The Color Purple
Walker wrote this in epistolary form and every letter lands like a fist. Celie's transformation from silence to voice is unforgettable.
Letters to God
Alice Walker's 1982 novel is told through letters written by Celie, a young Black woman in the rural American South, first to God and later to her sister Nettie who is far away in Africa. Celie endures abuse, poverty, and oppression, but through the love of a blues singer named Shug Avery she begins to discover her own worth and eventually her own freedom. Walker became the first Black woman to win both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for the novel in 1983. Steven Spielberg adapted it into a film in 1985.
Reading The Color Purple
Emotion
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Letter
"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.
"Alice Walker
Walker wrote portions of the novel by hand in a garden in Brooklyn and in a meditation retreat in northern California. She said the characters came to her and she had to follow them wherever they went.
The Pulitzer Prize committee initially resisted awarding the prize to Walker, but the judges overruled the committee. It was only the second time a Black woman had won the prize, after Gwendolyn Brooks in 1950.