Alice Walker - The color Purple, March 24,2022

The Color Purple, first edition cover, 1962.

The Color Purple takes place in rural Georgia, where the lives and tribulations of the life of African-American women in the 1930's is laid bare. It starts in a very despairing manner exposing wide-scale family abuse and rape of women at home as a result of male domination. 

Celie is the central character, abused by her husband Albert who treats her as his chattel and discards her after sex. Celie was raped by her stepfather and bore two children who subsequently disappeared. Nettie is her sister who escapes the dismal situation by going to London and joining a missionary group. She has a decent husband and lives a joyous life in Africa.

Albert takes on a mistress named Shug who is at first contemptuous of Celie, but later grows fond of her and establishes a bond. It all starts with Celie nursing Shug back to health when she falls sick. It grows into a lesbian affair and a few pages of this are the cause for demands that the book be banned in school libraries in USA.

Celie has no one to sympathise with her and confesses her troubles in letters addressed to God. This is how the first half of the story is told. She writes letters to Nettie but never gets a reply until she later discovers with Shug’s help that Nettie’s replies to her had been hidden, stashed away by her cruel husband in a trunk. From those letters, we learn of Nettie's voyage to Africa and her spiritual conversion, after finding that the white missionaries did not really care for the Olinka people or respect their traditions. In the end, the message is one of hope.

The Color Purple was turned into a musical in 2005 and played to sell-out audiences on Broadway during 2005 to 2008, earning eleven Tony Award nominations. 

                          

Scene from the musical The Color Purple – Fantasia Barrino, playing Celie, was wailing through her climactic solo, ‘I’m Here.’

The passage by Saras has the line from which the title of the novel is taken:

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.

Joe’s passage has another comforting quote from a letter of Nettie:

Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.

Alice Walker in her Mississippi days – photo by Everett

Alice Walker (born Feb 9, 1944) is an American writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are concerned with African American culture. Her writings are mostly about women and women’s problems, which are the main theme of The Color Purple (published in 1982), the novel we are reading.

Among modern authors she is the most overtly feminist and supportive of the true liberation of women. She also has a nose for detecting fake liberalism passed on as women’s empowerment. For example, she characterises Hillary Clinton in these words:

Hillary Clinton isn’t a champion of women’s rights. She’s the embodiment of corporate feminism.

The article linked above is worth reading.

Walker was the eighth child of a black sharecropper family in Georgia. She was blinded in one eye by an accident as a child. Her mother gave her a typewriter, which allowed her to write instead of doing menial work around the house. She received a scholarship to attend a local college, where she studied for two years before transferring to Sarah Lawrence College, a private liberal arts in New York, also on a scholarship. After graduating in 1965 she moved to Mississippi and became involved in the civil rights movement. This was a seminal experience in her life. She also began teaching and publishing short stories and essays. She married in 1967, but the couple divorced in 1976 (see below).

Walker wrote her first book of poetry, Once, in 1968, and her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland in 1970. A second volume of poetry, Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems, and her first collection of short stories, In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Woman, both appeared in 1973. The latter bears witness to sexist violence and abuse within the African American community. After moving to New York, Walker completed Meridian (1976), a novel describing the coming of age of several civil rights workers in the 1960s.

Walker later moved to California, where she wrote her most popular novel, The Color Purple (1982). An epistolary novel, it depicts the growing up and self-realisation of an African American woman between 1909 and 1947 in a small town in Georgia. The book won a Pulitzer Prize and was made into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1985. A musical version produced by Oprah Winfrey and Quincy Jones premiered in 2004 on Broadway. This novel remains a popular best-seller.

Walker’s later fiction includes The Temple of My Familiar, an ambitious examination of racial and sexual tensions (1989); Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), a narrative centred on female genital mutilation; By the Light of My Father’s Smile (1998), the story of a family of anthropologists posing as missionaries in order to gain access to a Mexican tribe; and Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2005), about an older woman’s quest for identity. 

Critics said these novels employed New Age abstractions and poorly conceived characters, though Walker continued to draw praise for championing racial and gender equality in her work. She also released the volume of short stories The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (2000) exploring love and race relations. It is based on her own life. In this book, Walker tells of her interracial relationship with Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, a civil rights attorney who was also working in Mississippi during her time there. The couple married on March 17, 1967, in New York City, because miscegenation was illegal in the South at the time. They divorced in 1976. A daughter, Rebecca, was born of the union in 1969. Rebecca Walker, Alice Walker's only child, is an American novelist, editor, artist, and activist. 

Alice Walker wrote several other volumes of poetry, including Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth (2003), A Poem Traveled Down My Arm (2003), Hard Times Require Furious Dancing (2010), and Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart (2018). Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems (1991) collects her poetry from 1965 to 1990.

Walker’s essays were compiled in In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983). She coined the term ‘womanist’ in that book to mean ‘a black feminist or feminist of color.’ She also wrote Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit After the Bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon (2001), We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For (2006), and The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm’s Way (2013). Walker’s writing extended to juvenile fiction and critical essays on such female writers as Flannery O’Connor and Zora Neale Hurston. 

In the unconventional memoir The Chicken Chronicles (2011), Walker discussed caring for a flock of chickens while also musing on her life. The documentary Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth was released in 2013.

This biography of Alice Walker is based largely on Britannica, with several facts taken from her wikipedia entry.

Thomo

Thomo found many interesting things about the book – the exchange of letters between Celie and God, and later with her sister Nettie; the bonding between the women, one relationship leading to a lesbian affair; and the promotion of women's empowerment. He felt that the language used would be at times difficult for someone not used to the dialectal speech of the American South, especially the idiom of the Blacks. 

