Table Of ContentAlice Walker’s
T C P
HE OLOR URPLE
DIALOGUE
5
Edited by
Michael J. Meyer
Alice Walker’s
T C P
HE OLOR URPLE
Edited by
Kheven LaGrone
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2009
Cover Design: Pier Post
Cover art: Renata E. Gray
Model: TaSin Sabir
Photography: Kheven LaGrone
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-2544-8
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2009
Printed in the Netherlands
Table of Contents
General Editor’s Preface ix
Introduction: To Follow the Hero’s Journey xiii
Rendering the (Womanist) Hero
We Need a Hero: African American Female
Bildungsromane and Celie’s Journey to Heroic
Female Selfhood in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple 3
Brenda R. Smith
Making Hurston’s Heroine Her Own:
Love and Womanist Resistance in
The Color Purple 23
Tracy L. Bealer
Alice Walker’s The Color Purple:
Womanist Folk Tale and Capitalist Fairy Tale 43
Raphaël Lambert
Theology of Liberation
Rendering the African-American Woman’s God
through The Color Purple 61
Patricia Andujo
God is (a) Pussy: The Pleasure Principle
and Homo-Spirituality in Shug’s Blueswoman Theology 77
Marlon Rachquel Moore
vi Table of Contents
Dear God . . . Dear Peoples . . . Dear Everything
Witnessing and Testifying:
Transformed Language and Selves in The Color Purple 95
R. Erin Huskey
“My Man Treats Me Like a Slave”: The Triumph
of Womanist Blues over Blues Violence
in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple 119
Courtney George
Alice Walker’s Revisionary Politics of Rape 149
Robin E. Field
Significance of Sisterhood and Lesbianism
in Fiction of Women of Color 173
Uplabdhi Sangwan
The Spirit of Space
Homeward Bound: Transformative Spaces
in The Color Purple 195
Danielle Russell
A House of Her Own: Alice Walker’s Readjustment
of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own
in The Color Purple 209
Turgay Bayindir
Adapting and Integrating: The Color Purple
as Broadway Musical 225
Kathryn Edney
The Classic Beneath the Polemic
Alice Walker’s Womanist Reading of Samuel Richardson’s
Pamela in The Color Purple 251
Apryl Denny
Table of Contents vii
Focalization Theory and the Epistolary Novel:
A Narrative Analysis of The Color Purple 287
Ping Zhou
Essay Abstracts 305
About the Authors 311
Index 317
General Editor’s Preface
The original concept for Rodopi’s new series entitled
Dialogue grew out of two very personal experiences of the general
editor. In 1985, having just finished my dissertation on John
Steinbeck and attained my doctoral degree, I was surprised to receive
an invitation from Steinbeck biographer, Jackson J. Benson, to submit
an essay for a book he was working on. I was unpublished at the time
and was unsure and hesitant about my writing talent, but I realized
that I had nothing to lose. It was truly the “opportunity of a lifetime.”
I revised and shortened a chapter of my dissertation on Steinbeck’s
The Pearl and sent it off to California. Two months later, I was
pleasantly surprised to find out that my essay had been accepted and
would appear in Duke University Press’s The Short Novels of John
Steinbeck (1990).
Surprisingly, my good fortune continued when several months
after the book appeared, Tetsumaro Hayashi, a renowned Steinbeck
scholar, asked me to serve as one of the three assistant editors of The
Steinbeck Quarterly, then being published at Ball State University.
Quite naïve at the time about publishing, I did not realize how
fortunate I had been to have such opportunities present themselves
without any struggle on my part to attain them. After finding my
writing voice and editing several volumes on my own, I discovered in
2002 that despite my positive experiences, there was a real prejudice
against newer “emerging” scholars when it came to inclusion in
collections or acceptance in journals.
As the designated editor of a Steinbeck centenary collection, I
found myself roundly questioned about the essays I had chosen for
inclusion in the book. Specifically, I was asked why I had not
selected several prestigious names whose recognition power would
have spurred the book’s success on the market. My choices of lesser-
known but quality essays seemed unacceptable to those who ran the
conference which produced the potential entries in the book. New
x Dialogue: Alice Walker The Color Purple
voices were unwelcome; it was the tried and true that were greeted
with open arms. Yet these experienced scholars had no need for
further publications and often offered few original insights into the
Steinbeck canon. Sadly, the originality of the lesser-known essayists
met with hostility; the doors were closed, perhaps even locked tight,
against their innovative approaches and readings that took issue with
scholars whose authority and expertise had long been unquestioned.
Angered, I withdrew as editor of the volume, and began to
think of ways to rectify what I considered a serious flaw in academé.
My goal was to open discussions between experienced scholars and
those who were just beginning their academic careers and had not yet
broken through the publication barriers. Dialogue would be fostered
rather than discouraged.
Having previously served as an editor for several volumes in
Rodopi’s Perspective of Modern Literature series under the general
editorship of David Bevan, I sent a proposal to Fred Van der Zee
advocating a new series that would be entitled Dialogue, one that
would examine the controversies within classic canonical texts and
would emphasize an interchange between established voices and those
whose ideas had never reached the academic community because their
names were unknown. Happily, the press was willing to give the
concept a try and gave me a wide scope in determining not only the
texts to be covered but also in deciding who would edit the individual
volumes.
When Kheven LaGrone proposed a volume on Alice Walker’s
The Color Purple, I encouraged him to pursue a call for papers. The
resulting essays address many of the issues that caused the novel to be
such a controversial text; the abrupt change in narrative voice, the
frank addressing of lesbian desire and sexual abuse, the blunt criticism
of the insensitive black males all were features that made its selection
for the 1983 Pulitzer Prize a very unpopular choice. In this volume’s
pages, such issues are not avoided but are addressed skillfully by
authors with a variety of publication histories, some experienced,
some neophytes. All are committed to a discussion of what earlier
reviewers had determined were pluses and minuses of The Color
Purple’s characters and plot and to addressing elements in Walker’s
stylistics and themes that were seen as flaws. As you will see, some of
authors break fertile new ground in the process, and offer approaches
that will help readers see the novel from several new angles.
This volume on The Color Purple will soon be followed by a
volume on Laura Esquivel’s Like Water For Chocolate, and one on
