Celie. Delirious with sickness, Shug initially regards Celie (wearing a face mask) as "ugly" on their first meeting. Despite this, they eventually become close friends and Shug helps Celie raise her self-confidence. Shug and Celie also enter into an affair (more pronounced in the book, but only hinted at in the film).^[3] Celie also finds strength in Sofia (Oprah Winfrey), who marries Albert's son Harpo (Willard E. Pugh). Sofia has also suffered abuse from the men in her family, but unlike Celie, she refuses to tolerate it. This high-spiritedness proves to be her downfall, however, as a rude remark to the town mayor's wife and a retaliatory punch to the mayor himself ends with Sofia beaten and jailed.

Nettie, meanwhile, has been living with missionaries in Africa and writing to Celie often. Unbeknownst to her, Albert confiscates Nettie's letters, telling Celie that she will never hear from her sister again. During a visit from Shug and her new husband, Grady, Celie and Shug discover many years' worth of Nettie's correspondence. Reconnecting with her sister and the assurance that she is still alive helps give Celie the strength to stand up to Albert. She almost slits his throat while shaving him, but is stopped by Shug. During a family dinner, Sofia is shown to be prematurely aged and permanently disfigured due to the severe beatings she received in jail, and demoralized into an almost catatonic state. During that time, Celie finally asserts herself, excoriating Albert and his father. Shug informs Albert that she and Grady are leaving, and that Celie and Harpo's girlfriend Squeak (Rae Dawn Chong) are coming with them. Despite Albert's attempts to verbally abuse Celie into submission, she stands up to him by mentioning that he kept Nettie away from her because Nettie was the only one who really loved her. Before she leaves him permanently, she tells him that until he does the right thing, everything he does will go wrong. After seeing Celie stand up for herself, Sofia returns to her normal self, laughing hysterically at a dumbfounded and embarrassed Albert. She also encourages Celie not to follow in her own footsteps, as Celie holds a knife to Albert's throat.

In Tennessee, Celie opens a haberdashery selling "one size fits all" slacks. Upon the death of her father, she learns that he was, in fact, her stepfather, and that she has inherited a house and shop from her real father. Meanwhile, Albert is feeling the effects of Celie's words. His fields and home languish into almost nonexistence as he slips into alcohol-fueled idleness, spending most of his time at Harpo's speakeasy. At one point, his father is seen suggesting that he find a new wife but Albert casually grabs his father by the arm and turns him off his property. Years of guilt finally catch up to him, with the knowledge that he has been a horrible person most of his life, especially to Celie. In a sudden act of kindness unknown to her, Albert takes all the money he has saved over the years, goes down to the immigration office, and arranges a family reunion with Nettie for Celie. Her children, Adam and Olivia, who were raised in Africa, are also reunited with her. Albert looks on from a distance, and Shug smiles at him because he finally did the right thing. Nettie and Celie play their childhood clapping game as the sun sets and the movie ends.

Cast[link]

Reception[link]

Critical response[link]

The Color Purple received mostly positive reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 88% based on reviews from 26 critics, with an average score of 6.9/10. The site's consensus is that the film is "a sentimental tale that reveals great emotional truths in American history."^[4]

Critic Roger Ebert awarded the film four stars, calling it "the year's best film." He also praised Whoopi Goldberg, calling her role "one of the most amazing debut performances in movie history" and predicting she would win the Academy Award for best actress. (She was nominated but did not win.). Ebert wrote of The Color Purple:

The world of Celie and the others is created so forcibly in this movie that their corner of the South becomes one of those movie places — like Oz, like Tara, like Casablanca — that lay claim to their own geography in our imaginations. The affirmation at the end of the film is so joyous that this is one of the few movies in a long time that inspires tears of happiness, and earns them.^[5]

Chicago Tribune film critic Gene Siskel praised the film as "triumphantly emotional and brave," calling it Spielberg's "successful attempt to enlarge his reputation as a director of youthful entertainments." Siskel wrote that The Color Purple was "a plea for respect for black women." Although acknowledging that the film was a period drama, he praised its "... incredibly strong stand against the way black men treat black women. Cruel is too kind a word to describe their behavior. The principal black men in The Color Purple use their women — both wives and daughters — as sexual chattel."^[6]

New York Times film critic Janet Maslin noted the film's divergence from Walker's book, but made the case that this shift works:

Mr. Spielberg has looked on the sunny side of Miss Walker's novel, fashioning a grand, multi-hanky entertainment that is as pretty and lavish as the book is plain. If the book is set in the harsh, impoverished atmosphere of rural Georgia, the movie unfolds in a cozy, comfortable, flower-filled wonderland. ... Some parts of it are rapturous and stirring, others hugely improbable, and the film moves unpredictably from one mode to another. From another director, this might be fatally confusing, but Mr. Spielberg's showmanship is still with him. Although the combination of his sensibilities and Miss Walker's amounts to a colossal mismatch, Mr. Spielberg's Color Purple manages to have momentum, warmth and staying power all the same.^[7]

