# data[].attributes.body
I believe "The Color Purple" should be included in our school curriculum. This powerful novel, written by Alice Walker, offers profound insights into the struggles and triumphs of African American women in the early 20th century. Its rich characters and gripping narrative not only highlight important social issues, such as racism and sexism, but also celebrate resilience, love, and personal growth. Introducing this remarkable piece of literature would provide students with valuable lessons about empathy, strength, and the importance of finding one's voice.

# data[].attributes.body
I believe this subject can be effectively integrated into either English or history classes, but I am particularly inclined toward the English classroom. In this context, students have the opportunity to explore how literary techniques—such as symbolism, motifs, and imagery—translate into the realm of film. This exploration can foster a deeper appreciation for visual media as a legitimate and impactful art form. Through engaging assignments that combine research, argumentation, and critical analysis with creative narration, students not only sharpen their analytical skills but also gain valuable insights into the rich and complex experiences of African Americans during the early decades of the 20th century. This approach allows for a multifaceted understanding of both historical context and artistic expression, enriching students' perspectives on culture and society.

# data[].attributes.body
The Color Purple is a powerful work that can be effectively integrated into history classes. This poignant story offers students a profound glimpse into the lives of African Americans during the early 20th century, highlighting their struggles, resilience, and cultural richness. Whether experienced through the novel's vivid narratives or the film's compelling visuals, it stands out as an important piece of historical fiction deserving of student engagement.

Ideally, students would immerse themselves in the depths of this narrative in their English classes, or explore its historical context in their history lessons. Unfortunately, the recent ban on the book in Florida presents significant obstacles to teaching it. It is disheartening to think that a narrative so rich in historical significance could be sidelined. I remain hopeful for a future where we can openly discuss these vital struggles in schools, fostering a deeper understanding and empathy among students.

# data[].attributes.body
I believe it would be immensely beneficial to examine this movie from a technical perspective. The cinematography is particularly impressive, utilizing lighting and camera angles to enhance the overall mood and storytelling. The costume design is another standout element; each outfit is carefully crafted to reflect the characters' personalities and the time period portrayed in the film. Additionally, the props are not just mere decorations; they are thoughtfully chosen to contribute to the authenticity and immersion of the setting. The set design is also meticulous, with every detail contributing to the film's atmosphere, making it feel like a living, breathing world.

These technical aspects warrant a thorough analysis, as they play a critical role in the film's impact. I believe this movie should be studied in the context of film and theater courses, where it can be compared to later adaptations and the original book it’s based on. Such a comparison could reveal how the visual storytelling techniques have evolved over time and highlight the artistic choices made by the filmmakers.

# data[].attributes.body
I firmly believe that it is essential to screen films like "The Color Purple" in educational settings, as they serve as powerful tools for confronting the realities of racism and its impact on society. I have noticed that, particularly among young boys, there seems to be a troubling normalization of racist attitudes and behaviors, which many might dismiss as merely a phase that adolescents go through. However, I think it's important to recognize that this is not just a passing trend; it poses a serious threat to our societal values and cohesion.

It is alarming to observe how, as a society, we appear to be regressing into a mindset that overlooks the important lessons of history. We need to actively remember and engage with the past to ensure that we do not fall back into the same patterns of prejudice and discrimination that have caused so much harm. Many individuals today may express frustration over discussions surrounding historical injustices, often saying, "These things happened years ago; why do you feel so strongly about them?" Yet, it is vital to understand that regardless of how much time has passed, these events are part of our collective history and their repercussions still affect us today.

For instance, "The Color Purple" highlights the severe challenges that minority groups, particularly African American women, faced during the 1920s. Many people may not be aware of the brutal realities that these individuals endured, including racism, sexism, and oppression. This film, like others that tackle uncomfortable historical truths, is a reminder that we must delve deeper into these stories to fully understand the struggles of those who came before us.

Therefore, we must commit to fostering a culture of education that not only addresses historical events but also analyzes their implications for our present and future. Ignoring or downplaying the lessons of our past will inevitably lead to negative consequences. By learning from the experiences of those who suffered, we can pave the way for a more inclusive and equitable future for everyone. It is our responsibility to ensure that the mistakes of the past inform our actions today and guide us in creating a better tomorrow.

