She wrote this for Progressive Media Project, . At long last, San Francisco novelist Alice Walker attempts to explain the monumental difficulties and 'dangerous crossroad' she confronted during and after the making of 'The Color Purple,' the. These are messages that moved me when I first read the book and that move me now.Įmily Bernard teaches English and ethnic studies at the University of Vermont. Alice Walker (born February 9, 1944) is a writer and activist, perhaps best known as the author of 'The Color Purple' and more than 20 other books and poetry collections. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, this novel about a resilient and courageous woman has become a Broadway show and a cultural phenomenon. It's about men and women trying to live together in peace and trying to transcend our culture's stifling dictates about gender. Today, 30 years later, the controversy has long since died off, and the book lives on. Critics, including Spike Lee, contended that Walker had betrayed the race by colluding with a white publishing industry that had long been bent on undermining black masculinity. But when it was published, the book ignited outrage, particularly among black men, who felt insulted and contended that Walker had reproduced stereotypes of black men as both predators and buffoons. The book has an undeniably implausible happy ending: Everybody changes, and all is forgiven.īut even at 16, I understood that the novel was an allegory about how the powerless can become powerful. She has no one except God, and her letters to God constitute the body of the novel.

Alice walker in the color purple