The film was not without criticism, much of it centered on its deviations from the book, especially in terms of the homosexuality depicted. For instance, Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times praised the film for being "distinctive and deeply moving," as well as the "three memorable performances" of Goldberg, Winfrey, and Avery, but faulted the film for the changes in tone, scale, and underlying themes.^[8] Variety found the film overly sentimental, writing, "there are some great scenes and great performances in The Color Purple, but it is not a great film. Steven Spielberg's turn at 'serious' filmmaking is marred in more than one place by overblown production that threatens to drown in its own emotions."^[9]

In addition, some critics alleged that the movie stereotyped black people in general^[10] and black men in particular,^[11] pointing to the fact that Spielberg, a white man, had directed a predominately African American story.^[12]

Filmmaker Oliver Stone, however, has defended The Color Purple as "an excellent movie, and it was an attempt to deal with an issue that had been overlooked, and it wouldn't have been done if it hadn't been Spielberg. And it's not like everyone says, that he ruined the book. That's horseshit. Nobody was going to do the book. He made the book live again."^[13]

Box office[link]

The Color Purple was a success at the box office, staying in U.S. theaters for 21 weeks,^[14] and grossing over $142 million worldwide.^[15] In terms of box office income, it ranked as the #1 rated PG-13 movie released in 1985, and #4 overall.^[14]

Awards[link]

The Color Purple was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Goldberg and Best Supporting Actress for both Avery and Winfrey.^[16] Notably, Spielberg was not nominated for his direction. It won none of them, tying the record set by 1977's The Turning Point for the most Oscar nominations without a single win.^[11]

Academy Awards nominations

• Best Picture
• Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium
• Best Actress in a Leading Role; Whoopi Goldberg
• Best Actress in a Supporting Role; Margaret Avery
• Best Actress in a Supporting Role; Oprah Winfrey
• Best Art Direction-Set Decoration; J. Michael Riva, Bo Welch, Linda DeScenna
• Best Cinematography; Allen Daviau
• Best Costume Design; Aggie Guerard Rodgers
• Best Makeup; Ken Chase
• Best Music, Original Score
• Best Original Song ("Miss Celie's Blues (Sister)")

The Color Purple was nominated for five Golden Globes, including Best Picture (Drama), Best Director for Spielberg, and Best Supporting Actress for Winfrey. Its only win went to Goldberg for Best Actress (Drama).

Spielberg received the Directors Guild of America Award for Best Motion Picture Director, his first.

The film was shown at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival as a non-competing title.^[17]

See also[link]

• List of American films of 1985
• The Color Purple (musical), the musical version of the novel.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Color Purple (film)

• The Color Purple at the Internet Movie Database
• The Color Purple at the TCM Movie Database
• The Color Purple at AllRovi
• The Color Purple at Rotten Tomatoes

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The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker that won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction.^[1][a] It was later adapted into a film and musical of the same name.

Taking place mostly in rural Georgia, the story focuses on female black life in the 1930s in the southern United States, addressing numerous issues including their exceedingly low position in American social culture. The novel has been the frequent target of censors and appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000-2009 at number seventeen because of the sometimes explicit content, particularly in terms of violence.^[2][3]

Plot summary[link]

Celie, the protagonist and narrator, is a poor, uneducated, fourteen-year-old black girl living in rural Georgia. Celie starts writing letters to God because her father, Alphonso, beats and rapes her. Alphonso has already impregnated Celie once. Celie gave birth to a girl, whom her father presumably killed in the woods. Celie has a second child, a boy, whom her father also abducts. Celie’s mother becomes ill and dies. Alphonso brings home a new wife, and continues to abuse Celie.

Celie and her bright, pretty younger sister, Nettie, learn that a man known only as Mr. wants to marry Nettie. Mr. has a mistress named Shug Avery, a sultry lounge singer whose photograph fascinates Celie. Alphonso refuses to let Nettie marry, and instead offers Mr. Johnson the "a ugly women" Celie as a bride. Mr. eventually accepts the offer, forcing Celie into a difficult and joyless married life. Nettie runs away from Alphonso and takes refuge at Celie’s house. Mr. still desires Nettie, and when he advances on her, she flees. Never hearing from Nettie again, Celie assumes her dead.

Mr.'s sister Kate feels sorry for Celie, and tells her to fight back against Mr. rather than submit to his abuses. Harpo, Mr.'s son, falls in love with a large, spunky girl named Sofia. Shug Avery comes to town to sing at a local bar, but Celie is not allowed to go see her. Sofia gets pregnant and marries Harpo. Celie is amazed by Sofia’s defiance in the face of Harpo’s and Mr.’s attempts to treat Sofia as an inferior. Harpo, kinder and gentler than his father, still assumes this means he is doing something wrong and under the advice of Mr. and a momentarily jealous Celie, attempts to beat Sofia into submission. However, he consistently fails, as Sofia is at least as strong and a more experienced brawler.

Shug falls ill and Mr. takes her into his house. Shug is initially rude to Celie, but the two women become friends as Celie takes charge of nursing Shug. Celie finds herself infatuated with Shug and attracted to her sexually.

Frustrated by Harpo’s consistent attempts to subordinate her, Sofia moves out, taking her children with her. Several months later, Harpo opens a juke joint where Shug sings nightly. Celie grows confused over her feelings toward Shug.

