Listen, God love everything you love? and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration.
You saying God vain? I ast.
Naw,
she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it
pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and
don't notice it.
What it do when it pissed off? I ast.
Oh,
it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care
about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to
please us back.
Yeah? I say.
Yeah, she say. It always making little surprises and springing them on us when us least expect.
You mean it want to be loved, just like the bible say.
Yes,
Celie, she say. Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance, make
faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that
trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?
(From The Color Purple, by Alice Walker)
I must have read and written papers on The Color Purple about five times through my college career, and somehow I never minded that it kept showing up on the syllabi of my English Lit classes. Every time, I read it over again. Every time, I got a little something different out of it. When the film version came out late in my college years, I pretty much had the book memorized and was pleased to see that the film stayed fairly true to the novel. In fact, I'm reading the book again this week in recognition of Banned Books Week. I might even watch the movie again.
The Color Purple is a book about finding one's voice, finding one's power, learning to write one's own story. It's about racism, sexism, and abuse, but it's also about deep friendships that help one grow into more than one would be alone; it's about love, it's about healing and reconciliation. It's about strength. It's about faith.
Oh, and by the way, there's a quilt in it.
'Nuff said.
