https://www.mreavoice.org/zv9mmk781y There are a number of strong voices that don’t want you—or me—to read Alice Walker’s best-known novel, The Color Purple. The American Library Association lists it among the 100 most often banned or challenged books in the U.S. in the decade 1990-99 (17th), 2000-09 (17th), and 2010-19 (50th), and shows it cracking the top ten in 2007 and 2009. Most often reasons for challenging the book include sexual explicitness and homosexuality, offensive language, and violence, particularly domestic violence. Particularly with regard to the latter charge, the novel has been criticized for its depiction of Black men—particularly in the abusive characters Albert and Alphonso—and hence contributing to a negative stereotype. In addition, and perhaps more seriously, Walker has a history of difficulties with the state of Israel, beginning by condemning their treatment of the Palestinians, which has strained her relations with Jews in the U.S., including her ex-husband, civil rights lawyer Melvyn Leventhal. Her anti-Israeli stance seemed to cross over into downright antisemitism more recently when she praised the book And the Truth Shall Set You Free by notorious British antisemitic conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier David Icke.
source urlBuy Generic Tramadol Uk This raises the question once more of whether we can separate art itself from the artist who produced it. Can we still appreciate the achievement of Annie Hall or Crimes and Misdemeanors from Woody Allen’s own crimes and misdemeanors? Can we accept the greatness of Ezra Pound’s poetry while deploring his Fascist sympathies? Should we “cancel” such artists, or simply accept as true what W.H. Auden said in his elegy on W.B. Yeats:
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https://lpgventures.com/yukmq845s2 I leave that to your own sensitivities. Only you can decide what is beyond the pale for you. For me, raised as I was under the precepts of the “New Criticism” (now going on 100 years old), I think that ultimately a literary text ought to be judged on its own merits or demerits, as if its creator never existed. So I’m going to go ahead and talk about the novel here.
https://www.brigantesenglishwalks.com/yxmm2w3awjhttps://guelph-real-estate.ca/vme13sn4 The Color Purple was not on any of the lists I consulted at the beginning of my project to compile my own list of the “100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language.” That is, it wasn’t on the famous 1998 Modern Library list, or Time magazine’s list of greatest books since 1923 or the Guardian or the Observer or Penguin Classics or the Norwegian Book Club lists. But since it had won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1983—making Walker the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in fiction (Toni Morrison’s Beloved did not win until 1988)—I figured it was worth considering. But as I have since learned, the book ranked 3rd on the Center for Fiction’s 2021 list of “200 Books That Shaped Our Lives,” 5th on Radcliffe Publishing’s 1998 “100 Best Novels” (published as a kind of answer to Modern Library) and 6th on the Library Journal’s 1999 “Books of the Century.” Walker’s novel ranked at number 18 on the Oxford American’s 2009 “Best Southern Novels of All Time,” number 25 on the London Times 2022 list of “The 50 Best Books of the Past 100 Years,” and number 45 on Entertainment Weekly’s 2013 list of the “Top 100 Novels.” In 2013, the British Guardian surveyed 6,000 U.K. readers to discover the “50 Best-Loved Novels Written by a Woman,” and rated The Color Purple as number 50. On the “Greatest Books of All Time” website, amalgamating more than 450 “Greatest Books” lists, The Color Purple is the 33rd most highly rated novel written in English. And of course I am listing it here as number 91 (alphabetically) of the 100 “most lovable” English language novels.
go to siteCheap Tramadol Overnight This is an old fashioned epistolary novel, a form going back to the very origins of the novel as a literary form in the 18th century. It consists of letters written by two sisters, over the course of some 40 years. Walker said in a 1983 interview that she adopted the form as a practical way of solving the problem that one of her protagonists is in Georgia while the other is in Africa. Neither of the sisters actually receives the other’s letters, but the two of them manage to feel closer to each other through the writing of them. Essentially the book is feminist in intent, or as Walker called it, “womanist” (what she calls feminist as applied to women of color, whose experiences are different from those of other feminists). Celie and Nettie are poor Black girls in rural Georgia, who in spite of extreme poverty and early trauma achieve empowerment by the novel’s end.