Shug decides to stay when she learns that Mr. beats Celie when Shug is away. Shug and Celie’s relationship grows intimate, and Shug begins to ask Celie questions about sex. Sofia returns for a visit and promptly gets in a fight with Harpo’s new girlfriend, Squeak. In town one day, the mayor’s wife, Miss Millie, asks Sofia to work as her maid. Sofia replies with a sassy "Hell no!" When the mayor slaps Sofia for her "insubordination", Sofia returns the blow, knocking the mayor down, for which is sent to jail. Squeak’s attempts to get Sofia released are futile. Sofia is sentenced to work for 12 years as the mayor’s maid in which she is eventually released six months earlier.

Despite her new marriage, Shug instigates a sexual relationship with Celie, and the two frequently share the same bed. One night Shug asks Celie about her sister and Celie tells her she assumes Nettie is dead because she'd promised to write Celie but never did. Shug helps Celie recover letters from Nettie that Mr. Johnson has been hiding from her for decades. Overcome with emotion, Celie reads the letters in order, wondering how to keep herself from killing Mr Johnson.

The letters indicate that Nettie befriended a missionary couple, Samuel and Corrine, and accompanied them to Africa to do ministry work. Samuel and Corrine have two adopted children, Olivia and Adam. Nettie and Corrine have become close friends, but Corrine, noticing that her adopted children resemble Nettie, wonders if Nettie and Samuel have a secret past. Increasingly suspicious, Corrine tries to limit Nettie’s role within her family.

Nettie becomes disillusioned with her missionary experience, as she finds the Africans self-centered and obstinate. Corrine becomes ill with a fever. Nettie asks Samuel to tell her how he adopted Olivia and Adam. Based on Samuel’s story, Nettie realizes that the two children are actually Celie’s biological children (whom Alphonso -her father- abducted), alive after all. Nettie also learns that Alphonso is actually only Nettie and Celie’s stepfather, not their biological father, who was a storeowner whom white men lynched because they resented his success. Alphonso told Celie and Nettie he was their real father because he wanted to inherit the house and property that was once their mother’s.

Nettie confesses to Samuel and Corrine that she is in fact their children’s biological aunt. The gravely ill Corrine refuses to believe Nettie. Corrine dies, having accepted Nettie’s story and reconciled thereto just before her death. Meanwhile, Celie visits Alphonso, who confirms Nettie’s story, admitting that he is only the sisters' stepfather. Celie begins to lose some of her faith in God, but Shug tries to get her to reimagine God in her own way, rather than in the traditional image of the old, bearded white man.

Celie moves to Tennessee and designs and sews tailored pants, turning her hobby into a business. She returns to Georgia to learn that Mr. has resorted back to his old ways and that Alphonso has died. Celie inherited that land and moved back into the house.

Meanwhile, Nettie and Samuel marry and prepare to return to America. Before they leave, Samuel’s son, Adam, marries Tashi, an African girl. Following African tradition, Tashi undergoes the painful rituals of female circumcision and facial scarring. In solidarity, Adam undergoes the same facial scarring ritual.

Symbols, Themes & Motifs[link]

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The Color Purple[link]

The title of the book is an important symbol. Celie goes through life having a hard time noticing the beautiful aspects and appreciating them. She had a difficult life and was abused as an adolescent. "The color purple is continually equated with suffering and pain. Sofia's swollen, beaten face is described as the color of 'eggplant'. Purple is the color of Celie's private parts, the site of her sexual violation.^[4][5] However, later Shug points out to her that life must be enjoyed. When they are in a field of purple flowers, Shug tells Celie to look at the flowers and embrace their beauty. "You must look at all the good and acknowledge them because God placed them all on earth". After learning this, Celie has a better respect for life and everything it has to offer. When Nettie arrives from Africa she is seen wearing a purple dress.

God[link]

At the start of the novel, Celie views God as completely separate from her world yet she does not have a clear understanding of who God is. Shug invites Celie to imagine God as something radically different, as an "it" that delights in creation and just wants human beings to love what it has created. She writes to God because she has no other way to express her feelings. Her writing thrusts her into a rich symbolic life that results in her repudiation of the life she has been assigned and a desire for a more expansive daily existence.^[6] While her faith is strong, it’s dependent on only what other people have revealed to her about God. Later she tells Shug that she sees God as a white man. She has this belief because everyone she knows has said God is white and a male. Later, Shug tells her God has no race or gender. This enables Celie to see God in a different way. She realizes that you cannot attribute qualities to God because God is a part of the unknown. Her faith is now based on her interpretation of God, not one she learned from someone else. Even though Shug helped her with this realization, Celie only used this knowledge to shape her faith. While Shug was a huge influence on Celie’s faith, it was Celie chose how she would express it. Through her writing, Celie symbolizes a shift from an object of someone else's care to being an independent woman.

Pants[link]

Celie begins to make pants after she takes her freedom from Mr. Johnson. After going away with Shug, she is finally able to reach industrialized society and make pants instead of working in the outdoors all day. Celie is able to have a job and live the life many women longed for in this time period, especially African American women. With the help of Shug, Celie overturns the idea that sewing is marginal and unimportant women's labor, and she turns it into a lucrative, empowering source of economic independence. The pants represent liberation from the common view of women as householders. Celie made a business out of selling the pants. Also, in this point in history women were supposed to wear dresses while men "wore the pants"; however, Celie made unisex pants, enabling women to be equal to men in this regard.