# data[].attributes.body
here's my first resource

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
RANDALL KENNEDY, Professor, Harvard Law School on the two alternative traditions relating to racism in America:

"I say that the best way to address this issue is to address it forthrightly, and straightforwardly, and embrace the complicated history and the complicated presence of America. On the one hand, that's right, slavery, and segregation, and racism, and white supremacy is deeply entrenched in America. At the same time, there has been a tremendous alternative tradition, a tradition against slavery, a tradition against segregation, a tradition against racism.

I mean, after all in the past 25 years, the United States of America has seen an African-American presence. As we speak, there is an African-American vice president. As we speak, there's an African- American who is in charge of the Department of Defense. So we have a complicated situation. And I think the best way of addressing our race question is to just be straightforward, and be clear, and embrace the tensions, the contradictions, the complexities of race in American life. I think we need actually a new vocabulary.

So many of the terms we use, we use these terms over and over, starting with racism, structural racism, critical race theory. These words actually have been weaponized. They are vehicles for propaganda. I think we would be better off if we were more concrete, we talked about real problems, and we actually used a language that got us away from these overused terms that actually don't mean that much. From Fahreed Zakaria, Global Public Square, CNN, December 26, 2021

Give your students new perspectives on race relations, on the history of the American Revolution, and on the contribution of the Founding Fathers to the cause of representative democracy. Check out TWM's Guide: TWO CONTRASTING TRADITIONS RELATING TO RACISM IN AMERICA and a Tragic Irony of the American Revolution: the Sacrifice of Freedom for the African-American Slaves on the Altar of Representative Democracy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
RANDALL KENNEDY, Professor, Harvard Law School on the two alternative traditions relating to racism in America: "I say that the best way to address this issue is to address it forthrightly, and straightforwardly, and embrace the complicated history and the complicated presence of America.

# data[].attributes.body
Here's my second resource

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Studies of Black History at the University of San Diego

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Color Purple Film and Discussion - Chloé Leclair - Studies of Black History at the University of San Diego

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Film, The Color Purple, Both Building Community and Creating Controversy Black History Month creates opportunities to celebrate black identity and community as well as the different dynamics and intersectionalities that exist in this community. February creates an opportunity to Continue reading →

# data[].attributes.body
Here's my third resource

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
To cite, use print source rather than this on-line version which may not reflect print copy format requirements or text lay-out and pagination. Join editorial staff
Case Study: The Color Purple on the Whiteboard
Baum, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer in Performance Studies, is a poet, playwright and performer.

The assigned high school reading of Alice Walker's The Color Purple was intended to rectify an imbalance in gendered and raced texts in the curriculum and increase Caucasian awareness of race. But the school administration failed to adequately prepare its predominantly white population and instead reinforced stereotypes about gender, race, and sexuality.

This case study reveals what happened when the novel The Color Purple was introduced into high school curriculum to correct gender and racial inequity in school readings. Administrators, well meaning but ill-informed, failed to prepare teachers-and therefore students-for the text's cultural biases. I address The Color Purple's resistance of canonical writing and the need for re-education of readers approaching unfamiliar cultures.

Dominant reading sources reflect "the canon": Euro-American (Western European or North American) literature, almost always written by men, commonly from an unconsciously privileged and/or colonial perspective. A movement to challenge-or unseat-the canon's dominance resulted in a flurry of sub-literatures by writers labelled "marginal" or "postcolonial," predictably resulting in alternative canons. The concept of "writing back to the Empire" has engendered a sense of Third World writers speaking for themselves, a required step to multi-cultural consciousness.

But alternative canons do not inherently re-condition readers to re-think plot, character, or voice: structuralist textual expectations prevail, readers adhere to canonical criteria structuring comprehension and predicting preference. Marginalized authors have argued that unless readers themselves shift from a "central" point-of-view there can be no conscious engagement with marginal texts. Readers must learn to read and comprehend in a "de-centralized" manner. Thus, non-canonical works necessitate re-contextualization: students must be encouraged to consider the suppressive forces underprivileged authors face, constructively grapple with ramifications of gender in writing and reading the marginal, and locate themselves within an ongoing academic argument about what constitutes literature and how to read it.

Texts introduced to satisfy gender imbalances in education may stir rather than quiet emotions. Not only an issue of male and female sex characteristics or roles, gender is a complex negotiation between individuals and societies, affecting every part of life. In this study issues of race and its gendering, as well as sexual preference, provoked controversy in and out of the classroom.

