Women in society are degraded for simply being a woman. No matter who you are or what type of woman you are, “The strength of a woman is not measured by the impact that all her hardships in life have had on her, but..measured by the extent of her refusal to allow those hardships to dictate her and who she becomes” (C. Joybell C.) Through literature, many writers are able to present this idea to audiences and show how a woman’s strength can get her through anything. Alice Malsenior Walker, born on Feburary 9, 1994, an establishing African American writer portrays what it means to be a black woman during the 1920s and 1930s in the rural southern Georgia novel, The Color Purple. Walker elucidates the meaning of survival and strength, sisterhood, and womanhood.
Walker, an African American author experienced many situations in the upbringing of her life that had effects on her. She was born on February 9, 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia. Her parents were Willie Lee and Minnie Grant Walker. Walker was the youngest out of eight children in her family. Her hometown was known as a poor town and Walker’s family made their living by sharecropping cotton. Growing up, “Walker learned early the oppression of economic deprivation coupled with the southern reality of white domination”. Her family was part of the black population. She was known for being a positive little girl and shining in school until “her brother accidentally shot her in the right eye with a BB gun during a game of cowboys and Indians”. After this tragic event, Alice changed as a person, she wasn’t the shining student anymore and the effects were not positive. The accident resulted in herm, “to retreat emotionally and physically…[Alice] hung her head; although she turned to boo...
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...Celie was one to prove them wrong through her survival and strength skills, sisterhood, and womanhood.
Works Cited
Works Cited
“Alice Malsenior Walker.” Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Bibliography
Context. Web. 18 Sept. 2013.
Andrews, Claudia Emerson, and Janet McCann. “Alice Walker.” Magill’s Survey Of American
Literature, Revised Edition (2006): 1-9. Literary Reference Center. Web. 18 Sept. 2013
McFadden, Margaret. “The Color Purple.” Magill’s Literary Annual 1983 (1983): 1-4. Literary
Reference Center. Web. 29 Oct. 2013.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. United States: Harcourt Books, 1982.
Weidemann, Barbara. “The Color Purple.” Masterplots II: Juvenile & Young Adult Fiction
Series (1991): 1-2. Literary Reference Center. Web. 29 Oct. 2013.
Alice Walker grew up in rural Georgia in the mid 1900s as the daughter of two poor sharecroppers. Throughout her life, she has been forced to face and overcome arduous lessons of life. Once she managed to transfer the struggles of her life into a book, she instantaneously became a world-renowned author and Pulitzer Prize winner. The Color Purple is a riveting novel about the struggle between redemption and revenge according to Dinitia Smith. The novel takes place rural Georgia, starting in the early 1900s over a period of 30 years. Albert, also known as Mr._____, and his son Harpo must prevail over their evil acts towards other people, especially women. Albert and Harpo wrong many people throughout their lives. To be redeemed, they must first learn to love others, then reflect upon their mistakes, and finally become courageous enough to take responsibility for their actions. In The Color Purple, Alice Walker effectively develops Albert and Harpo through redemption using love, reflection, and responsibility.
Alice Walker is an African American essayist, novelist and poet. She is described as a “black feminist.”(Ten on Ten) Alice Walker tries to incorporate the concepts of her heritage that are absent into her essays; such things as how women should be independent and find their special talent or art to make their life better. Throughout Walker’s essay entitled “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” I determined there were three factors that aided Walker gain the concepts of her heritage which are through artistic ability, her foremothers and artistic models.
• Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia. She was born into a poor sharecropper family, and the last of eight children.
Before the Civil Rights Movement, which took place from 1955-1968, African-Americans had a difficult time establishing an identity and their rights. However, for many African-Americans, the Civil Rights Movement developed a purpose for one’s life and progressed African-Americans’ status and rights in society. Although some people may argue that the Civil Rights Movement was not productive and only caused conflict and havoc, due to the majority of African-Americans still employed in low-level jobs and many towns affected by the Civil Rights Movement being torn apart and degraded, those effects were only temporary and tangible to others. The Movement had a much more profound effect of giving one a purpose or “spark” in life, which later led to African-Americans demanding more rights and equal status in society.
