“H... ... middle of paper ... ...Feminist Organization conference that it had been too long since I sat in a room full of black women and unafraid of being made to full peculiar spoke about things that matter to me. “(273) Alice Walkers non-fiction books coccid of many emotional narratives stories which revealed the truth Alice Walker exposed readers to the struggle of African-Americans in the racist and misogynistic society of U.S from the 1960s to 1990s. She delivered the important messages of the experiences she had through various types of poems, non-fiction and fiction. She used her own experiences to show others how hard it was for her to face her problems and how no one should ever sit back and do nothing about something unfair. Alice Walker faced misogynistim and racism with courage, she never hid from her problems and that was one of her keys to success.
Women's Identities in The Color Purple by Alice Walker and Behind a Mask by Louisa May Alcott Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple has a rich array of female characters to examine when answering the above question. I feel that Louisa May Alcott’s short story, “Behind A Mask” offers an equally rich array of female characters to consider. Through the course of this essay I will show how Walker and Alcott used different narrative techniques and made different use of language and dialogue to create their characters; and how they each respectively created very powerful pieces of work, identifying with their characters and the problems and obstacles faced by them in their everyday lives. The Color Purple is written in the epistolary style where the main character writes letters to God. These letters are like a diary where Celie tells her story.
(Muellero Vol.1) Her writing mainly reflects her concerns on multidimensional sympathy with racial, sexual, and the take in power of social & political issues among African American women 's struggle at her time. (Whitted n pag.) She justified that, “The black women is one of America’s greatest heroes Not enough credit has been given to the black women who has oppressed beyond recognition.” (Gerding Period.5) Walker throw back and reflects her opinion on her third novel that is widely known called The Color Purple. The novel traces the life of Celie, a poor Southern black woman who is physically and mentally abused by her step-father and husband. (Muellero Vol.1) In the youth age, Celie often got raped by her step-father causing to have two children, but the step-father sell the children away and her failed marriage husband, Albert who beats and torture her continuously.
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.
Walker's thoughts and feelings show through in her writing of poetry and novels. Alice Walker writes through her feelings and the morals that she has grown up with, she writes about the black woman's struggle for wholeness and sexual, political, and racial equality. Much of Walker's fiction comes from her Southern background. She was born in Eatonton, Georgia, a rural town where most blacks worked as farmers. At the age eight she was blinded in the right eye when an older brother accidentally shot her with a BB gun, after which she fell into a depression.
In her essay, A Room of One’s Own, she focuses on what is meant by connecting the terms, women and fiction. Woolf divided this thought into three categories: what women are like throughout history, women and the fiction they write, and women and the fiction written about them. When one thinks of women and fiction, what they think of; Woolf tried to answer this question through the discovery of the female within literature in her writing. Virginia Woolf Throughout her life Virginia Woolf became increasingly interested in the topic of women and fiction, which is highly reflected in her writing. To understand her piece, A Room of One’s Own Room, her reader must understand her.
In addition to this, women were given few choices for marriage many times it was for status, and for women at this point it was also for their whole life. This provides the backdrop for Kate Chopin’s, The Awakening. Chopin’s novel shows the struggle of a woman in this time period dealing with the repression and injustices in society. In this early feminist novel, the main character, Edna Pontellier, struggles to find herself and free herself from the roles of wife, and mother. The novel is rife with symbolism that helps us to understand the struggle that Edna, and many of the women of the early nineteen-hundreds went through to free themselves from stereotypes in their quest for personal freedom.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker is a story written in 1982 that is about the life struggles of a young African American woman named Celie. The novel takes the reader through several main topics including the poor treatment of African American women, domestic abuse, family relationships, and also religion. The story takes place mostly in rural Georgia in the early 1900’s and demonstrates the difficult life of sharecropper families. Specifically how life was endured from the perspective of an African American woman. The Color Purple is written in the form of letters that Celie narrates explaining the events that took place at certain points in her life.
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 demanding lessons of life. She transferred the struggles of her life into a book, that got her awarded a Pulitzer Prize and she became known as a world renowned author. The Color Purple is a compelling novel about redemption and revenge. The conflict between racism, sexism, and the power of strong female relationships is how Alice expressed her life and incorporated it into the story.
Alice Walker is woman of class, diversity, and feminism. More importantly, she is a civil rights activist, novelist, poet, and essayist. Growing up poor, I would like to think motivated her, and crafted her to the woman she is at this time in her life. Her works is a tasteful gratification of what it was like fighting for equality for all African Americans, affirming the possibility to love and forgive amongst black and white people, and just writing impeccable wisdom. While attending Spelman College, she turned down a scholarship to study abroad in Paris, and instead she went to Mississippi to pursue civil rights.