In the early 1990s added , and begins the letter writing for which Celie lives. Nettie eventually marries the gentle missionary and, with Celie's help, returns to Celie's Southern home. Compounding blessed coincidences, the children stolen from Celie are not really her own siblings but progeny of Celie and her The Color Purple to its curriculum to rectify its balance of gendered and raced texts. Despite its horrible beginning and middle, this novel about two small African-American girls in the 20thcentury South, separated in childhood, reaches a happy end in two women reuniting. Celie's childhood-based upon 's great-great grandmother, whose master raped and impregnated her at age 11-is violently shattered by continuous rapes committed by her father. Pregnancies keep her from school, turning her-briefly-into a teenage mother; her progeny are immediately removed by their (and her) father; she is transferred to another man ("Mr. ___") for his sexual gratification and abuse. When sister Nettie's innocence is similarly threatened by Mr. ___, Nettie is serendipitously removed by missionaries, is taken to step-father and were raised by Nettie's missionaries. With Nettie's return Celie's family is complete.

In its narrative exchange of letters as the conduit for sisterhood, the novel promotes love of language and writing and displays the possibility of genuine love between unrelated women: the beautiful entertainer Shug Avery, Mr. ___'s long-term mistress, falls in love with Celie and eventually rescues her from a loveless marriage. The novel's representation of positive female characters is uncommonly powerful and forthright: women defend their honor, family, and rights; care for the sick, needy, and undeserving; work to ensure their families' livelihood; and keep society from absolute moral decay.

The school administration intended a positive and powerful gender and race identity role in author Alice Walker, a female African-American writer. Where single texts-or teachers-represent whole categories (concepts found in many high schools and perpetuated at the tertiary level), appears a superb choice. For , a forceful personality in American literature, "black and female" are only two possible signifiers. She is Southern, representing a regional voice typically granted to white males. (Even Margaret Mitchell's inclusion affirms wealthy white landowners with slaves as capital. In contrast, John Howard Griffin's 1962 novel Black Like Me, a romantic liaison between a black man and blind white woman, suggests that both are viewed as disabled: race is an issue only clinical blindness can overcome and only romance can mitigate.)

Forthrightly identifying with , imports sharecroppers, educated in "prestigious American colleges," and "scarred by the poverty of her origins" (Christian 15), Roots writer Alex Haley's "authenticity" to a postmodern female context. Daughter of poor says, "Because I'm black and I'm a woman and because I was brought up poor and because I'm a Southerner...the way I see the world is quite different from the way many people see it. I could not help but have a radical vision of society" ( 106).

also writes sympathetically about lesbianism without placing same sex desire before plot, reality, or heterosexual discourse. [1] Travelling a feminist route that espouses non-feminist writing, bypasses those critical of all feminist or lesbian platforms, calling herself "womanist":

A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women's culture, women's emotional flexibility...and women's strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally universalist, as in "Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige, and black?" (Walker 1983: xi)

With this personal mandate rejects social labelling that fixes categories and dictates behavior. She does not apologize for or explain her desires; periodic political changes; or inclusive vision of color. This makes a palatable representative of race, gender, even same-sex desire-tempered with heteronormativity.

And fame. with its story of two black girls whose loyalty cannot be severed by separation, expatriation, or dehumanization. In 1983 the novel, on The Color Purple (1982) swept the The New York Times best-selling list for weeks, earned both the American Book Award for Fiction and the Pulitzer Prize. With Steven Spielberg's decision to screen the novel-maintaining its name- was catapulted to the celebrity recognition reserved for actors.

Woods High administrators' first priority was to study a female writer's work. a solid role model for The Color Purple's measurable financial success made all students, many encountering female writing in the curriculum for the first time. Yet the majority did not share 's racial characteristics; the minority opposed 's "universal" platform; and it is difficult to explain how a work making so positive a statement about lesbianism evaded the careful censorship applied to high school curricula.
Big Screen
When Warner Brothers approached to write the screenplay for The Color Purple, Walker did not know who Spielberg was. Although she later gave up on writing the screenplay, ostensibly because she did not support the project, in 1985 permitted adaptation, telling her daughter, "Well, maybe if he can do Martians, he can do us" (Dworkin 68).