He chose to read the scene in which Harpo, Mr. ____'s son brings Sofia Butler, a girl he has impregnated and wants to marry against Mr. _____'s wishes.  Thomo was impressed with the way Sophia tells Harpo as she gets up to leave, "... When you free, me and the baby be waiting."

Priya

“Beat her, I say.”

Nearly half a century later after it was written Alice Walker’s seminal novel, The Color Purple, on Feminism continues to enthral readers the same way it did when it was written in 1982. Walker was accorded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the book won the National Book Award (US Literary Awards).

Written in epistolary style, it tells the story of Celie, a young poor, uneducated African American who is abused by the men in her family and endures the gravest crimes against her, to the point where she is inured to the brutality.

With no one to share her pain, she writes letters first to God, and later on to her sister Nettie, upon discovering she is alive; the selected passage is an interaction between Celie, her step-son Harpo and his father Albert (Mr ____________).

Accustomed to the constant physical and mental abuse she suffers at the hands of her husband, Celie quite shockingly advises (when asked) by Harpo how to keep his wife Sofia in line: “Beat her, I say”. Sofia’s crimes are that she has a mind of her own, talks back and goes about her work without pandering to Harpo. She is often “primping herself in front of the mirror” too.

Celie feels that violence by the husband is the way to control a wife, until she learns otherwise from the bold and brave Shug Avery, her husband’s mistress.

When Harpo heeds Celie’s advice, it is he who is beaten black and blue, baffled by Sofia’s strength. Later Sofia bears many hardships with grit. All women characters in the book are gritty and rise above the unspeakable crimes against them.

The novel exposes the existing patriarchy and misogynistic life of the Black American society of the time. Fighting against the tide Celie finds her strength, discovers her mind and identity, and empowers herself. A notable feature of the book is the use of African American Vernacular English, spoken by the characters, who live in the US south.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ebonics

Kavita

The Color Purple (TCP) is the story of Celie, an African American teenager who narrates her life through brutally honest ‘letters to God’ which are poignant to read. TCP is about women who care for each other, and the children they nurture and love – all the while, being abused and ill-treated by males in their own family.

Celie overcomes the hardships she faces; her perseverance gives her the strength to rise out of her misery. Eventually she achieves an independent and enriching life.

The story also has letters written by Celie’s sister Nettie to her. The strong thread of Celie’s relationship with her sister Nettie, and with her stepson’s wife Sofia, and her own husband’s mistress Shug Avery, form the basis of this novel. Celie has a lesbian relationship with Shug that opens up a new world to her.

In this book Alice Walker (AW) presents God and religion as vehicles, but the chief theme is what AW calls ‘womanism’, the ability of women as a sisterhood to rescue themselves from the indignities and insults they suffer. AW has said, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.” Women have to be strong to survive in the world, since it’s ruled by men who do not respect women.

Kavita selected the portion which exposes to the reader the mild nature of the protagonist.

Celie is a gentle soul – she has never hurt anyone and Sofia cannot understand that. Celie thinks that is it wrong to be angry. She and Sofia build a rapport and become friends and she admires Sofia for being bold and forthright. 

She had not been sleeping properly earlier. Her conversation with Sofia, sharing laughter and companionship, relaxed her; she gets a good night’s sleep after that. Companionship is what she craved for and never got from her husband. Celie is happy with the small things in life and has no great aspirations.

KumKum

The Color Purple was one of the books KumKum had to read for a course on Black American Literature at West Virginia University in the 1990s. She enjoyed reading the book then. The story of Celie’s life is a wonderful story of emancipation, though it begins with her very tragic early life. This is not a story of Black folks being mistreated by whites, which is even now prevalent in the US, but a story of Black women being persecuted by their own husbands and family members. Celie is born into highly deprived circumstances in the American South.

Reading The Color Purple for the second time with the KRG was great, KumKum felt, since she didn’t have to study for a grade in class.

She chose this particular passage because here the author, with some delicacy, describes a blossoming lesbian relationship between Celie, Albert’s wife, and Shug Avery, his longtime mistress. Shug was a singer and a woman with a career. She was beautiful and knew the art of mesmerising men who fell for her charms.

Albert, the vulgar husband of Celie, was a completely different person as Shug Avery’s doting lover. He treated his wife Celie very cruelly, as a bondswoman, but worshipped Shug as his Muse.

“When I came here, say Shug, I treated you so mean. Like you was a servant” – with these words Shug admitted her misdemeanour toward Celie. A new relationship blossomed between the two when they recognised each other’s worth.

Shug treated Celie poorly at first because she saw Albert was treating his wife thus. It was Celie’s caring and forgiving nature that won Shug’s heart. Shug took Celie under her loving care, ultimately freeing her from bondage to Albert. She encouraged Celie to be enterprising and start a business of her own. Encouragement and recognition eventually made Celie a liberated woman with an independent income.

The Color Purple is an epistolary novel. That is to say, a lot of the story evolves through the letters Celie exchanges with Nettie, her sister, who had left on a missionary journey first to London, and then to Africa. We find Celie often addressing her letters to God telling Him her feelings, but the existence of her sister Nettie’s letters to Celie came to light in the passage KumKum read. Nettie’s letters form the bulk of this novel. These letters also expanded the horizon of the story. Nettie wrote to Celie from New York, London, then from Africa, from different circumstances.

These passages also contain the clue why Celie never heard from her beloved sister Nettie. Though Nettie wrote to her sister without fail, Celie never received them because Albert hid all those letters in his trunk, and kept them locked. Nettie wrote in one of her early letters that “he (Albert) was some mad. He said because of what I’d done I’d never hear from you again, and you would never hear from me.” Albert tried to keep his threat true as long as he could.

