Alice Walker – Cannonball Read 17

Not just surviving, but thriving

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

November 23, 2022 by Wanderlustful Leave a Comment

The Color Purple felt intimidating before I started it- it won Alice Walker the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and it was adapted into a much loved and lauded film that launched Oprah and Whoopi Goldberg’s careers to the next level. (I have seen stills of the film but have yet to watch it). Additionally, I’ve been lumping it in mentally with Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, which was beautiful writing but tough subject matter (the ‘colour in the title’ wasn’t helping me either). From […]

The Color Purple – Alice Walker (1982)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

March 29, 2021 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

I think this is maybe the third or fourth time I’ve read this book. Once in college for a Black Women’s Writers course, once for a Southern Literature course, and now, and I think maybe one other time. In addition, I’ve read the sequel (Possessing the Secret of Joy), which carries on especially the conversation about FGM that this book gets into with the Nettie in Africa sections. This particular time, I listened to Alice Walker reading the book for an audio edition (which involves […]

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

September 26, 2020 by Leedock 1 Comment

CBR12 BINGO: Violet Square So very late to this party and I’m more than a little disappointed in myself that it took a CBR Bingo Square to get me to read it. It was not at all what I expected. Told through a series of letters written between sisters and from one sister to God, The Color Purple is about a lot of things: racism, classism, abuse, love, family. At it’s heart though, is a beautiful story about a woman, who against all odds and […]

How to get a book banned in six easy steps

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

September 22, 2019 by KimMiE" Leave a Comment

CBR11bingo: Banned Books BINGO! Vertically: Youths, Illustrated, Classics, Rainbow Flag, Banned Books The Banned Books bingo square is one of my favorites in CBR Bingo. I like to peruse lists of banned books and see what foolishness is causing people to get up in arms. I also like to combine the square with something I’ve been wanting to read, and Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple was the perfect choice. It’s been on my TBR list for ages, and I was surprised to […]

All my life I had to fight

November 25, 2018 by Sophia Leave a Comment

The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker was one of the books from my list of 50 Books Every Woman Should Read Before She Turns 40 that I was kind of dreading. I was not very familiar with the story, and I’d never seen the movie, but I’d obviously heard of it. I had a vague idea that it was violent, disturbing, and that horrible things happened to the protagonist. Also, for some reason I had the impression that it took place during slavery, and I just wasn’t […]

“Unbelief is a Terrible Thing, and So is the Hurt we Cause Others Unknowingly”

August 12, 2018 by Lisa Bee 3 Comments

A couple of years ago I fell in love with the music and voices from the (at that time) currently running broadway revival of The Color Purple, and I realized that while I knew about this book and the subsequent movie adaptation, I had never read nor watched it. But here it fit perfectly into the bingo square for frequently challenged or banned books, so no time like the present. I can’t recall if anyone I knew had read it as a part of our high […]

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