Thesis Statement: Alice Walker, a twentieth and twenty- first century novelist is known for her politically and emotionally charged works, which exposes the black culture through various narrative techniques.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. Harcourt Bruce Jovanovich, Publishers. New York, San Diego, London, 1992
Alice Walker, one of the best-known and most highly respected writers in the US, was born in Eatonton , Georgia, the eighth and last child of Willie Lee and Minnie Lou Grant Walker. Her parents were sharecroppers, and money was not always available as needed. At the tender age of eight, Walker lost sight of one eye when one of her older brothers shot her with a BB gun by accident. This left her in somewhat a depression, and she secluded herself from the other children. Walker felt like she was no longer a little girl because of the traumatic experience she had undergone, and she was filled with shame because she thought she was unpleasant to look at. During this seclusion from other kids her age, Walker began to write poems. Hence, her career as a writer began.
...nspired to make a change that she knew that nothing could stop her, not even her family. In a way, she seemed to want to prove that she could rise above the rest. She refused to let fear eat at her and inflict in her the weakness that poisoned her family. As a child she was a witness to too much violence and pain and much too often she could feel the hopelessness that many African Americans felt. She was set in her beliefs to make choices freely and help others like herself do so as well.
responses to "The Color Purple" by Jacqueline Bobo. N.p., 28 Feb. 1988. Web. 30 Apr.
Walker brought most of the horrific and even sickening scenes of the book to life, with the help and influence of society in history. One of the greatest influences to have an effect on Walker's style of writing and especially The Color Purple, were instances from slavery and prejudice. The whites owned and empowered America during the time of slavery. They had no respect for any other race, which they thought of as substandard. As Lean'tin Bracks stated, blacks were considered to be racially inferior, and they were used for the exploitation of the white culture. The whites used the black people as animals, and made them do their every bidding. Blacks and whites were separated form each other and this segregation of the two races barred blacks from legal and economic access, and they were put to punishment by the white culture. Interaction between the two races rarely occurred other than specific affairs or whites intruding on blacks. There were no penalties to pay by whites, therefore intrusions were common, and they took advantage of the African-Americans. The intrusions varied from breaking and entering to rape and murder for no apparent reason (84). Walker used this basis of racism to grip the reader and take them through a story of a women, who survives physical, verbal, and emotional abuse, everyday.
Alice Walker’s writings were greatly influenced by the political and societal happenings around her during the 1960s and 1970s. She not only wrote about events that were taking place, she participated in them as well. Her devoted time and energy into society is very evident in her works. The Color Purple, one of Walker’s most prized novels, sends out a social message that concerns women’s struggle for freedom in a society where they are viewed as inferior to men. The events that happened during and previous to her writing of The Color Purple had a tremendous impact on the standpoint of the novel.
Alice Walker, "The Color Purple." ENGL 3060 Modern and Contemporary Literature, a book of 2003. Web. The Web. The Web.
Alice Walker is a well known poet, novelist, essayist, educator, biographer, and editor and her quote “Black women can survive only by recovering the rich heritage of their ancestors,” best characterizes her works and life as a black women in this world.
Women have battled for centuries to be equivalent to men. In “The Color Purple," Alice Walker illustrates the theme of women’s heartache, racist acts, and complications of a day to day woman. The Color Purple took place during a demeaning era to not only African American women but African Americans in general were treated inhumane. African American women submitted themselves to controlling men due to the belief of that’s how it should be. During this time, women were used for manual and sexual labor. They were referred as one’s property, hardly spoken of or treated like human-beings. Women faced lack of self-love and identity therefore the definition of love was clouded.
The Black woman struggles against oppression not only as a result of her race, but also because of her gender. Slavery created the perception of Black inferiority; sexism traces back to the beginning of Western tradition. White men have shaped nearly every aspect of culture, especially literature. Alice Walker infuses her experiences as a Black woman who grew up in Georgia during the Civil Rights era into the themes and characters of her contemporary novels. Walker’s novels communicate the psychology of a Black woman under the Western social order, touch on the “exoticism of Black women” and challenge stereotypes molded by the white men in power (Bobo par. 24). In The Color Purple Walker illustrates the life of a woman in an ordinary Black family in the rural South; in his article “Matriarchal Themes in Black Family Literature”, Rubin critiques that Walker emphasizes not only that the Black female is oppressed within society, but also that external oppression causes her to internalize her inferiority. Every theme in Walker’s writings is given through the eyes of a Black woman; by using her personal experiences to develop her short stories and novels, Walker gives the Black woman a voice in literature. Walker demonstrates through her writings that the oppression of Black women is both internal and external.