A Colour Purple
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Submitted by Auzdevil on 06/30/2008 05:21 PM
- Category: Psychology
- Words: 1568
- Pages: 7
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A Colour Purple
The Glorious Transformation
Alice Walker won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her novel The Color Purple (Day 85). The book is written in epistolary form, creating a keen sense of honesty. Walker once said she hoped, "people can hear her [Celie's] voice" (Bloom 67). Like most of her works, this, her third and most highly acclaimed novel, is informed by her own southern background (Draper 1808).
This self-proclaimed "womanist" was born in Eatonton, Georgia in 1944 to a sharecropping family. At the age of eight, she was accidentally shot in the eye with a BB gun. Her parents did not have access to a car and, by the time she received medical attention, irreversible damage had been done. Walker spent much of her childhood withdrawn from others because of the disfigurement. She began to "really see people and things, to notice relationships and to learn to be patient enough to care about how they turned out" and wrote poetry to ease her loneliness (Draper 1808).
In 1961, Alice won a scholarship to Spelman College in Atlanta. Here, she became involved in the civil rights movement and participated in sit-ins at local businesses. Two years later, she transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. She graduated in 1965.
The following summer was spent in Mississippi as an activist and teacher. She also met her future husband, Melvyn Leventhal, who was, at that time, a Jewish civil rights attorney.
Transformation-2
The two married in 1967 and continued their activist work in Mississippi. They were the first legally married interracial couple to live in the state capital of Jackson.
Since their divorce in 1976, Walker has focused more on her writing and has taught at various colleges and universities (Draper 1808).
The Color Purple made Walker one of the most important contemporary writers. It also made her an overnight celebrity in the world of...
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