Themes[link]

Racism & Sexism[link]

Almost none of the abusers in the novel possess a stereotypical demon-like demeanor that could be dismissed as pure evil. The characters who perpetuate violence are themselves, victims, often of sexism, racism, or paternalism. In the novel, Harpo only beats Sofia after his father indicated that because of Sofia's resistance, Harpo is less of a man. Although Mr. Johnson is quite violent towards Celie, Celie counsels Harpo to beat Sofia because she is envious of Sofia's strength and assertiveness.

Disruption of Traditional Gender Roles[link]

Many characters in the novel break the boundaries of traditional male or female gender roles. Sofia's strength and sass, Shug's sexual assertiveness, and Harpo's insecurity are major examples of such disparity between a character's gender and they the traits he or she displays. This blurring of gender traits and roles sometimes involves sexual ambiguity, as we see in the sexual relationship that develops between Celie and Shug. Disruption of gender roles sometimes cause problems. Harpo's insecurity about his masculinity leads to marital problems and his attempts to beat Sofia. Likewise, Shug's confident sexuality and resistance to male domination cause her to be labeled a tramp. Throughout the novel, Walker wishes to emphasize that gender and sexuality are not as simple as we may believe. Her novel subverts and defies the traditional ways in which we understand women to be women and men to be men. Throughout the novel, the assertion of what the African American femininity is compared to the exploration of African American male struggle with masculinity. The idea of African American women femininity is focused around the abilities of the husband to care for the wife and family. The normative roles by men are viewed as the source of oppressive behavior by men. Therefore, if the African American male is not fulfilling his role, it is unlikely for the African American woman to fulfill her role of femininity because she is predicated on his abilities.

Motifs[link]

Letters[link]

Alice Walker highlights the power of communication through the characters letter writing form^[7]. The letters that Celie writes to God, and later to her sister Nettie, symbolize a certain voice that only Celie has and one that she is only able to express in her letters. She is able to express her true desires only in her letter. These letters allow her to display any emotion, and they are very personal to her as well. In the beginning, when she was writing letters only to God, the letters were very private and Celie would not have wanted anyone to see them. The letters are the only way she can represent her true feelings and despair as she is abused. Later, the letters she gets from Nettie give her hope that she will be reunited with her sister again.

Celie writes to God for a lack of someone else to write to. She writes to her sister because she gets mad at God because of her past and the people who have been hurt because of it. She asks God "Why?" which is a question that cannot be answered. The last letter she writes is to everyone, including God showing that she has forgiven Him, and that her story has gone through a full circle of maturation.

Character Analysis[link]

Celie[link]

Celie Bieber is the main character, who has been oppressed by men her whole life. As an adolescent she is raped by her father and soon thereafter gives birth to two children that are taken away from her. Her father gives her away to be married to Mr. Johnson befriends with Shug Avery, a blues singer which leads to a sexual relationship between both Celie and Shug. Shug has a significant influence on Celie and she begins to model herself after following her views and opinions leading her ultimately to a life of independence. Shug influences not only the way that Celie allows Mr. Johnson to treat her, but also her religious views. In showing Celie that it is all right to commit sin but still believe in and live for God, she broadens Celie's view on religion. It is also Shug who frees Celie from Mr. Johnson's bondage, first by loving her, then by helping her to start a custom sewing business. From Shug, Celie learns that Albert has been hiding letters written to her from Africa by her sister Nettie, a missionary. These letters, full of educated, firsthand observation of African life, form a moving counterpoint to Celie's life. They reveal that in Africa, just as in America, women are persistently oppressed by men.^[8]

Nettie[link]

Nettie is Celie's younger sister, whom Celie saves from living the tragic life that she had to endure. Due to the fact that Nettie is prettier than Celie, who has been dubbed ugly, Mr. Johnson is originally interested in Nettie as a wife, but settles for Celie. Nettie runs away from home to be with Celie, yet when Mr. Johnson forces Nettie to leave, she promises to write to Celie and tells her that only God can keep them apart. Nettie is eventually taken in by Samuel and Corrine, a missionary couple, with whom she travels to Africa as a missionary. While in Africa, Nettie becomes the caregiver of Samuel and Corrine's children and religiously writes to Celie for decades. Nettie marries Samuel after Corrine's death and moves back to America with Celie's children. Through explaining her experiences to Celie, Nettie encourages Celie to be more enthusiastic and optimistic about life. Nettie finds that while there isn't racial disparity there, gender disparity exists. The women of the tribe aren't treated as equals, and aren't permitted to attend school.

Shug Avery[link]

A sultry blues singer who first appears as Mr. Johnson's mistress, Shug becomes Celie's friend and eventually her lover. Shug remains a gentle mentor who helps Celie evolve into an independent and assertive woman. At first, Shug doesn't appear to be the mothering and nurturing kind, yet she nurtures Celie physically, spiritually, and emotionally. Shug helps Celie discover the long lost letters from her sister Nettie that Mr. Johnson had been hiding for decades. In allowing Celie to view these letters, Shug is supplying her with even more hope and inspiration, letting Celie see that in the end, everything works out for the best.

