The Color Purple

Summary

An epistolary novel told largely through the letters of Celie, a poor Black woman in early-twentieth-century rural Georgia, as she endures abuse and gradually finds friendship, love, and her own voice. Walker weaves together questions of race, gender, sexuality, family, and faith, while a parallel correspondence opens the story onto colonial Africa. The book became a touchstone of late-twentieth-century African American literature and a widely taught classroom text.