Free Sample Essays > Literature
The Color Purple: Letter to Alice Walker
I recently read your novel The Color Purple as part of a social justice curriculum at my school. I felt compelled to take the time to tell you what a profound honor it was to read your book. I am so grateful to both you and my teachers for giving me the opportunity to experience something that in all likelihood I would never have had the privilege of experiencing otherwise. I am currently in a humanities program at my school that allows me to have many experiences such as reading your book. We read The Color Purple as part of a unit on gender and sexuality issues from a social justice perspective. These issues were very poignant throughout the duration of the novel and your portrayal of them, along with your portrayal of many other issues was absolutely beautiful to me. However, in particular what were most beautiful to me were your portrayals of the definition of family and as an extension of that, the idea of couples becoming trinities. The way your characters illustrated both of these ideas was new to me; instead of feeling fear and apprehension when faced with the new ideas, I quickly felt that the ideas were comfortable, familiar, and ingenious.
At the opening of the novel I saw many examples of the importance of the traditional family unit in America. Celie is forced to marry Mr. because in patriarchal American society it is essential that she have a husband. Mr. ‘s father forces him to marry Annie Julia despite the fact that he really loves Shug because he must have a proper wife. After reading the letters containing this information I was expecting a story of the typical family unit. I was not expecting the type of family that is ultimately glorified in the book. My understanding that the family that I would ultimately see in the book would not be a conventional one came with the realization that attitudes towards women in the novel caused men to sleep with several different women. When I say attitudes towards women, I mean the commonly held beliefs that women do not need to be respected, are easily replaceable, and are essentially property. The result of the aforementioned promiscuity is that men have children from different mothers all over the place. It is difficult to establish the traditional two parent, two kid family when there are several different mothers and children involved. Sometimes, as was the case with Mr. and ‘Fonso, a man’s wife will die and he will take another wife. He will often have children by both the first, second, and possibility third wife as Alfonso did. In addition to the men, there are several strong, assertive female characters in the novel that were [next page]