The Color Purple: Further reading and resources

Helpful overviews & study material

Alice Walker - The Color Purple (Readers' Guides to Essential Criticism), Dr Rachel Lister, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010
Alice Walker's The Color Purple (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations), ed. Prof. Harold Bloom, New edition 2008
A Study Guide for Alice Walker's The Color Purple (Novels for Students) by The Gale Group
Studies in Alice Walker's 'The Color Purple', Shymasree Basu, Booksway, 2014

There are a number of other helpful texts dealing with African-American issues pertinent to The Color Purple:

Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved is an influential magical realism slave narrative
Coffee Will Make You Black by April Sinclair deals with the Civil Rights movement and growing up as an African-American girl in 1960s Chicago
Maya Angelou’s autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings makes an interesting true life comparison to Celie’s experiences
For a masculine view of the African-American identity, read Alex Hayley’s Roots, which recounts Hayley’s successful quest to trace his family roots back to Africa
The Huffington Post list of ‘books every African-American should read’ can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/22799.Books_That_Every_African_American_Should_Read_Huffington_Post_List_#606095

Stephen Spielberg’s film The Color Purple, 1985, makes an interesting comparison with the novel: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Color-Purple-Danny-Glover/dp/B00004CX88
Watch some of the You Tube clips from the musical version of the novel. Trisha Jeffrey’s version of Celie’s ‘I’m Here’ speech as a solo power ballad is interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5YLXPAYys8

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