Albert / Mr. Johnson[link]

Mr. Johnson is the man to whom Celie is married. Originally, he seeks a relationship with Nettie, but settles for Celie. Mr. Johnson mistreats Celie just as her father had, although Celie does not understand that she doesn't have to tolerate the abuse. Mr. Johnson uses Celie to help raise his children, who give her a hard time for not being their real mother. When Mr. Johnson's mistress, Shug Avery, comes to town, he falls all over her as he normally does. Through Shug's seductive and manipulative ways, she leads Albert to start treating Celie better. In the end, Albert realizes that he has mistreated Celie and seeks a friendship with her.

Film, theatrical, and radio adaptations[link]

The novel was adapted into a film of the same name in 1985. It was directed by Steven Spielberg and stars Whoopi Goldberg as Celie, Danny Glover as Albert, and Oprah Winfrey as Sofia. Though nominated for 11 Academy Awards, it won none. This perceived snubbing ignited controversy because many critics considered it the best picture that year,^[9] including Roger Ebert.^[10] Others were upset by the film's depiction of the black male as abusive, uncaring, and disloyal. Other critics felt that Steven Spielberg, then most associated with films like "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" and "Indiana Jones", was a poor choice for such a complex social drama, and that the film had changed or eliminated much of the book's defense of lesbianism.

On December 1, 2005, a musical adaptation of the novel (based on the film) opened at The Broadway Theatre in New York City. The show was produced by Scott Sanders, Quincy Jones, Harvey Weinstein, and Oprah Winfrey, who was also an investor.^[11] It garnered five 2006 Outer Critics Circle Award nominations, including Outstanding Broadway Musical and Outstanding New Score. That same year, the show was nominated for eleven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Original Score Written for the Theater, and Best Leading Actress in a Musical (LaChanze). LaChanze did win the Tony Award, though the show itself won no other awards. LaChanze's win was attributed to the variety of roles for which she had garnered positive attention, as well as for a powerful backstory. In April 2007, Fantasia Barrino took over the role. The Broadway production ended its run on February 24, 2008.^[12]

In 2008 BBC Radio 4 broadcast a radio adaptation of the novel in ten 15-minute episodes as a Woman's Hour serial, with Nadine Marshall as Celie. The script was by Patricia Cumper, and in 2009 the production received the Sony Radio Academy Awards Silver Drama Award.^[13]

Editions[link]

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

• 1982
• ISBN 0-606-00587-0 (prebound, 1985)
• ISBN 0-671-61702-8 (mass market paperback, 1985)
• ISBN 0-671-64745-8 (mass market paperback, 1987)
• ISBN 0-671-66878-1 (paperback, 1988)
• ISBN 0-15-119154-9 (hardcover, 1992, Anniversary Edition)
• ISBN 1-56849-628-1 (library binding, 1995, reprint)
• ISBN 0-671-01907-4 (paperback, 1998)
• ISBN 0-7641-2064-6 (paperback, 2002)
• ISBN 0-15-602835-2 (paperback, 2003)
• ISBN 0-671-72779-6
• ISBN 0-7043-3905-6
• ISBN 978-0-7538-1892-3 (paperback, United Kingdom, 2004)

See also[link]

Novels portal

• Feminist literature
• Black feminism
• African-American literature

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Alice Walker discusses The Color Purple on the BBC's World Book Club
• New Georgia Encyclopedia
• Photos of the first edition of The Color Purple
• The Color Purple student and teacher guide, analysis, quotes, multimedia

This article uses bare URLs for citations. Please consider adding full citations so that the article remains verifiable. Several templates and the Reflinks tool are available to assist in formatting. (Reflinks documentation) (March 2012)

Alice Walker
Alice Walker
Born	(1944-02-09) February 9, 1944 (age 68) Eatonton, Georgia, USA
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer, poet, political activist
Period	1970–
Genres	African American literature
Notable work(s)	The Color Purple
Notable award(s)	Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1983 National Book Award 1983
Spouse(s)	Melvyn Roseman Leventhal (married 1967, divorced 1976)
Partner(s)	Robert Allen, Tracy Chapman
Children	Rebecca Walker
Influences Howard Zinn, Zora Neale Hurston
Influenced Gayl Jones
www.alicewalkersgarden.com

Alice Malsenior Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender. She is best known for the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple (1982) for which she won the National Book Award^[1][a] and the Pulitzer Prize.^[2]

Early life[link]

Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia, the youngest of eight children, to Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Lou Tallulah Grant. Her father, who was, in her words, "wonderful at math but a terrible farmer," earned only $300 a year from sharecropping and dairy farming. Her mother supplemented the family income by working as a maid.^[3] She worked 11 hours a day for USD $17 per week to help pay for Alice to attend college.^[4]

