The blurb reads:
Wildfire Books is a series of contemporary women's writing from around the world. The series offers an introduction to a wide range of women's writing from many different genres and cultures. Each title includes an introduction by the author and a variety of activities and assignments to support and extend a reading of the book.

In association with The Women's Press

'Dear God: I am fourteen years old. I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me ...'

So begins Alice Walker's touching, complex and engrossing novel, the story of two sisters in the harsh segregated world of the Deep South in the early part of the twentieth century. Celie has been raped by the man she calls father; her two children are taken away from her; her beloved, younger sister, Nettie, has run away. She is given in an ugly marriage to Albert, to look after his children. She has no one to talk to but God. Then she meets Shug Avery, the singer, the magic woman, and discovers not the pain of rivalry but the love and support of women.

The Color Purple - a harsh world revealed with honesty, humour and compassion.
Cambridge University Press, 7th printing, 1999

A remarkable novel interpreted in the Leistungskurs English

Alice Walker's The Color Purple
and Post-Colonialism

by Thorsten-Michael Wulff

The topic of the third term in 2000 and a first term in 2001 of a Leistungskurs English is the history of the African American population viewed in the context of colonialism and its aftermath. The students studied texts on the British Empire (cf. Bülow et. al. (ed.): Topline, Lese und Arbeitsbuch für die 12. und 13. Klasse. Klett 1997) and made presentations on the colonisation of India and Africa and the slave trade. The slave trade is ideologically underpinned by the Europeans (and with them the British) feeling as a race that is superior to the "savages" in India and Africa (and Australia). It is this attitude of ethnic and cultural superiority that also vindicated slavery in the South of the United States. Taking the rise of nationalism in the 18th and 19th century into account, there developed a dangerous concoction of colonialist and chauvinist ideologies that provided a hotbed for fascism in Europe, the fascist state in Germany and later for similar regimes in other countries and continents, and it is to my mind reflected in the xenophobia and violent hostility to foreigners today.

The Civil War in the US abolished slavery, it is true, but it did not do away with the attitude behind it. (Cf. the current discourse on the re-appraisal of Abraham Lincoln's stance on African Americans. "I, as much as any other man, am in favour of having the superior position assigned to the white race," Lincoln says in his speech in 1858. Cf. The International Herald Tribune of 10 April 2002.) The former black slaves toiled on as wage workers who were miserably paid, if they had work at all, and the whites kept discriminating against them. The rapid general economic decline of the agriculturally based economy of the South aggravated the situation of the African Americans as well as of many whites. The South "was suffering from most of the classic evils of colonial underdevelopment: discriminatory freight rates (...), absentee ownership, concealed unemployment (...), shortage of credit (...). Absurdest of all, this predominantly agricultural region was a net importer of food." (Godfrey Hodgson: In Our Time. America from World War II to Nixon. London 1976; p. 56) Although the African Americans had become citizens after the Civil War, they did not enjoy the same rights, not even legal justice and protection, as the incidents of lynching sadly prove. They "could not be worse treated by Hitler than they are by Southerners today." writes the distinguished liberal US historian Arthur John Schlesinger, Jr. in his autobiography (A Life in the 20th Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950. Boston, New York 2000) citing his report to the Office of War Information in the 1940s. (Quoted in The Economist, Oct. 28th 2000, p. 177)

It is a decade before that report to the Office of War Information quoted above that Alice Walker's epistolary and journal novel The Color Purple is set. It mirrors the humiliating situation of the Native American share croppers in the South from the point of view of Celie's diary, a young girl that is raped by her stepfather, bears him two children that are taken away and later happen to live with her sister Nettie. This traumatic experience aborts her menstruation for the rest of her life and makes her feel averse to sex with men.

The post-colonial concept of white superiority is reproduced in the hierarchy of men over women within the white society of the time and, strangely enough, among the African American population in the South. Such instances are Celie's marriage and the marriages Celie sees around her. But in the course of the novel as Celie grows older, she gradually emancipates herself especially since she forms a relationship with Shug Avery, a successful performing artist. See Sonja Keibel's and Anastasia Mattern's contributions on Celie's first steps towards her sexual liberation. But even her husband whose physical violence on her actually veiled his personal weakness turns to a tolerant and interested person after Celie has left him for good. See below Anne Zippel's contribution on Celie's relationship with her husband Albert.

Another character, Sofia, wife to Harpo, the son of Celie's husband, immediately fights her repressive husband. But her spirit is crushed by an incident with the white mayor of the nearest town and his wife, when Sofia ends up in prison for twelve years, the gaolers abusing her and crippling her physically and spiritually. See Anastasia Mattern's contribution.

The colonial aspect is resumed in the latter half of the novel that chiefly consists of Nettie's letters to Celie and their subsequent correspondence. Celie finally gets hold of the letters from her sister Nettie who is staying with a missionary family in Africa with a tribe called the Olinkas. Nettie's letters are not only critical of the whites' conduct in Africa, but also of the relatively low position of women in tribal hierarchy and the customs of the natives, manifest in female circumcision and scarring the face. See below Janina Lee's contribution where she gives the details.

Apart from this historical and ideological background that is woven into the very personal histories of the novel, Alice Walker proves to me that the African American variant of English may be as riveting and captivating a reading experience as the received standard variant of American English if it is used in a great work of art such as the novel The Color Purple.

As time goes on and the novel is read again in other classes, new students' papers that have thus not been introduced above will be published on this site.