Annotated Bibliography on The Color Purple

By Tessa Saiia

“Humor in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.” South of Tradition: Essays on African American Literature, by Trudíer Harrís-Lopez, University of Georgia Press, Athens; London, 2002, pp. 1–17. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46nmct.4.

Humor is viewed, in this Chapter from Trudíer Harrís Lopez’s book South of Tradition, as a defense mechanism that Celie uses. Celie goes through so much, and she physically cannot fight back, so she uses humor as a release. Harrís say, “it emphasizes that humor can serve as a potential survival strategy and again places Celie in the realm of blues transcendence.” 

Lopez spends about fifteen out of the eighteen pages in this section of her book, to show examples and quotes from the book on the humor that Celie would use. Most of her examples were pointed towards Harpo and Sofia. Harpo has a weird desire to beat Sofia into submission. Even though he knows that she is too stubborn to ever give in to him and his abuse. Whenever a man tries to show dominance over a woman is when Celie brings out the humor. The way Lopez closes out the chapter could not be worded any better than it is. Lopez Closes the chapter by saying, “ It is also that duality in the African American worldview the belief that humor can lie at the heart of pain that enables us to try to find something salvageable in a novel where psychological and physical brutality could be soul destroying; it gives us the potential for hope in spite of pain and horror. It is that duality. Finally, that might allow us to explain how Celie rises from abuse and violation to health and affirmation.”

The amount of examples and the in-depth descriptions that are given in this chapter about how Celie uses humor as a tool for survival, is more than enough to help me argue the helpless state and the powerless feeling that she feels when it comes to gender roles, and the desire men have for their wives to be submissive.

Morgan, Winifred. “Alice Walker: The Color Purple as Allegory.” Southern Writers at Century's End, edited by JEFFREY J. FOLKS and JAMES A. PERKINS. by JAMES H. JUSTUS, University Press of Kentucky, 1997, pp. 177–184. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt130j8h6.20.

This Chapter in Southern Writers at Century’s End, written by Winifred Morgan, is about the racism and sexism during slavery. This chapter is like heaven on a page for feminists. The author goes into how black women during this period are slaves, sexually abused, and treated as something that can be traded like cattle. Morgan talks about what this story means to both black and white women of today's society. To some, this story is “an allegory of both the racial and sexual oppression that black women have endured during and since slavery.” Others see it as the choice to make something of your life instead of “accepting one's fate as biologically predetermined.”

            This chapter is going to be used to focus on the slave aspect of Celie’s life. Although she was not a slave in the sense that most think of, she was a slave to her Pa and to Mr.____.   

“The Unwed Mother Triumphant: Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.” Embroidering the Scarlet A: Unwed Mothers and Illegitimate Children in American Fiction and Film, by Janet Mason Ellerby, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2015, pp. 102–121. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.6944967.9.

Janet Mason Ellerby talks about the Comparison of several novels and the struggles that the women protagonists have to go through and overcome. I read through chapter 5 in her book Embroidering the Scarlet A. Although I feel the majority of this chapter is a broad summary of The Color Purple, she also has a lot to input about the abuse that she went through and how it left her feeling powerless until Shug comes along and shows Celie what real love is.

Celie is sexually, physically, mentally and emotionally abused thought the majority of the novel. Celie takes Nettie's place as Mr.____’s wife willingly, knowing that Nettie has not been raped and is still “fresh.” Ellerby says, “. . . Because she sees little value in her person. . . [H]er position as a site of racialized and sexualized dominance codes. . . Does not allow [her] to fight for a more equitable role in life” (92). All of the racism and sexism have left Celie Powerless. She goes on to talk about how so many of Alice Walker’s black male characters are “hardened chauvinists.” The adversity that Celie had to deal with was a social norm for the period. She can’t even feel safe in her church because the people there judge her and blame her for the pregnancies and the abusive marriage.

I will be using this piece of literature to help prove the idea that men during this period had power over women that made the women defenseless. You didn’t have to be a woman of color to face discrimination and hatred. Being a woman was enough to make you worthless. All it took was one male to say you weren’t worth much and that defined how you would be treated the rest of your life by men.

Ellis, Deborah S. “The Color Purple and the Patient Griselda.” College English, vol. 49, no. 2, 1987, pp. 188–201. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/377878.

Deborah S. Ellis Compares Clerk’s Tale and The Color Purple. In both stories, there are wives that were wedded for family reasons only. The women in both stories were poor and therefore powerless. Both women were not lusted after; they were convenient. Griselda and Celie both lose a child, or in Celie’s case, both of her children. These women struggle with being controlled by their husbands, while at the same time being tossed aside. They are used as sex slaves and caretakers more than as wives, while their husbands bring in prettier women to be gentle and loving with. Throughout the article Ellis focuses on the emotional abuse and the struggle that these protagonist women went through in their relationships with their husbands and the other men in their lives.

I will use Deborah S. Ellis’ comparison between Clerk’s Tale and The Color Purple, to help prove my argument on how poorly women were treated by men. And how the way these women were treated affected them as human beings. 

“Romance, Marginality, Matrilineage: The Color Purple.” The Other Side of the Story: Structures and Strategies of Contemporary Feminist Narratives, by Molly Hite, Cornell University Press, ITHACA; LONDON, 1989, pp. 103–126. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt207g66s.7.

Molly Hite uses this chapter in Structures and Strategies of Contemporary Feminist Narratives, to talk about how romance isn’t dead. She compared several stories to the plot of The Color Purple. The relationships between man and wife is not always perfect but you can still find happiness and pleasure in other things. With Celie even though her husband would have sex with her, she never enjoyed it. Shug came along and showed her how to explore her own body and how to get pleasure from herself since she does not experience it from any man. Hite also goes on to talk about how Celie and Albert were able to reconcile their relationships and live in “platonic harmony” and how much strength and determination it takes to move on from the past and to be fruitful in life. Celie went from a life of slavery, sexual abuse as well as physical and emotional abuse and was able to start a successful business, own a home, live in peace and mend broken relationships.

I will be using this piece of literature to show how even bad relationships can be made good and how Celie didn’t let everything that albert did to her while they were together affect how they would live in the future.

Selzer, Linda. “Race and Domesticity in The Color Purple.” African American Review, vol. 29, no. 1, 1995, pp. 67–82. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3042429.

Linda Selzer starts by talking about how important it was for Celie to find the letters that Mr.____ hid that was sent by Nettie. Then goes into how it was a good and interesting choice for Alice Walker to have the main character/ narrator be as illiterate as Celie is. She talks about how the culture and life were in the part of Africa that Nettie lived in with the missionaries and Celie’s two children. Life in Africa was not the best, but it seems as though in the United States Black women had it just as tough if not tougher.

She discussed how it was rude for Sofia to not acknowledge how cute the white baby was and how she was punished for not respecting white people and the culture in the way it was thought that she should. If a white person were to do the same things Sofia did they would not have been punished let alone thrown in jail. The differences in lifestyles of white and black people were huge. On top of any day to day struggles that black people were going through they had to deal with the constant hate and discrimination from white people.

I will be utilizing this source as a way to explain on a deeper level the struggles of life as an African American.