Shug however got the key to the trunk and retrieved those letters for Celie, which cemented their relationship. Celie discovered in these letters her long-lost beloved sister, and her two dear children.

Zakia

Zakia’s passage also was a reading from the letters. This passage reveals the ways of God. Nettie has adopted Celie’s children – Zakia found it very touching, how the circumstances have come full circle. At last we meet some kind people, after ploughing through the book, full of cruelties and rough treatment of women. Nettie writes:

… there are colored people in the world who want us to know! Want us to grow and see the light! They are not all mean like Pa and Albert, or beaten down like Ma was. 

She confides in Celie about Corrine and Samuel and says:

… their children, sent by "God" are your children, Celie. And they are being brought up in love, Christian charity and awareness of God.

In all her letters Celie is ‘talking to God’ but here at the end a miracle is narrated in this passage – that Celie’s children are being protected at a distance by Nettie, her sister, who is lavishing all the love she feels for Celie, on her children. Isn’t it amazing that God has answered Celie in this truly compassionate way! 

They are all God-fearing, said Kavita, and KumKum agreed. This was a short but moving passage.

Shobha

Celie learns that Albert has been hiding the letters sent by her sister Nettie. She and Shug Avery together find the letters hidden in his trunk and Nettie starts to read them. Nettie is working as a nanny in the home of Samuel and Corrine, caring for their children Adam and Olivia.

The family are on the way to Africa, on missionary work, and take Nettie with them. They travel by train to New York, a totally new experience for Nettie.

 Shobha’s selected passage deals with Nettie’s reaction to the train journey from Georgia and her experiences in New York city.

New York in the early 1900’s overtook London as the most populous city in the world. It was the gateway for immigrants who poured in from all parts of the world. Blacks from the south migrated to New York, settling in Harlem in upper Manhattan. For the first time Nettie sees black people owning fancy cars and living in fine houses. Horse drawn carriages had been quickly replaced by motor cars in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Nettie is also surprised that all the people have indoor toilets and gas or electric lights

The fashion in Harlem, says Nettie, is for boys to wear knickers and for girls to wear garlands of flowers in their hair. Even today, parts of the country are very old-fashioned and people living there have little knowledge of the world outside their small town. The contrast would have been far greater at that time.

Joe

Joe read a passage in which there are two contrasting scenes. In the first part Nettie describes the usual behaviour of men who don’t even look at women when women are speaking, listening just long enough to issue instructions to them. The women are expected to turn their gaze away from a man’s face, like Moses in front of Yahweh.

In the second part we have Nettie describing the scenery and her feeling of oneness with the tenor of life in Africa:

“… the villagers gather at the edge of the village near the cassava fields, and watch the building of the road. And watching them, some on their stools and some squatted down on their haunches, all chewing cola nuts and making patterns in the dirt, I feel a great surge of love for them.”

She adds a line that Joe appreciated:

“It is hard to believe we've been here five years. Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.” 

The description of life in Africa is rendered tenderly. It gives a good impression and you find different locales described, probably in Liberia where Nettie landed. There is also a reference to Tubman, who was the President of Liberia from 1944 until his death in 1971. It is comforting to see the people so much at home and able to fend for themselves in everything – as regards, food, clothing, shelter – all self-sufficient people, much as Gandhiji would have wanted people in villages to be. Happy people who don’t feel they lack in anything. The second part of his passage, Joe felt, compensates for the dark material at the beginning of the book which leaves the reader depressed.

In the discussion it was mentioned that it was from West Africa that most of the slaves were imported into USA and the Caribbean to work on the plantations. 

The landing of the first Africans as slaves to the Virginia Colony in English North America in August, 1619, took place here at Point Comfort, Fort Monroe, Hampton, Virginia.

More information can be found at https://1619landing.org/

Liberia is an artificial country resettled by African Americans who went back to Africa. Liberia was a project of the American Colonization Society (ACS), which despaired for black people in the United States and thought their freedom and prosperity was more assured by returning back to Africa.

Saras remarked that the road that was built into their village destroyed their life completely. Kavita mentioned that at present in Kerala there is an agitation to stop the Government’s proposal to construct the Silver Line, a semi-high-speed railway line, 532 kms long, connecting Kasargod in the north with the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram in the south. The current estimate of cost is Rs 66,000 crores (~USD 8.7bn). Do we need it? Opinion was split.

Pamela

Pamela chose this passage because this particular letter from Nettie to Celie was about the revelation that their ‘Pa was not their Pa!’

This letter gives a twist to the story. Weaving a story through letter-writing was a style used during the early period of novel writing. These kind of novels were called 'Epistolary novels.' (Epistle means letter). A classic example of this style is Samuel Richardson's Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded.

The term ‘epistolary novel’ refers to the works of fiction that are written in the form of letters or other documents. The letter as a written genre, predates the novel itself.

(https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu).

Novels written in epistolary format are often less dialogue-driven, with more emphasis on thoughts, feelings and emotions. Instead of narrating the actions of the protagonist, most incidents are related through a character and presented as their thoughts and memories. (https://www.britannica.com/art/epistolary-novel)

This story within the letters written by Nettie to Celie, has an impact on the characters of the main story. The story also reveals the difference in the behaviour of the Whites in their own country and the Whites in Africa. Nettie found the White missionaries Africa more kindly disposed to the Blacks, than the White people in Georgia.

The letter by Nettie also reveals that the children adopted by Samuel and Corrine – Adam and Olivia – were actually Celie's children and describes the events that led to their being there. The sisters thus came to realise that Alphonso was actually their step-father. The reader then finds the reason for Alphonso’s initial cruel behaviour and his insensitive treatment of Celie. This story is being narrated by Samuel to Nettie. His story also reveals the cruelty of the White merchants who got together to kill the owner of the store that was taking away the black business from them.

