“Was that ‘The Color Purple’?” I turned to my teenage cousin and asked as the lights in the theater came on. “Yes,” she said. I couldn’t believe what I had seen.
I was six years old when the film adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epistolary novel debuted in theaters in the U.S. The movie went on to receive 11 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
It’s a coming-of-age story about Celie, a teenage African American girl who experiences sexual abuse, misogyny, unthinkable heartbreak and hardship. The story takes place in rural Georgia in the 1900s and is told through her letters to God.
Due to some sexually explicit scenes, my eyes were covered and I was told to plug my ears for parts of the movie. So, while in college, I picked up a copy of the book and remembered being disgusted by her abusive marriage to Mister.
His actual name is Albert—though she wasn’t allowed to address him by it. The suffering this poor girl endured at the hands of a man at least twice her age and the violent enforcement of gender roles has never left me.
But what struck me most was her relationships with the women in her life: her unbreakable bond with her sister Nettie, her complex relationship with her daughter-in-law, Sophia, and her friendship with Shug, which ignited her own journey to self-discovery, the exploration of her sexuality and a powerful reunion with her children. Their stories are examples of female empowerment, self-defense and self-definition, resistance to gender and race-based violence, racism, patriarchal oppression and submission.
In her letters, Celie tells God all about it. Her seemingly one-sided exchanges become a kind of paper trail. They also double as liberation sites–places where she finds her voice and claims her worth.
Nettie’s letters to Celie reveal the truth about her abusive past and her family’s history. They later facilitate the return of her children. Celie’s questions and prayers, which are, in fact, written in her letters to God, are answered by her sister.
No longer isolated or powerless, due in part to her relationships with the women in her life, Celie recovers her voice and writes letters directly to Nettie. Nettie’s letters, once hidden by Albert, he, too, knew the power of their pens.
“I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is,” Celie wrote. “I have a right to be this way…I can’t apologize for that, nor can I change it, nor do I want to… We will never have to be other than who we are to be successful…We realize that we are as ourselves unlimited and our experiences valid. It is for the rest of the world to recognize this, if they choose.”
This was likely my first introduction to somebodiness, the self-assertion of dignity and worth. To witness Celie’s self-actualization and the expansiveness of her speech points to the shortsightedness of patriarchy and the significant reduction of a woman’s worth to her appearance and ability to labor for the comfort of a man.
The concept of womanism, a more nuanced form of feminism and a richer perspective that acknowledges the challenges and experiences of African American women, is also easily observable in “The Color Purple.” Walker coined the term in her 1983 book “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” and explained, “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.” Womanism shows appreciation for the culture of women and our commitment to wholeness for ourselves and others.
Celie bares her soul and bears witness to the ugliness of racism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. She also proves the impractical nature of traditional American religion, namely “pie in the sky” to be eaten in the “sweet by and by” Christianity. Instead, she finds the Divine within and falls in love with her and, later, Shug.
Shug explained the change from traditional religion to a mystical experience: “Here’s the thing …. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know what you looking for.”
Each of the women speaks to a part of Celie’s deliverance and through their bonds, they work to set her free. The women in Celie’s story create a kind of chorus for her own come-to-myself meeting. This prompts Celie to finally notice the color purple and, thus, the beauty that has always been around her.
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Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor, host of the Good Faith Media podcast, “The Raceless Gospel” and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.
