Childhood Exposed In Alice Walker's The Color Purple

Superior Essays
All through history, women of color have faced racism and prejudice. In the early 1900s, women were treated as slaves to their husbands and fathers. Many were raped by family members or people they were close with, leading to unhealthy mindsets and difficulty forming further relationships. Women would turn to eachother for comfort and support in these terrifying times. These are actions that were present during the time the novel was written, and still today. Alice Walker uses her childhood and these issues of the early 1900s to get across her lesson on strength in The Color Purple. Alice Walker’s life from childhood to adulthood affected her writing. She was born to a sharecropper and a housewife on, “February 9, 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia. She was the eighth and last child in the family” (Baeyen 1878). For college, Walker started at Spelman from 1991-1993, and then transferred to Sarah Lawrence (“The Color,” Novels 49). With this education, Walker became a “teacher of black studies, a writer in …show more content…
“Alice Walker.” Beacham’s Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction, edited by Kirk H. Beetz, vol. 3, Beacham Publishing, 1996, pp. 1878-1888.
Bates, Gerri. Alice Walker: A Critical Companion. Greenwood, 2005.
Christian, Barbara T. “Walker’s Childhood, Education, and Crusade for African American Women.” Women Issues in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, edited by Claudia Durst Johnson, 2001, pp. 16-24.
“The Color Purple.” Literature and Its Times: Profiles of 300 Notable Literary Works and the Historical Events that Influenced Them, edited by Joyce Moss and George Wilson, vol. 3, Gale, 1997, pp. 80-87. Gale Virtual Reference Library,

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