Samuel also mentions that the widow of the lynched man, had lost her mind and would “talk about her dreams and plans to her neighbours, which were grander than anything they could ever conceive of for coloured people.” She was shunned by her neighbours for this. It makes the reader feel how heart-rending it is for the coloured people not to have even the right to express a dream.

In conclusion, Nettie writes about herself as belonging to a large and poor family and her need to earn a living. This probably was the state of most Black families. One feels inspired to reach out to the downtrodden after reading the book.

Saras

The Color Purple is a book about abuse, incest, feminism, the power of sisterhood and the ultimate triumph over circumstances. It is set in the early 1900s and written in the casual spoken style of that era. The novel is a series of letters written by the main protagonist Celie to God, though later in the story the letters are addressed to her sister Nettie.

Saras found the novel very depressing in the first reading; it was upon a second reading closer to the KRG session that she really appreciated the novel and the way it powerfully addressed issues, where a woman’s choices, her will and her ability to think and live on her own are taken away from her. One of the themes that stood out for Saras was the sisterhood of the women characters who help each other through their life. Celie, though uneducated and oppressed, fights back in little ways – she spits in the water she serves her father-in-law. Celie learns the importance of sisterhood from Sofia, the wife of her stepson Harpo, and how women must stand up for each other.

Her biggest supporter, surprisingly, is Shug Avery a Jazz and Blues singer, who is her husband’s longtime mistress. Surprisingly a lesbian relationship evolves between her and Celie. Celie has been abused by her father (her stepfather actually, though she learns this much later in the novel) and has two children by that incestuous act who were given away for adoption against her will. She is now unable to have any children and is unmoved by the sex act with her husband. With Shug, she learns about feminine pleasure and also about standing up for herself. Slowly Celie learns to stop being an object and learns to act on her own. She finally retaliates and chooses to leave her husband and go with Shug Avery to Tennessee where she starts her own successful business as a seamstress making pants – male attire. Celie overcomes the notion that sewing is unimportant and unrewarding women’s labour and turns it into a lucrative source of economic independence. Celie has finally taken charge of her life and her destiny – she is empowered.

The other theme in the book is faith. Celie’s sister Nettie has escaped from the crushing atmosphere at home and joined the household of Reverend Samuel and his wife Corrine whose adopted children Adam and Olivia are actually Celie’s children. Celie has lost contact with Nettie because Celie's husband, whom she refers as Mr. throughout the book, hides the letters Nettie sends her, as revenge because Nettie had refused his sexual advances. Shug reveals that the letters exist and gives them to Celie who learns that Nettie is in Africa with the Reverend’s family on a mission.

Celie has lost faith in God as she tells Shug that God has done nothing for her. The God she has been writing to is a man and acts like all men she knows, trifling, forgetful and lowdown, not capable of listening to poor colored women in the world. All her life she never cared about what people thought, but only about what God thought. And finally found out that God didn’t think.

The portion that Saras chose to read is from this part of the book where Shug tells Celie about her take on God. This is also where the phrase The Color Purple appears first in the book. .According to Shug, once we feel loved by God, we do our best to please him. Going to church, singing in the choir, feeding the preacher are all things that we don’t have to do unless we want to. We can just admire things, be happy and have a good time. Shug says she never found God in Church, only a bunch of people who hoped that He would show up there.

Celie feels God looks like a bearded White man with blue eyes which Shug finds very amusing. God looks like that because that’s the God in the white folk’s bible. Shug believes that God is inside you and everybody else. You come to earth with God and find it only when you search for it inside. Sometime it manifests even when you are not looking. God isn’t a he or a she but a genderless it. She found it in things around her like trees, the air, in other people. God loves everything that you love and even things you don’t. Most of all God loves admiration and sharing a good thing. God will be upset if we walk past the color purple in a field and do not notice it. God is always giving and all we have to do is to acknowledge it. Man has corrupted everything and to understand God we have to remove man from the equation. Celie admits that she has never observed these things and this admission changes her life.

Purple stands for royalty and Saras wondered whether there was a significance in the choice of the color mentioned. For instance, why not yellow or green? Maybe the purple also signifies the control that Celie acquires and her independence. She is the queen of her own destiny. Another interpretation is that the color purple represents all the good things in the world that God creates for people to enjoy. 

Arundhathy

This book, The Colour Purple, has received extensive critical acclaim as feminist literature . The author Alice Walker herself calls it ‘Womanism.‘

While Alice Walker beautifully carves out multi dimensional, psychological and social issues of the times, women’s empowerment and liberation is the pivotal theme of this book. 

It brings forth very many women characters who suffer various different forms of atrocities by the males in their lives and the many different ways they overcome their oppression and liberate 

Arundhaty chose this passage which is significant  because this is where finally all the women get together to openly defy the male supremacy and come into their own . 

Not only do they declare their independence but also make bold to ridicule and outright insult the men who dominated them. As Celie says “You a lowdown dog is what’s wrong, I say.“ They again try to put them in their place as Harpo says to Squeak, “It bad luck for women to laugh at men.“

The award of the Pulitzer Prize for the novel caused many scholars to research and analyse this book and its many characters.

While reading more on the critical analysis, Arundhaty noted two very relevant observations which come through in the book.

1. That it’s possible to fight back when women support each other as seen , as Shug begins to sympathise with and takes Celie under her wing.

2. Before freeing herself Celie had always worn dresses, it is only after she breaks free from Mr._____ that she simultaneously breaks free from her identity as an oppressed woman.

