Pulitzer Book Club Inclusion Guide
"The Color Purple" by Alice Walker
INCLUSION MILESTONES
1983
• Sally Ride first woman, Guion Bluford first African American in space
• Discrimination suit overturns eviction of doc treating HIV patients
AUTHOR INSPIRATIONS
Alice Walker, daughter of a Georgia sharecropper, attended segregated schools and studied in Kenya and Uganda during college. She and her husband were the first interracial couple married in Mississippi. She has dated women and men. A former Ms. Magazine editor, Walker is civil rights advocate and outspoken opponent of apartheid and female genital mutilation.
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Featured Reader Wanted!
Featured Reader
– Share your key take-away about inclusion in this book in a sentence or two.
– Write a paragraph or two (up to 250 words) to describe your thoughts on exclusion/inclusion in the book, why you related or did not connect with the book, and why you think reading, inclusion and dialog about inclusion matter.
– Identify the name and website address of a cause you support with an inclusive mission.
Black Georgia woman endures abuse, poverty; finds love, sisterhood, career
Shug Avery gives Celie a mirror and explains sex.
The first Pulitzer fiction winner to focus on Black women was written by the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Fiction Prize. “Dear God” is not only the salutation of the letters that open this novel, it’s the reaction you will likely have to what’s happening. Unrequited correspondence between sisters in an Africa mission and rural Georgia and love letters to and from a sexy blues singer reveal character, unity, and talent as well as abuse and heartbreak.
Comand performance 8-hour narration by Alice Walker or 304 addictive pages
Sisterhood. Lift each other.
An unflinching look at the exploitation of Black women by Whites as well as Black men and the consequences of poverty.
Pull a pie out of your safe and serve a big slice of blackberry pie and some clabber (or buttermilk if you’re out of clabber) to somebody who’s eating a lot so he can get as big as his wife and be able to control her.
Create a dish made with healthy yams that disguises the taste of yams.
Decorate with frogs, turtles, and elephants.
“…the only way to stop making somebody the serpent is for everybody to accept everybody else as a child of God, or one mother’s children, no matter what they look like or how they act.”
Wear pants to a roadhouse with a fabulous torch singer or a quilting circle.
How do the letters in this novel feel in today’s world of instant messaging and social media? What’s the value in writing/posting unanswered messages?
Compare now Sofia and Celie handled abuse in their time and how they might react today.
What are the major differences between the lives of Netty in Africa, Sug on the road, and the two experiences Celie had living with Mr.?
Head to Eatonon south of Atlanta and take the self-guided Alice Walker Driving Tour which includes her childhood home.
https://www.exploregeorgia.org/eatonton/arts-culture/cultural-trails-tours/alice-walker-driving-tour
2011 1985 Film
2005 Broadway opening; 910 performances
2015 Broadway revival
Film musical upcoming
2013 documentary “Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth”memoir “The Chicken Chronicles”
2011 memoir “The Chicken Chronicles”