Living under Jim Crow Laws, Walker's parents resisted landlords who expected the children of black sharecroppers to work the fields at a young age. A white plantation owner said to her that black people had “no need for education.” Minnie Lou Walker said, "You might have some black children somewhere, but they don’t live in this house. Don’t you ever come around here again talking about how my children don’t need to learn how to read and write.” Her mother enrolled Alice in first grade at the age of four.^[5]

Growing up with an oral tradition, listening to stories from her grandfather (the model for the character of Mr. in The Color Purple), Walker began writing, very privately, when she was eight years old. "With my family, I had to hide things," she said. "And I had to keep a lot in my mind."^[6]

In 1952, Walker was accidentally wounded in the right eye by a shot from a BB gun fired by one of her brothers.^[7] Because the family had no car, the Walkers could not take their daughter to a hospital for immediate treatment. By the time they reached a doctor a week later, she had become permanently blind in that eye. When a layer of scar tissue formed over her wounded eye, Alice became self-conscious and painfully shy. Stared at and sometimes taunted, she felt like an outcast and turned for solace to reading and to writing poetry. When she was 14, the scar tissue was removed. She later became valedictorian and was voted most-popular girl, as well as queen of her senior class, but she realized that her traumatic injury had some value: it allowed her to begin "really to see people and things, really to notice relationships and to learn to be patient enough to care about how they turned out".^[3]

After high school, Walker went to Spelman College in Atlanta on a full scholarship in 1961 and later transferred to Sarah Lawrence College near New York City, graduating in 1965. Walker became interested in the U.S. civil rights movement in part due to the influence of activist Howard Zinn, who was one of her professors at Spelman College. Continuing the activism that she participated in during her college years, Walker returned to the South where she became involved with voter registration drives, campaigns for welfare rights, and children's programs in Mississippi.^[8]

Activism[link]

Alice Walker met Martin Luther King Jr. when she was a student at Spelman College in Atlanta in the early 1960s. Walker credits King for her decision to return to the American South as an activist for the Civil Rights Movement. She marched with hundreds of thousands in August in the 1963 March on Washington. As a young adult, she volunteered to register black voters in Georgia and Mississippi.^[9][10]

On March 8, 2003, International Women's Day, on the eve of the Iraq War, Alice Walker, Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior; and Terry Tempest Williams, author of An Unspoken Hunger; were arrested along with 24 others for crossing a police line during an anti-war protest rally outside the White House with her dogs. Walker and 5,000 activists associated with the organizations Code Pink and Women for Peace, marched from Malcolm X Park in Washington D.C. to the White House. The activists encircled the White House. In an interview with Democracy Now, Walker said, "I was with other women who believe that the women and children of Iraq are just as dear as the women and children in our families, and that, in fact, we are one family. And so it would have felt to me that we were going over to actually bomb ourselves." Walker wrote about the experience in her essay, "We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For."^[11]

In November 2008, Alice Walker wrote "An Open Letter to Barack Obama" that was published on Theroot.com. Walker addresses the newly elected President as "Brother Obama" and writes "Seeing you take your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina, and character, is a balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only sung about."^[12]

In January 2009, she was one of over 50 signers of a letter protesting the Toronto Film Festival's "City to City" spotlight on Israeli filmmakers, condemning Israel as an "apartheid regime."^[13]

In March 2009, Alice Walker traveled to Gaza along with a group of 60 other female activists from the anti-war group Code Pink, in response to the Gaza War. Their purpose was to deliver aid, to meet with NGOs and residents, and to persuade Israel and Egypt to open their borders into Gaza. She planned to visit Gaza again in December 2009 to participate in the Gaza Freedom March.^[14] On Jun 23, 2011, she announced plans to participate in an upcoming aid flotilla to Gaza which is attempting to break Israel's naval blockade.^[15][16] Explaining her reasons she cited concern for the children and that she felt that "elders" should bring "whatever understanding and wisdom we might have gained in our fairly long lifetimes, witnessing and being a part of struggles against oppression".^[17][18] Fellow author Howard Jacobson took Walker to task saying that her concern for the children does not justify the flotilla.^[19]

In a June 2011 interview, Walker described the United States and Israel as "terrorist organizations" stating "When you terrorize people, when you make them so afraid of you that they are just mentally and psychologically wounded for life -- that's terrorism."^[17]

Personal life[link]

In 1965, Walker met Melvyn Roseman Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. They were married on March 17, 1967 in New York City. Later that year the couple relocated to Jackson, Mississippi, becoming "the first legally married inter-racial couple in Mississippi".^[20][21] They were harassed and threatened by whites, including the Ku Klux Klan. The couple had a daughter Rebecca in 1969. Walker described her in 2008 as "a living, breathing, mixed-race embodiment of the new America that they were trying to forge."^[20] Walker and her husband divorced amicably in 1976.

Walker and her daughter became estranged. Rebecca felt herself to be more of "a political symbol... than a cherished daughter". She published a memoir entitled Black White and Jewish, expressing the complexities of her parents' relationship and her childhood. Rebecca recalls her teenage years when her mother would retreat to her far-off writing studio while “I was left with money to buy my own meals and lived on a diet of fast food.” Since the birth of Rebecca’s son Tenzin, her mother has not spoken to her because she dared to “question her ideology.” Rebecca has learned that she was cut out of her mother’s will in favor of a distant cousin.^[22][23][24]

In the mid-1990s, Walker was involved in a romance with singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman.^[25]

In 2011 shooting began on Beauty in Truth, a documentary film about Walker's life directed by Pratibha Parmar.