The role of clothing (wearing pants, for example) becomes a symbol of gender and sexual liberation. This has been noted in an article, The Development of Clothes as symbols in The Color Purple. The change in Celie’s identity is connected to the change in her clothes as she starts to wear pants, mostly worn by men. Not only does Celie begin to wear pants but she also starts a successful business herself of making trousers for men, and for women as well. She refuses to be intimidated by the sexual stereotypes of her society.

Clothing becomes the way Celie frees herself from her gender restricted roles that society has forced upon women. She strives for her own freedom and independence, both in terms of her identity as well as becoming financially independent. 

Whoopi Goldberg as Celie from a documentary on the making of The Color Purple movie by director Steven Spielberg

See:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfVlK58Zm-g

Oprah Winfrey talks about how desperately she wanted to get a role in this film. Unfortunately, and perhaps predictably, the film angered the Black American Male community and created enough controversy. It might otherwise have got an Oscar. 

Arundhaty said in her opinion this book is one of the most powerful feminist books ever written. 

The Readings

1. Thomo – 23

 Harpo bring her over to meet his daddy. Mr. say he want to have a look at her. I see 'em coming way off up the road. They be just marching, hand in hand, like going to war. She in front a little. They come up on the porch, I speak and move some chairs closer to the railing. She sit down and start to fan herself with a hansker. It sure is hot, she say. Mr. don't say nothing. He just look her up and down. She bout seven or eight months pregnant, bout to bust out her dress. Harpo so black he think she bright, but she ain't that bright. Clear medium brown skin, gleam on it like on good furniture. Hair notty but a lot of it, tied up on her head in a mass of plaits. She not quite as tall as Harpo but much bigger, and strong and ruddy looking, like her mama brought her up on pork. 

She say. How you, Mr. ? 

He don't answer the question. He say. Look like you done got yourself in trouble. 

Naw suh, she say. I ain't in no trouble. Big, though. 

She smooth the wrinkles over her stomach with the flats of her hands. 

Who the father? he ast. 

She look surprise. Harpo, she say. 

How he know that? 

He know. She say. 

Young womens no good these days, he say. Got they legs open to every Tom, Dick and Harry. 

Harpo look at his daddy like he never seen him before. But he don't say nothing. 

Mr. say. No need to think I'm gon let my boy marry you just cause you in the family way. He young and limited. 

Pretty gal like you could put anything over on him. 

Harpo still don't say nothing. 

Sofia face git more ruddy. The skin move back on her forehead. Her ears raise. 

But she laugh. She glance at Harpo sitting there with his head down and his hands tween his knees. 

She say. What I need to marry Harpo for? He still living here with you. What food and clothes he git, you buy. 

He say. Your daddy done throwed you out. Ready to live in the street I guess. 

She say, Naw. I ain't living in the street. I'm living with my sister and her husband. They say I can live with them for the rest of my life. She stand up, big, strong, healthy girl, and she say. Well, nice visiting. I'm going home. 

Harpo get up to come too. She say, Naw, Harpo, you stay here. When you free, me and the baby be waiting. 

2. Priya – 26

DEAR GOD, 

Harpo want to know what to do to make Sofia mind. He sit out on the porch with Mr. . He say, I tell her one thing, she do another. Never do what I say. Always backtalk. 

To tell the truth, he sound a little proud of this to me. 

Mr. don't say nothing. Blow smoke. 

I tell her she can't be all the time going to visit her sister. Us married now, I tell her. Your place is here with the children. She say. I'll take the children with me. I say. Your place is with me. She say. You want to come? She keep primping in front of the glass, getting the children ready at the same time. 

You ever hit her? Mr. ast. 

Harpo look down at his hands. Naw suh, he say low, embarrass. 

Well how you spect to make her mind? Wives is like children. You have to let 'em know who got the upper hand. Nothing can do that better than a good sound beating. 

He puff on his pipe. 

Sofia think too much of herself anyway, he say. She need to be taken down a peg. 

I like Sofia, but she don't act like me at all. If she talking when Harpo and Mr. come in the room, she keep right on. 

If they ast her where something at, she say she don't know. Keep talking. 

I think bout this when Harpo ast me what he ought to do to her to make her mind. I don't mention how happy he is now. 

How three years pass and he still whistle and sing. I think bout how every time I jump when Mr. call me, she look 

surprise. And like she pity me. 

Beat her. I say. 

Next time us see Harpo his face a mess of bruises. His lip cut. One of his eyes shut like a fist. He walk stiff and say his teef 

ache. 

I say. What happen to you, Harpo? 

He say. Oh, me and that mule. She fractious, you know. She went crazy in the field the other day. By time I got her to head for home I was all banged up. Then when I got home, I walked smack dab into the crib door. Hit my eye and scratch my chin. Then when that storm come up last night I shet the window down on my hand. 

Well, I say. After all that, I don't spect you had a chance to see if you could make Sofia mind. 

Nome, he say. 

But he keep trying. 

3. Kavita – 28

I ain't never struck a living thing, I say. Oh, when I was at home I tap the little ones on the behind to make 'em behave, but not hard enough to hurt. 

What you do when you git mad? she ast. 

I think. I can't even remember the last time I felt mad, I say. I used to git mad at my mammy cause she put a lot of work on me. Then I see how sick she is. Couldn't stay mad at her. Couldn't be mad at my daddy cause he my daddy. Bible say. Honor father and mother no matter what. Then after while every time I got mad, or start to feel mad, I got sick. Felt like throwing up. Terrible feeling. Then I start to feel nothing at all. 

Sofia frown. Nothing at all? 

