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

Cultural links

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

Other media

• 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