The comparison was not an idle one: the novel did uncommonly celebrate common people. The Color Purple is brilliant, engaging, and deeply moving; writes simply but eloquently about domestic violence and child sexual assault. The novel is exhilarating for its direct treatment of love between women and veneration of women in general, whether societally unattractive (ugly, big, or strong) or accustomed to the male gaze and the dubious privileges sexual objectification carries. The majority of the epistolary novel is comprised of Celie's letters, in uneducated, phonetically written speech, including secret letters to God in which she divulges her father's violations.

All the virtues of the book-its gumption and directness and the potency of its private, vernacular vision of anguish-are evident in the first half of this section. hauls you in by serving up rape, incest, and infanticide on the first two pages, reported by a fourteen-year-old girl who doesn't know what's happening to her. It's a shock the reader doesn't recover from until, sixty or seventy pages later, the bells of sisterhood begin to peal so loudly that they drown out everything else in the book. (Vineberg 95)

While powerfully presenting the issues, the movie soft-coats the unremitting horror of Celie's childhood, the girls' epistolary achievement, and occludes 's seminal arguments about female agency and friendship. There is no acknowledgement of the depth of passion between Celie and Shug, but instead the chaste, companionable female love of Victorian novels. No lesbian romance supersedes the heterosexual, only a tepid bath scene in which desire is made apparent-and apparently doused. Kabir writes,

The presence of lesbian sexual desire in the written texts has been deliberately erased in the screen versions, possibly because the film industry has until recently been reluctant to grant screen space to something as progressive and disruptive as lesbian identity. (Kabir 113)

Public reactions were extreme:

Since its premiere... The Color Purple... provoked constant controversy, debate and appraisals of its effects on the image of Black people in the U.S. [However,] one of the problems most of the film's reviewers have in trying to analyse the film... is to make sense of the overwhelming positive response from Black female viewers. (Bobo 90-92) [2]

The film's portrayal of black life and female friendship was unusually apt; but many spectators protested Spielberg's trivializing of 's statements about sexuality and relationships. Most disappointingly, Celie's and Nettie's sisterhood, enduring grievous assaults on body and memory, was presented as the accomplishment of male intervention.

Woods High School students found the novel so compelling that they forgot the author's involvement, completely negating Walker as a positive role model-or, because of autobiographical nature of essays at secondary level-conflated Walker with her novel's subjects, seeing her alternatively as an ugly, abused black woman (neglecting Celie's many successes) or an exotically beautiful yet dependent black woman (Shug Avery). Students' access to the movie is probably most to blame for this latter identification. John Peacock notes, "While far behind the number one and two best-sellers up until then... The Color Purple had the distinction of being the only video in the top hundred all-time best sellers to date that was concerned with black feminist issues" (Peacock 127 n.1).

It is also possible that teachers, ignoring tutorial design, skipped over the biographical material, plunging directly into the text. In any case, students were not guided to adopt a different reading protocol towards non-canonical, specifically raced and gendered texts. The "capsule," moreover, failed to distinguish between story and stereotype. Harpo and Sofia emulated Stepin Fetchit's comic timing; Goldberg's tremulous coming of confidence became a comic scene ending in a grinning media caricature. [3] Thus one student commented: "Black people, well-they're naturally funny, aren't they?"

's beautiful specificity was lost in the translation from teacher objective to student reception. Students variously described the story:

It was really sad, how black people live. I mean, the black people are all poor because they were slaves. They aren't slaves in the book though, but they're still poor and they don't know how to read or write...

And the girl has a baby because she's ugly and can't get married, so her father does it to her, but because she gets pregnant he has to kill the baby...

But later the man who does the rape is okay, because he puts the sisters together again, so all is forgiven.

While these students felt they had understood the novel, and indeed achieved an empathetic relationship to the primary female characters, what they understood contravened curricular intentions. The module in fact presented what the students received-but the film interfered:

Then she gets married to Danny Glover. But her husband can't stand her, 'cause he loves the beautiful one. Celie loves her too, only she can't really because Shug isn't like that. She wasn't beaten up and...wasn't raped...she's a normal woman.

The students unfortunately made a connection-common to fairytales upon which they were raised-between physiognomy and virtue. Both Shug and Nettie are sexually objectified, and mostly good things happen to them; Celie, repeatedly labelled ugly-even by Shug herself- suffers a range of brutality by male perpetrators. Finally, Sofia, who defies women's normative behavior, is grossly punished by white society.