Well, sometime Mr. git on me pretty hard. I have to talk to Old Maker. But he my husband. I shrug my shoulders. 

This life soon be over, I say. Heaven last all ways. 

You ought to bash Mr. head open, she say. 

Think bout heaven later. 

Not much funny to me. That funny. I laugh. She laugh. Then us both laugh so hard us flop down on the step. 

Let's make quilt pieces out of these messed up curtains, she say. And I run git my pattern book. 

I sleeps like a baby now. 

4. KumKum –  66

And when I came here, say Shug, I treated you so mean. Like you was a servant. And all because Albert married you. And I didn't even want him for a husband, she say. I never really wanted Albert for a husband. But just to choose me, you know, cause nature had already done it. Nature said. You two folks, hook up, cause you a good example of how it sposed to go. I didn't want nothing to be able to go against that. But what was good tween us must have been nothing but bodies, she say.Cause I don't know the Albert that don't dance, can't hardly laugh, never talk bout nothing, beat you and hid your sister Nettie's letters. Who he?

I don't know nothing, I think. And glad of it 

DEAR GOD, 

Now that I know Albert hiding Nettie's letters, I know exactly where they is. They in his trunk. Everything that means something to Albert go in his trunk. He keeps it locked up tight, but Shug can git the key.

One night when Mr. and Grady gone, us open the trunk. Us find a lot of Shug's underclothes, some nasty picture postcards and way down under his tobacco, Nettie's letters. Bunches and bunches of them. Some fat, some thin. some open, some not.

How us gon do this? I ast Shug.

She say. Simple. We take the letters out of the envelopes, leave the envelopes just like they is. I don't think he look in this corner of the trunk much, she say.

I heated the stove, put on the kettle. Us steam and steam the envelopes until we had all the letters laying on the table. Then us put the envelopes back inside the trunk.

I'm gonna put them in some kind of order for you, say Shug.

Yeah, I say, but don't let's do it in here, let's go in you and Grady room.

So she got up and us went into they little room. Shug sat in a chair by the bed with all Nettie letters spread round her, I got on the bed with the pillows behind my back.

These the first ones, say Shug. They postmark right here.

DEAR CELIE, The First letter say, You've got to fight and get away from Albert. He ain't no good.

When I left you all's house, walking, he followed me on his horse. When we was well out of sight of the house he caught up with me and started trying to talk. You know how he do. You sure is looking fine. Miss Nettie, and stuff like that. I tried to ignore him and walk faster, but my bundles was heavy and the sun was hot. After a while I had to rest, and that's when he got down from his horse and started to try to kiss me, and drag me back in the woods.

Well, I started to fight him, and with God's help, I hurt him bad enough to make him let me alone. But he was some mad. He said because of what I'd done I'd never hear from you again, and you would never hear from me.

5. Zakia – 71

Oh, Celie, there are colored people in the world who want us to know! Want us to grow and see the light! They are not all mean like Pa and Albert, or beaten down like Ma was. Corrine and Samuel have a wonderful marriage. Their only sorrow in the beginning was that they could not have children. And then, they say, "God" sent them Olivia and Adam. 

I wanted to say, "God" has sent you their sister and aunt, but I didn't. Yes, their children, sent by "God" are your children, Celie. And they are being brought up in love, Christian charity and awareness of God. And now "God" has sent me to  watch over them, to protect and cherish them. To lavish all the love I feel for you on them. It is a miracle, isn't it? And no  doubt impossible for you to believe. 

6. Shoba – 72

Dear Celie, 

While we were in town Corrine bought cloth to make me two sets of traveling outfits. One olive green and the other gray. Long gored skirts and suit jackets to be worn with white cotton blouses and lace-up boots. She also bought me a woman's boater with a checkered band. 

Although I work for Corrine and Samuel and look after the children, I don't feel like a maid. I guess this is because they teach me, and I teach the children and there's no beginning or end to teaching and learning and working— it all runs together. 

Saying good-bye to our church group was hard. But happy, too. Everyone has such high hopes for what can be done in Africa. Over the pulpit there is a saying: Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth Her Hands to God. Think what it means that Ethiopia is Africa! All the Ethiopians in the bible were colored. It had never occurred to me, though when you read the bible it is perfectly plain if you pay attention only to the words. It is the pictures in the bible that fool you. The pictures that illustrate the words. All of the people are white and so you just think all the people from the bible were white too. But really white white people lived somewhere else during those times. That's why the bible says that Jesus Christ had hair like lamb's wool. Lamb's wool is not straight, Celie. It isn't even curly. 

What can I tell you about New York— or even about the train that took us there! We had to ride in the sit-down section of the train, but Celie, there are beds on trains! And a restaurant! And toilets! The beds come down out of the walls, over the tops of the seats, and are called berths. Only white people can ride in the beds and use the restaurant. And they have different toilets from colored. 

One white man on the platform in South Carolina asked us where we were going— we had got off the train to get some fresh air and to dust the grit and dust out of our clothes. When we said Africa he looked offended and tickled too. Niggers going to Africa, he said to his wife. Now I have seen everything. 

When we got to New York we were tired and dirty. But so excited! Listen, Celie, New York is a beautiful city. And colored own a whole section of it, called Harlem. There are colored people in more fancy motor cars than I thought existed, and living in houses that are finer than any white person's house down home. There are more than a hundred churches! And we went to every one of them. And I stood before each congregation with Samuel and Corrine and the children and sometimes our mouths just dropped open from the generosity and goodness of those Harlem people's hearts. They live in such beauty and dignity, Celie. And they give and give and then reach down and give some more, when the name "Africa" is mentioned. 

