It’s a work of art that Black women cherish and critique, but then she doesn’t get the Grammy for Album of the Year. I think Beyonce’s visual album Lemonade is similar to a certain degree. The Color Purple is unique because it got recognized by the literary establishment, but also got critiques and celebration from Black people. Are there other works of art that strike you as being similarly received? The Color Purple resonated with many people, but it was also, as you’ve documented, criticized. She was trying to show us not just the beauty of Celie and the community that she was able to nurture-she was trying to get us to see the divine in all aspects of the South.Īs a critic of culture, you’ve got an interesting perspective on public reaction. When I went to visit the place where Alice Walker was born, the land on which she was formed, there was this gorgeous tree and I was like, Of course, this is what she was trying to do. We hear the trauma, but we don’t see the beauty that it exists in contention with. I think there is an ongoing misreading of the South on the part of many Black people who live in the North. I think I saw the novel’s setting as such a restrictive violent place in which both the physical home, but also the state or the town, was violent. I think in my early years I misread the book. I didn’t grow up with the land the way Alice did. I’m from Boston and New Jersey, and I lived in Trinidad, so I didn’t grow up in the South the way that Alice did. Afterward, I understood how important it was that she be surrounded by beauty for these characters to be born. I went to Eatonton first, and then went to Alice’s current home in Northern California-then finally, back to Eatonton. That’s what disrupts the safety and the beauty of the natural world-these institutions in which someone like Celie can be so easily discarded and easily just rendered a victim.Īfter being in conversation with Walker and her writing, how has your understanding of nature and the environment changed? Not only was it the setting of The Color Purple, but I recognized that in this book she was trying to balance this deep appreciation for nature as this gift from God, and understand these human courses of oppression, like sexism and racism. I also went to her hometown of Eatonton, and this is where I was the most surprised, because the town is utterly gorgeous. Seeing that, I think, gave me a deeper appreciation of Celie’s own arc. She has such a compassionate energy about the lives of everything and everyone around her. Alice Walker is someone who tried to channel the voices of those who are typically rendered invisible. Sitting in her company gave me such deep insight into her level of empathy. I understood Celie’s arc more by being in Alice Walker’s presence in Philo, California. Walker’s writings inspired Tillet’s own activism, moving her to cofound A Long Walk Home, a national nonprofit that uses art to empower young people to end violence against girls and women. Tillet, a contributing critic at large for The New York Times and the Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University, first read the story of Celie as a teenager, and the book has served as guidepost for her at various times in her life. In Salamishah Tillet’s latest work, In Search of The Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece, Tillet delves into the backstory of the novel, explores why Walker’s book continues to resonate, and explains how the literary work became a cultural phenomenon, all while masterfully weaving together personal, cultural, and historical conversations about the text, including original interviews with Walker herself and players in the film and musical such as Oprah Winfrey, Quincy Jones, and Danny Glover. But the novel’s influence didn’t stop there.
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