https://www.brigantesenglishwalks.com/72r31np7k The story begins in rural Georgia in 1909, where Celie, a black girl in her early teens whose mother has died, is being sexually abused by her father Alphonso, who threatens her “You better not never tell nobody but God.” What we first read is a letter she writes to God, detailing how at the age of 14 she has given birth for a second time, and, as he had with the first child, Alphonso takes the baby away. “But I don’t think he kilt it,” she writes hopefully. When Alphonso begins to look at her little sister Nettie, she determines to protect the younger girl. Soon a widower named Albert (Celie calls him “Mr.”) takes an interest in Nettie, but Alphonso won’t let him marry her, and talks him into taking Celie instead. Celie’s marriage is an abusive one, but after Alphonso marries a girl Celie’s age, Nettie flees her home and comes to live with Celie. Albert remains interested in Nettie, and forces her to leave when she refuses his sexual advances. She promises Celie that she will write to her, but as time goes on and Celie never hears from her, she assumes Nettie must be dead.
https://www.yolascafe.com/x5czqtx8ya Harpo, Albert’ son by his first wife, marries a young woman named Sofia, whom Celie admires for her spirit. When Harpo, frustrated that he can’t get Sofie to do what he tells her, asks Celie for advice, she tells him to beat her, that being the only experience she has had of male-female relationships. Sofia fights back, and discovering Celie had encouraged the beating, she confronts Celie, and after the initial antagonism the two become friends.
follow url Celie also grows in agency through her relationship with Albert’s mistress Shug Avery, a successful jazz and blues singer who moves in with them because she is ill. Though at first Shug follows Albert’s example in verbally abusing Celie, eventually with Celie taking care of her they become close, ultimately becoming lovers. When Shug is fully recovered and leaves, Celie wants to go with her but Albert stops her. Shug returns again, however, with a new husband in tow, and she and Celie resume their affair. Together they discover a cache of letters Nettie has written to Celie over the years, which Albert has kept from her. From the letters, Celie learns that Nettie has become attached to a missionary couple, Samuel and Corrine, and gone with them to Liberia. The couple have two adopted children, Adam and Olivia, There is more revealed in the letters, but for the sake of limiting the spoilers I include here, I won’t reveal them at this point. From this point on, though, Celie addresses her letters to Nettie instead of God. She also has achieved enough agency to leave “Mr.” and go to live in Memphis with Shug. Before she leaves, she curses Albert for his treatment of her and his hiding her sister’s letters for so many years: “Until you do right by me, I say, everything you even dream about will fail. I give it to him straight, just like it come to me. And it seem to come from the trees.”
https://www.mbtn.net/?p=s0utnc3 Thematically, The Color Purple movingly depicts the growing up and self-realization of Celie, who overcomes oppression and abuse to find fulfillment and independence. But there is a larger significance, as Celie, though portrayed as a real individual, is also representative of every Black woman in America over the generations who may have gone through much the kinds of dehumanizing abuse and hardship as she does. Not only from southern whites whose social, political and economic superiority may impose unjust hardship, sometimes on a whim (as we see in the senseless persecution of Sofia by the mayor’s wife in the novel), but also from the bullying cruelty of certain Black men.
https://danivoiceovers.com/92nncccyh The novel raises questions about religion as well, which is where Celie should have been able to turn for hope and comfort. But she gets no comfort from her religion, only judgment and the reinforcing of her victimhood. And she realizes that her image of God as an old white man is stultifying. Shug has other ideas:
go to site “Here’s the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it….”
https://onlineconferenceformusictherapy.com/2025/02/22/g43vq8qhy “It?” I ask.
https://alldayelectrician.com/c0tkbtdc “Yeah, It. God ain’t a he or a she, but a It.”
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https://penielenv.com/3cdgvgc “Don’t look like nothing,” she say. “It ain’t a picture show. It ain’t something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you’ve found it.”
click here These are the things that make the book a “womanist” novel. In the end it is an optimistic novel, for Walker’s Celie gains enough confidence and agency to shake off the social bonds that have held her, and does so with the help and encouragement of other Black women—Shug and Sofia and Nettie. The answer to an oppressive patriarchy is sisterhood.
click The Color Purple was famously made into an acclaimed film by Steven Spielberg in 1985, with Whoopi Goldberg as Celie, Danny Glover as Albert, and Oprah Winfrey as Sofia. That film was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. It does play down any lesbian facets of Shug and Celie’s relationship, and also leaves out much of Nettie’s story. The Broadway musical production of 2005 and its film adaptation in 2023, directed by Blitz Bazawule, depicts Shug and Celie’s liaison more honestly. I’d encourage you to see either film, but, as always, read the book first.
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