Writing career[link]

Alice Walker at the Miami Book Fair International of 1989

Walker's first book of poetry was written while she was a senior at Sarah Lawrence. She took a brief sabbatical from writing while working in Mississippi in the civil rights movement. Walker resumed her writing career when she joined Ms. magazine as an editor before moving to northern California in the late 1970s. Her 1975 article "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston", published in Ms Magazine, helped revive interest in the work of Zora Neale Hurston, who inspired Walker's writing and subject matter. In 1973, Walker and fellow Hurston scholar Charlotte D. Hunt discovered Hurston's unmarked grave in Ft. Pierce, Florida. The women collaborated to buy a modest headstone for the gravesite.^[26]

In addition to her collected short stories and poetry, Walker's first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, was published in 1970. In 1976, Walker's second novel, Meridian, was published. The novel dealt with activist workers in the South during the civil rights movement, and closely paralleled some of Walker's own experiences.

In 1982, Walker published what has become her best-known work, the novel The Color Purple. About a young troubled black woman fighting her way through not only racist white culture but also patriarchal black culture, it was a resounding commercial success. The book became a bestseller and was subsequently adapted into a critically acclaimed 1985 movie as well as a 2005 Broadway musical.

Walker has written several other novels, including The Temple of My Familiar and Possessing the Secret of Joy (which featured several characters and descendants of characters from The Color Purple). She has published a number of collections of short stories, poetry, and other published work. She expresses the struggles of black people, particularly women, and their lives in a racist, sexist, and violent society. Her writings also focus on the role of women of color in culture and history. Walker is a respected figure in the liberal political community for her support of unconventional and unpopular views as a matter of principle.

Her short stories include the 1973 Everyday Use, in which she discusses feminism, racism and the issues raised by young black people who leave home and lose respect for their parents' culture.^[27]

In 2007, Walker gave her papers, 122 boxes of manuscripts and archive material, to Emory University's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library.^[28] In addition to drafts of novels such as The Color Purple, unpublished poems and manuscripts, and correspondence with editors, the collection includes extensive correspondence with family members, friends and colleagues, an early treatment of the film script for The Color Purple, syllabi from courses she taught, and fan mail. The collection also contains a scrapbook of poetry compiled when Walker was 15, entitled "Poems of a Childhood Poetess".

Selected awards and honors[link]

• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1983) for The Color Purple^[2]
• National Book Award for Fiction (1983) for The Color Purple^[1][a]
• O. Henry Award for "Kindred Spirits" 1985.
• Honorary Degree from the California Institute of the Arts (1995)
• American Humanist Association named her as "Humanist of the Year" (1997)
• The Lillian Smith Award from the National Endowment for the Arts
• The Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts & Letters
• The Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, the Merrill Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship
• The Front Page Award for Best Magazine Criticism from the Newswoman's Club of New York
• Induction to the California Hall of Fame in The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts (2006)
• Domestic Human Rights Award from Global Exchange (2007)

Selected works[link]

Notes[link]

References[link]

Citations

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Alice Walker

• Alice Walker's Official Website
• Profile at the Poetry Foundation
• Profile at Poets.org
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • In Depth interview with Walker, May 4, 2008
• Alice Walker on Charlie Rose
• Alice Walker at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Alice Walker in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Alice Walker at ZSpace
• Alice Walker collected news and commentary at The Guardian
• Alice Walker collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Interview on the nature of a writer’s social responsibilities Lannan Foundation (Audio, 15 mins) August 21, 1987
• New Georgia Encyclopedia
• Interview with Alice Walker by ascent magazine
• Shambhala Sun Magazine Interview
• Alice Walker's archives at Emory University. Profile, audio files, archive at the James Weldon Johnson Institute, Emory
• "Toxic Culture of Globalization", from Democracy Now! October 27, 2004. "'I am a Renegade, an Outlaw, a Pagan' interview February 13, 2006. "Pacifica Radio at 60" April 15, 2009 "Overcoming Speechlessness" April 13, 2010
• Alice Walker at the Internet Movie Database

Danny Glover
Danny Glover, January 2008
Born	Danny Lebern Glover (1946-07-22) July 22, 1946 (age 65) San Francisco, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor, director, activist
Years active	1979–present
Height	6'3" now (Peak Height: 6'4")
Spouse	Asake Bomani (1975–99?; divorced; 1 child)

Danny Lebern Glover (born July 22, 1946) is an American actor, film director, and political activist.^[1] Glover is well known for his roles as Mr. Albert Johnson in The Color Purple, as Michael Harrigan in Predator 2, as corrupt cop James McFee in Witness, as Detective Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon film franchise, as Detective David Tapp in Saw as George Knox in Angels in the Outfield, and for his catch phrase "I'm too old for this shit." He has also appeared in many other movies, television shows, and theatrical productions. He is an active supporter of various humanitarian and political causes. He currently stars as Professor Arthur Teller in the Fox television series Touch.

