Bolstered by her contacts with other women and by her affection for her yonger sister,

That's how come I know trees fear men.'īut during the course of the novel, which begins in the early 1900's and ends in the mid-1940's, Celie frees herself from her husband's repressive control. When his oldest son, Harpo, asks Albert why he beats Celie, he says simply, 'Cause she my wife.'įor a time Celie accepts the abuse stoically: 'He beat me like he beat the children. Vivacious and determinedly independent blues singer named Shug Avery, Celie is merely a servant and an occasional sexual convenience. As a teen-ager she is repeatedly raped and beaten by her stepfather, then forced by him into loveless marriage to Albert, a widower with four children. Isolation and despair, she initially addresses to God. The tale is told primarily through her own letters, which, out of 'The Color Purple' is foremost the story of Celie, a poor, barely literate Southern black woman who struggles to escape the brutality and degradation of her treatment by men. 'The Color Purple,' while easily satisfyingthat claim, brings into sharper focus many of the diverse themes that threaded their way through her past work. Several collections of poetry and two collections of short stories, include two novels ('The Third Life of Grange Copeland' and 'Medridian') - have elicited almost unanimous praise for Miss Walker as a lavishly gifted

No mean accomplishment, since her previous books - which, in addition to Ithout doubt, Alice Walker's latest novel is her most impressive.

Alice walker in the color purple