The Color Purple: The classic, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel

The novel, The Color Purple, is about the main character, Celie, and her sister Nettie. Some other characters are Celie and Nettie’s stepfather, Celie’s husband, and Celie’s lover, Shug. It uses detailed imagery to paint a picture of all of the characters, their physical and emotional attributes. The main theme throughout the novel is how people of certain races and genders are mistreated throughout the era of the 1940s. The main character, Celie, is abused by her stepfather, verbally and physically. It shows her struggle from being stuck in his clutches, to becoming her own person, and earning her independence. She discovers things about herself, and discovers things about other people, and what they mean to her in certain aspects of her life. My favorite character was Celie, this is because the reader can see the progress she makes over the course of the book, and I think the strength that she finds within herself is inspiring and encouraging. I relate to Celie, and all the other characters in the book that have been mistreated, or abused. This is because I empathize for them, and I have had friends that have been mistreated, and I understand how it affects a person's well being, and besides that, their self esteem. I loved the book, I loved the type of insight it gave into an aspect of life that no other author really covers. My favorite part of this book was the part where Celie begins to realize that she is worth more than what she is being given. Through the support of her lover, Shug, she gains self-confidence and realizes that she did not deserve the horrible treatment that she received throughout her entire life. She had to withstand being molested by her step-father, basically being held captive by him, and then in a sense, he “sold” her to the man he thought would need her housekeeping skills the most. She constantly had to go through only being thought of as a piece of meat, and property, almost the maid of every house she walked into. The only thing I would change about this book would be the beginning of the exchange of letters between Nettie and Celie, the first section where it is just about 20 pages of Nettie’s letters to Celie are a bit hard to grasp and get interested in enough to get through that section. Although I am happy I did, because past that, the book was amazing! I read about what was happening in the African village that nettie was in, but also got to see what was happening in Celie’s life. I would definitely recommend this book to any of my friends, it has a great insight on the lives of black women in the 1940s, and unique.

If you, like myself, have seen the movie and think, " I don't need to read the story," you're wrong.While there are, naturally, many similarities between the two...there are by far MANY more differences and they're great.While both the novel and the movie can, and do, stand alone, I highly recommend you give both a chance. I combined them in my head as I read and I think it just heightened them both for me.Please don't pass on the novel or the movie if you've read or seen one but not the other.SO well written.And I'm still irritated that The movie was completely ignored during the Academy Awards that year. A combination of racism spread out against 2 different entities. Those of African heritage and those of Jewish heritage.Read this and watch the movie.You'll regret neither.

The book discussion group met in March 2017 to enthusiastically discuss this. Wow, we loved this book. Most of us had seen the movie at some point in the past (and a few of us had seen the Oprah-produced Broadway musical), but it turns out this is a favorite book of a few members of the group and everybody liked it lot. We rarely get this kind of universal praise for a book, so you know that if you didn't read it for group, you should still definitely put it on your list of books to read.Most of us agreed that the language is tough and off-putting for the first few letters, but you both get used to the odd spellings and grammar and also the writing gets better at Celie writes more. After eight or ten letters, it all seems pretty normal.The violence and cruelty is also tough and off-putting in the first part of the book but again, it gets less violent and you get used to it (what a horrifying thought!) as the novel continues.The words that readers used to describe the events and language in the novel are "epic," "biblical," "powerful," and finally "beautiful."The story seems huge and the family tree is complicated with parents, step-parents, unacknowledged parents, forced marriages, lovers and mistresses, as well as two dead unnamed mothers. But the major characters are clearly defined and change during the novel and, unlike many novels, the changes are clearly explained and well motivated by events in the novel.Celie is so desperate to be loved that she loves everyone else without thinking of herself. The men are largely evil (this is probably a valid criticism of the novel) who are forced to learn and change by the strong and far more admirable women who shape them.We enjoyed discussing butch and femme women (as well as the stupidly masculine men as compared to the loving and generous men), the open lesbianism, and the alternate Christian theology presented largely by the openly sexual Shug.I thought that the African letters from Nettie were a bit dry and anthropological compared to Celie's personal and emotive letters. And a few of the readers thought that the ending was perhaps too happy with everyone turning out to be a better, more evolved character.But these are quibbles compared to the well-drawn characters, the wide scope, the emotional fulfillment, and the positive changes that most of the characters undergo.