Alice Walker's The color purple / edited by Kheven LaGrone.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

LaGrone, Kheven.

Series:

Dialogue (Rodopi (Firm)) ; 5.

Dialogue ; 5

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African American women in literature.

Walker, Alice, 1944- Color purple.

Walker, Alice.

Walker, Alice, 1944---Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (347 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; New York : Rodopi, 2009.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

data file

Summary:

Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Color Purple is a tale of personal empowerment which opens with a protagonist Celie who is at the bottom of America's social caste. A poor, black, ugly and uneducated female in the America's Jim Crow South in the first half of the 20th century, she is the victim of constant rape, violence and misogynistic verbal abuse. Celie cannot conceive of an escape from her present condition, and so she learns to be passive and unemotional. But The Color Purple eventually demonstrates how Celie learns to fight back and how she discovers her true sexuality and her unique voice. By the end of the novel, Celie is an empowered, financially-independent entrepreneur/landowner, one who speaks her mind and realizes the desirability of black femaleness while creating a safe space for herself and those she loves. Through a journey of literary criticism, Dialogue: Alice Walker's The Color Purple follows Celie's transformation from victim to hero. Each scholarly essay becomes a step of the journey that paves the way for the development of self and sexual awareness, the beginnings of religious transformation and the creation of nurturing places like home and community.

Contents:

Preliminary Material

We Need a Hero: African American Female Bildungsromane and Celie’s Journey to Heroic Female Selfhood in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple / Brenda R. Smith

Making Hurston’s Heroine Her Own: Love and Womanist Resistance in The Color Purple / Tracy L. Bealer

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple: Womanist Folk Tale and Capitalist Fairy Tale / Raphaël Lambert

Rendering the African-American Woman’s God through The Color Purple / Patricia Andujo

God is (a) Pussy: The Pleasure Principle and Homo-Spirituality in Shug’s Blueswoman Theology / Marlon Rachquel Moore

Witnessing and Testifying: Transformed Language and Selves in The Color Purple / R. Erin Huskey

“My Man Treats Me Like a Slave”: The Triumph of Womanist Blues over Blues Violence in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple / Courtney George

Alice Walker’s Revisionary Politics of Rape / Robin E. Field

Significance of Sisterhood and Lesbianism in Fiction of Women of Color / Uplabdhi Sangwan

Homeward Bound: Transformative Spaces in The Color Purple / Danielle Russell

A House of Her Own: Alice Walker’s Readjustment of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own in The Color Purple / Turgay Bayindir

Adapting and Integrating: The Color Purple as Broadway Musical / Kathryn Edney

Alice Walker’s Womanist Reading of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela in The Color Purple / Apryl Denny

Focalization Theory and the Epistolary Novel: A Narrative Analysis of The Color Purple / Ping Zhou

Essay Abstracts

About The Authors

Index.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1983

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

1-282-59421-4

9786612594212

90-420-2891-2

1-4416-0651-3

OCLC:

659500196

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789042028913 DOI