They love Africa. They defend it at the drop of a hat. And speaking of hats, if we had passed our hats alone they would not have been enough to hold all the donations to our enterprise. Even the children dredged up their pennies. Please give these to the children of Africa, they said. They were all dressed so beautifully, too, Celie. I wish you could have seen them. There is a fashion in Harlem now for boys to wear something called knickers— sort of baggy pants, fitted tight just below the knee, and for girls to wear garlands of flowers in their hair. They must be the most beautiful children alive, and Adam and Olivia couldn't take their eyes off them.  

7. Joe – 82

There is a way that the men speak to women that reminds me too much of Pa. They listen just long enough to issue instructions. They don't even look at women when women are speaking. They look at the ground and bend their heads  toward the ground. The women also do not "look in a man's face" as they say. To "look in a man's face" is a brazen thing  to do. They look instead at his feet or his knees. And what can I say to this? Again, it is our own behavior around Pa. 

Next time Tashi appears at your gate, you will send her straight home, her father said. Then he smiled. Your Olivia can visit her, and learn what women are for. 

I smiled also. Olivia must learn to take her education about life where she can find it, I thought. His offer will make a splendid opportunity. 

Good-bye until the next time, dear Celie, from a pitiful, castout woman who may perish during the rainy season. 

Your loving sister, Nettie 

DEAR CELIE, 

At first there was the faintest sound of movement in the forest. A kind of low humming. Then there was chopping and the sound of dragging. Then a scent, some days, of smoke. But now, after two months, during which I or the children or Corrine has been sick, all we hear is chopping and scraping and dragging. And every day we smell smoke. 

Today one of the boys in my afternoon class burst out, as he entered. The road approaches! The road approaches! He had been hunting in the forest with his father and seen it. 

Every day now the villagers gather at the edge of the village near the cassava fields, and watch the building of the road. And watching them, some on their stools and some squatted down on their haunches, all chewing cola nuts and making patterns in the dirt, I feel a great surge of love for them. For they do not approach the roadbuilders empty-handedly. Oh, no. Each day since they saw the road's approach they have been stuffing the roadbuilders with goat meat, millet mush, baked yam and cassava, cola nuts and palm wine. Each day is like a picnic, and I believe many friendships have been made, although the roadbuilders are from a different tribe some distance to the North and nearer the coast, and their language is somewhat different. I don't understand it, anyway, though the people of Olinka seem to. But they are clever people about most things, and understand new things very quickly. 

It is hard to believe we've been here five years. Time moves slowly, but passes quickly. Adam and Olivia are nearly as tall as me and doing very well in all their studies. Adam has a special aptitude for figures and it worries Samuel that soon he will have nothing more to teach him in this field, having exhausted his own knowledge. 

When we were in England we met missionaries who sent their children back home when it was no longer possible to teach them in the bush. But it is hard to imagine life here without the children. They love the open feeling of the village, and love living in huts. They are excited by the hunting expertise of the men and the self-sufficiency of the women in raising their crops. No matter how down I may be, and sometimes I get very down indeed, a hug from Olivia or Adam completely restores me to the level of functioning, if nothing else. Their mother and I are not as close as we once were, but I feel more like their aunt than ever. And the three of us look more and more alike every day. 

8. Pamela – 87 

Guess what? Samuel thought the children were mine too! That is why he urged me to come to Africa with them. When I showed up at their house he thought I was following my children, and, soft-hearted as he is, didn't have the heart to turn me away. 

If they are not yours, he said, whose are they? 

But I had some questions for him, first. 

Where did you get them? I asked. And Celie, he told me a story that made my hair stand on end. I hope you, poor thing, 

are ready for it. 

Once upon a time, there was a well-to-do farmer who owned his own property near town. Our town, Celie. And as he did so well farming and everything he turned his hand to prospered, he decided to open a store, and try his luck selling dry goods as well. Well, his store did so well that he talked two of his brothers into helping him run it, and, as the months went by, they were doing better and better. Then the white merchants began to get together and complain that this store was taking all the black business away from them, and the man's blacksmith shop that he set up behind the store, was taking some of the white. This would not do. And so, one night, the man's store was burned down, his smithy destroyed, and the man and his two brothers dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night and hanged. 

The man had a wife whom he adored, and they had a little girl, barely two years old. She was also pregnant with another child. When the neighbors brought her husband's body home, it had been mutilated and burnt. The sight of it nearly killed her, and her second baby, also a girl, was born at this time. Although the widow's body recovered, her mind was never the same. She continued to fix her husband's plate at mealtimes just as she'd always done and was always full of talk about the plans she and her husband had made. The neighbors, though not always intending to, shunned her more and more, partly because the plans she talked about were grander than anything they could even conceive of for colored people, and partly because her attachment to the past was so pitiful. She was a good-looking woman, though, and still owned land, but there was no one to work it for her, and she didn't know how herself; besides she kept waiting for her husband to finish the meal she'd cooked for him and go to the fields himself. Soon there was nothing to eat that the neighbors did not bring, and she and her small children grubbed around in the yard as best they could. 

While the second child was still a baby, a stranger appeared in the community, and lavished all his attention on the widow and her children; in a short while, they were married. Almost at once she was pregnant a third time, though her mental health was no better. Every year thereafter, she was pregnant, every year she became weaker and more mentally unstable, until, many years after she married the stranger, she died. 

Two years before she died she had a baby girl that she was too sick to keep. Then a baby boy. These children were named 

Olivia and Adam. 

This is Samuel's story, almost word for word. 

The stranger who married the widow was someone Samuel had run with long before he found Christ. When the man showed up at Samuel's house with first Olivia and then Adam, Samuel felt not only unable to refuse the children, but as if God had answered his and Corrine's prayers. 

