The Color Purple

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Recommended: Critical analysis of the color purple novel

The Color Purple, written by Alice Walker, is a very heavy book to read. The author focuses on very difficult and hard aspects of the life of a poor, African American women, in the early twentieth century. Alice Walker truly shows that no one is exempt from the possibility of a happy life and a conscious connection to oneself and all that is around her in nature, regardless of the trials and tribulations of their past. Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944. She grew up in Eatonton as the youngest child out of eight. Her parents, Minnie Grant and Willie Walker, were poor sharecroppers. Alice was raised with in a family of poverty and a life of violent racism. Her environment left a permanent impression on her writing (“Alice Walker”). When she was eight, Alice and her brother were playing a game of “Cowboys and Indians” when she was blinded in her right eye. This incident occurred by a BB gun pallet. She was teased by her classmates and misunderstood by her family and became shy. She isolated herself from her classmates, and she explains, “ I no longer felt like the little girl I was. I felt old, and because I felt I was unpleasant to look at, filled with shame.” She had the amazing opportunity to have the cataract removed when she was fourteen. She had it removed, yet her sight in her right eye never returned. When she was in high school she was voted prom queen and graduated as the schools valedictorian. Alice continued her journey by entering Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia (“Biography”). When she was a freshman she was invited to attend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s home. In 1963, she heard King’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech. Walker was given the opportunity of a scholarship to Sarah Lawrence College and she accepted. She was one of the very few black students at Sarah Lawrence College (“Alice Walker”). By Alice’s senior year she experienced

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