About the author
Alice Walker is an American novelist, poet, essayist, and activist. The Color Purple made her the first Black woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and her wider body of work returns to race, gender, violence, kinship, and self-possession.
Published in 1982, The Color Purple won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Its account of violence is unsparing; its insistence on joy is deliberate. Walker called it a book about the color purple — about noticing what God puts in front of us.
Where to start
Start with The Color Purple. Celie writes letters to God about a life of abuse — and slowly, with the help of other women, writes herself free.