He never told Corrine about the man or about the children's "mother" because he hadn't wanted any sadness to cloud her happiness. 

But then, out of nowhere, I appeared. He put two and two together, remembered that his old running buddy had always been a scamp, and took me in without any questions. Which, to tell the truth, had always puzzled me, but I put it down to Christian charity. Corrine had asked me once whether I was running away from home. But I explained I was a big girl now, my family back home very large and poor, and it was time for me to get out and earn my own living. 

Tears had soaked my blouse when Samuel finished telling me all this. I couldn't begin, then, to tell him the truth. But Celie, I can tell you. And I pray with all my heart that you will get this letter, if none of the others. 

Pa is not our pa! 

9. Saras – 95

Oh, she say. God love all them feelings. That's some of the best stuff God did. And when you know God loves 'em you enjoys 'em a lot more. You can just relax, go with everything that's going, and praise God by liking what you like. 

God don't think it dirty? I ast. 

Naw, she say. God made it. Listen, God love everything you love— and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration. 

You saying God vain? I ast 

Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. 

What it do when it pissed off? I ast. 

Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back. 

Yeah? I say. 

Yeah, she say. It always making little surprises and springing them on us when us least expect. 

You mean it want to be loved, just like the bible say. 

Yes, Celie, she say. Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk? 

Well, us talk and talk bout God, but I'm still adrift. 

Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?). Not the little wildflowers. Nothing. 

Now that my eyes opening, I feels like a fool. Next to any little scrub of a bush in my yard, Mr. 's evil sort of shrink. 

But not altogether. Still, it is like Shug say. You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a'tall. 

Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain't. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up flowers, wind, water, a big rock. 

But this hard work, let me tell you. He been there so long, he don't want to budge. He threaten lightening, floods and earthquakes. Us fight. I hardly pray at all. Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it. 

10. Arundhaty – 96

As soon as dinner over, Shug push back her chair and light a cigarette. Now is come the time to tell yall, she say. 

Tell us what? Flarpo ast. 

Us leaving, she say. 

Yeah? say Flarpo, looking round for the coffee. And then looking over at Grady. 

Us leaving, Shug say again. Mr. look struck, like he always look when Shug say she going anywhere. Fie reach down 

and rub his stomach, look offside her head like nothing been said. 

Grady say. Such good peoples, that's the truth. The salt of the earth. But— time to move on. 

Squeak not saying nothing. She got her chin glued to her plate. I'm not saying nothing either. I'm waiting for the feathers 

to fly. 

Celie is coming with us, say Shug. 

Mr. 's head swivel back straight. Say what? he ast. 

Celie is coming to Memphis with me. 

Over my dead body, Mr. say. 

You satisfied that what you want, Shug say, cool as clabber. 

Mr. start up from his seat, look at Shug, plop back down again. Fie look over at me. I thought you was finally happy, 

he say. What wrong now? 

You a lowdown dog is what's wrong, I say. It's time to leave you and enter into the Creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need. 

Say what? he ast. Shock. 

All round the table folkses mouths be dropping open. 

You took my sister Nettie away from me, I say. And she was the only person love me in the world. 

Mr. start to sputter. ButButButButBut. Sound like some kind of motor. 

But Nettie and my children coming home soon, I say. And when she do, all us together gon whup your ass. 

Nettie and your children! say Mr. . You talking crazy. 

I got children, I say. Being brought up in Africa. Good schools, lots of fresh air and exercise. Turning out a heap better than the fools you didn't even try to raise. 

Hold on, say Flarpo. 

Oh, hold on hell, I say. If you hadn't tried to rule over Sofia the white folks never would have caught her. 

Sofia so surprise to hear me speak up she ain't chewed for ten minutes. 

That's a lie, say Flarpo. 

A little truth in it, say Sofia. 

Everybody look at her like they surprise she there. It like a voice speaking from the grave. 

You was all rotten children, I say. You made my life a hell on earth. And your daddy here ain't dead horse's shit. 

Mr. reach over to slap me. I jab my case knife in his hand. 

You bitch, he say. What will people say, you running off to Memphis like you don't have a house to look after? 

Shug say, Albert. Try to think like you got some sense. Why any woman give a shit what people think is a mystery to me. Well, say Grady, trying to bring light. A woman can't git a man if peoples talk. 

Shug look at me and us giggle. Then us laugh sure nuff. Then Squeak start to laugh. Then Sofia. All us laugh and laugh. 

Shug say. Ain't they something? Us say urn hum, and slap the table, wipe the water from our eyes. 

Harpo look at Squeak. Shut up Squeak, he say. It bad luck for women to laugh at men. 

She say. Okay. She sit up straight, suck in her breath, try to press her face together. 

He look at Sofia. She look at him and laugh in his face. I already had my bad luck, she say. I had enough to keep me laughing the rest of my life. 

Harpo look at her like he did the night she knock Mary Agnes down. A little spark fly cross the table. 

I got six children by this crazy woman, he mutter. 

Five, she say. 

He so outdone he can't even say. Say what? 

He look over at the youngest child. She sullen, mean, mischeevous and too stubborn to live in this world. But he love her best of all. Her name Henrietta. 

Henrietta, he say. 

She say, Yesssss ... like they say it on the radio. 

Everything she say confuse him. Nothing, he say. Then he say. Go git me a cool glass of water. 

She don't move. 

Please, he say. 

She go git the water, put it by his plate, give him a peck on the cheek. Say, Poor Daddy. Sit back down. 

You not gitting a penny of my money, Mr. say to me. Not one thin dime. 

Did I ever ast you for money? I say. I never ast you for nothing. Not even for your sorry hand in marriage.