Early life[link]

Glover was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Carrie (née Hunley) and James Glover. His parents, postal workers, were active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), working to advance equal rights.^[2] Glover's mother, daughter of a midwife, was born in Louisville, Georgia and graduated from Paine College in Augusta, Georgia.^[3] Glover grew up with a love for sports, like his father. Glover suffered from epilepsy in his teens and as a young adult. According to his own account, he "developed a way of concentrating so that seizures wouldn't happen." Using this technique, which he describes as "a type of self-hypnosis", Glover says he has not suffered a seizure since age 34.^{[citation needed]}

Career[link]

Glover at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

Glover originally worked in city administration working on community development^{[citation needed]} before transitioning to theater. On the transition, he said:

"I didn't think it was a difficult transition. Acting is a platform that can become a conveyer for ideas. Art is a way of understanding, of confronting issues and confronting your own feelings—all within that realm of the capacity it represents. It may have been a leap of faith for me, given not only my learning disability (dyslexia) but also the fact that I felt awkward. I felt all the things that someone that's 6'3" or 6'4" feels and with my own diminished expectations of who I could be [and] would feel. Whether it's art, acting or theater that I've devoted myself to I put more passion and more energy into it."^[4]

His first theater involvement was with Conservatory Theater, a regional training program in San Francisco^{[citation needed]}. Glover also trained with Jean Shelton at the Shelton Actors Lab in San Francisco. In an interview on Inside the Actor's Studio, Glover credited Jean Shelton for much of his development as an actor. Deciding that he wanted to be an actor, Glover resigned from his city administration job and soon began his career as a stage actor. Glover then moved to Los Angeles for more opportunities in acting, where he would later go on to co-found the Robey Theatre Company with actor Ben Guillory in honor of the actor, radical activist, and concert singer Paul Robeson in Los Angeles in 1994^{[citation needed]}.

Glover has had a variety of film, stage, and television roles, and is best known for playing Los Angeles police Sergeant Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon series of action films. During his career, he has made many cameo appearances. For example, he appeared in the Michael Jackson video Liberian Girl of 1987. He has also appeared as the husband to Whoopi Goldberg's character Celie in The Color Purple, and as Lieutenant James McFee in the film Witness. In 1994 he made his directorial debut with the Showtime channel short film Override. Also in 1994, Glover and actor Ben Guillory formed the Robey Theatre Company in Los Angeles, focusing on theatre by and about Black people.

Glover earned top billing for the first time in Predator 2, the sequel to the sci-fi action film Predator. That same year he starred in Charles Burnett's To Sleep with Anger, for which he won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead.

In common with Humphrey Bogart, Elliott Gould and Robert Mitchum, who have played Raymond Chandler's private eye detective Philip Marlowe, Glover played the role in the episode "Red Wind" of the Showtime network's 1995 series Fallen Angels.

In 1997, under his former production company banner Carrie Films, Glover executive produced numerous films of first time directors including Pamm Malveaux’s neo-noir short film Final Act starring Joe Morton which aired on the Independent Film Channel.

In addition, Glover has been a voice actor in many children's movies. Glover was featured in the popular 2001 film Royal Tenenbaums, also starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson.

In 2004, he appeared in the low-budget horror film Saw as Detective David Tapp. In 2005, Glover and Joslyn Barnes announced plans to make No FEAR, a movie about Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo's experience. Coleman-Adebayo won a 2000 jury trial against the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The jury found the EPA guilty of violating the civil rights of Coleman-Adebayo on the basis of race, sex, color and a hostile work environment, under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Coleman-Adebayo was terminated shortly after she revealed the environmental and human disaster taking place in the Brits, South Africa, vanadium mines. Her experience inspired passage of the Notification and Federal Employee Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002 (No FEAR Act).

In 2009, Glover performed in The People Speak a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans, based on historian Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States”.^[5]

Glover played President Wilson, the President of the United States in 2012, a disaster film directed by Roland Emmerich and released in theaters November 13, 2009.

In 2010, Glover participated in a Spanish film called "I Want to Be a Soldier".^[6][7]

Planned directorial debut[link]

Glover sought to make a film biography of Toussaint Louverture for his directorial debut. In May 2006, the film had included cast members Wesley Snipes, Angela Bassett, Don Cheadle, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Roger Guenveur Smith, Mos Def, Isaach De Bankolé, and Richard Bohringer. Production, estimated to cost $30 million, was planned to begin in South Africa, filming from late 2006 into early 2007.^[8] In May 2007, President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez contributed $18 million to fund the production of Toussaint for Glover, who is a prominent U.S. supporter of Chávez. The contribution annoyed some Venezuelan filmmakers, who said the money could have funded other homegrown films and that Glover's film was not even about Venezuela.^[9][10] The following June, some Venezuelan filmmakers petitioned for Glover to reconsider using the funds provided by their president while the actor was scouting locations outside the Venezuelan capital Caracas.^[11] The petition resulted in the local film guilds Anac and Caveprol being outlawed by Venezuela; the country's state-backed film institute Cnac was also instructed to sever ties with the guild.^[12] In April 2008, the Venezuelan National Assembly authorized an additional $9,840,505 for Glover's film, which is still in planning.^[13]