White students' mixing of character and actor is indicative of the association they feel exists between black Americans' story-life and reality. These students didn't personally know blacks because of a faithful economic demarcation securing relatively wealthy white kids in private schools close to their own elite neighborhoods, and blacks, Chicanos, and disadvantaged whites in public schools at the outskirts. Apart from the rare (and speedy) drive past rough, lower class neighborhoods, blacks were visible only on television, which featured three seasoned representations of black family life: The Cosby Show, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and Family Matters-sitcoms dedicated to proving rich black folks just as vapid, materialist, and apolitical as rich white folks. Renunciation of the novel's same-sex pathos demonstrates the students' inability to de-centralize or allow novelties in race and gender to suggest other differences. While reading, therefore, students received impressions of American blackness that supported what they heard of inner-city black life and opposed what they saw of black life.

Woods' students emotional kinship with black tv families was actually usurped by exposure to The Color Purple: if black people could behave so badly and live so poorly, then they were truly Other. Black segregation was, ironically, justified by a text denouncing black shame and exploitation.

Unable to grasp the people they encountered in novel form, they also failed to distinguish between norms inculcated by inferior financial status, economic hardship, and white heterosexist ideology. This is not the novel's fault, [4] but a problem in reading. Bobo explains the necessary act of reading from the margins:

A viewer of a film (reader of a text) comes to the moment of engagement with the work with a knowledge of the world and a knowledge of other texts, or media products. What this means is that...she/he does not leave her/his histories, whether social, cultural, economic, racial, or sexual at the door. An audience member from a marginalized group (people of colour, women, the poor, and so on) has an oppositional stance as they participate in mainstream media. The motivation for this counter-reception is that...mainstream media has never rendered our segment of the population faithfully. (Bobo 96)

Marginalized readers learn to locate themselves in dominant texts. The practice typically employed by dominant readers is to whitewash privilege for the duration of the reading. For all its humility, humanity, and delightful audacity, The Color Purple could not be accepted as the text it is, but only as the text it appeared to be, refracted by whiteness into an impoverished picture of African-American life.

[1] Many lesbian critics hesitated to embrace The Color Purple as a lesbian novel. renée c. hoogland's "unequivocal ambivalence" about Celie's lesbian-or sexual-subjectivity is a case in point (hoogland 1997).

[2] Black and white women viewers were positive for different reasons; Bobo's thesis is interested only in articulating the black female debate. Bobo expands upon this chapter in her book (Bobo 1995).

[3] Karen Ross critiques the "forgettable and undemanding" characters Whoopi Goldberg has played in a career beginning with award of 's Golden Globe for Best Actress in The Color Purple. She adds: "But perhaps part of Goldberg's appeal may be precisely that her characterizations provide a comforting respite from the constant negotiations about race which other films featuring black performers require, since her ethnicity is never a controversial issue. [When] the storyline does turn on racial identity...race is not really prefigured in any meaningful way" (Ross 24-25).

, Jacqueline. " The Color Purple: Black Women as Cultural Readers." Female Spectators: Looking at Film and Television. Ed. E. Deidre Pribram. : Verso, 1988. 90-109.

Christian, Barbara T., ed. " Everyday Use:" Alice Walker. NJ: Press, 1994.

Davis, Thadious M. "Alice Walker's Celebration of Self in Southern Generations." " Everyday Use:" Alice Walker. Ed. Barbara T. Christian. NJ: Press, 1994. 105-122.

Ross, Karen. Black and White Media: Black Figures in Popular Film and Television. NY: Polity Press, 1996.

Vineberg, Steve. No Surprises, Please: Movies in the Reagan Decade. NY: Macmillan Books, 1993.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Case Study: The Color Purple on the Whiteboard

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
To cite, use print source rather than this on-line version which may not reflect print copy format requirements or text lay-out and pagination. Join editorial staff Case Study: The Color Purple on the Whiteboard Baum, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer in Performance Studies, is a poet, playwright and performer.

# data[].attributes.body
Reflecting on my experience of converting my rhetorical analysis into a digital project, I found it to be a far more enjoyable endeavor than writing a traditional essay. The opportunity to incorporate images allowed me to enhance the visual appeal of my work while customizing the layout added a personal touch that really kept my engagement. This creative freedom made the project feel more interactive and engaging, transforming what could have been a monotonous task into an exciting one. Overall, I found the digital project to be a far more rewarding and enjoyable experience compared to the conventional essay format. the digital project over the essay.