The Color Purple (For Further Study)

For Further Study

• Richard Abcarian, Negro American Literature, Wadworth, California, 1970.

  An early but fundamental commentary on African American literature, its roots and importance. There is a deep discussion of Richard Wright's novel.

• Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, Cambridge, 1954.

  An early, fundamental source to understand the problem of prejudice, and racism in general, and to help define concepts such as visibility and difference.

• Barbara Christian, editor, Black Feminist Criticism, Pergamon Texto, University of California Press, 1985.

  A number of essays about black literature from the feminist criticism perspective.

• Arthur Davis and Michael W. Peplow, Anthology of Negro American Literature, Holt, New York, 1975.

  A collection of critical essays on early African American literature.

• Leslie Fiedler, "Negro and Jew: Encounter in America", in No! In Thunder, Stein and Day, New York, 1972.

  An interesting article by a very well-known critic about the relationships between Jews and African Americans in the United States.

• Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Power in America, Bantam, 1985, p. 186.

  Giddings, a historian, discusses the role of color and its impact on achievement. She offers supporting evidence that African Americans of mixed race (with lighter skin color) had better educational and economic opportunities than those with dark skin color.

• Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, editors. Ethnicity: Theory and Experience, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1975.

  A study of the relationships between "Self" and "Other," written after some important observations of the sixties.

• Jacquelyn Grant, "Womanist Theology: Black Woman's Experience as a Source for Doing Theology," in Encyclopedia of African American Religions, Garland, 1993, p. 1.

  Grant explains the concept of womanist as opposed to feminist. A distinction in terminology is made for black women because their struggle for expression has been different from white women.

• Bell Hooks, Ain't I Woman: Black Women and Feminism, South End, 1981.

  Hooks discusses the sexual assault black women endured after the end of slavery and the passive role of black women after World War II.

• Charles Frederick Marden and Gladys Meyer, Minorities in American Society, Van Nostrand, New York, 1973.

  An early study of ethnic relationships in the United States. The most detailed section of the book is devoted to the problems faced by African Americans in the United States.

• S. Dale McLemore, Racial and Ethnic Relations in America, Allyn and Bacon, Boston, 1980.

  A much more advanced study of the subject of ethnic relations in the United States with a big section devoted to African Americans and a deep discussion of cultural versus racial differences and visibility.

• Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark, Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Picador, 1992.

  The essential, interesting ideas of Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison about African American literature, its roots, purposes and future.

• Carol Pearson and Katherine Pope, The Female Hero in American and British Literature, Bowker, New York, 1981.

  An essential study of women in literature that is very interesting for understanding the position of Celie as heroine in The Color Purple.

• Annis Pratt, Archetypal Patterns in Women's Fiction, Indiana University Press, Indiana, 1981.

  This study can be applied to the use of archetypes and myth in The Color Purple.

• Elaine Showalter, Towards a Feminist Poetics, Oxford, 1979.

  A study about feminist poetic theory, with interesting ideas that are applicable to The Color Purple.

• Claudia Tate, Black Women Writers at Work, Continuum, New York, 1983.

  A series of interviews with black female authors, including one with Alice Walker. The interviews have a distinctively feminist focus, making them especially interesting to anyone studying The Color Purple.

• Fannie Barrier Williams, in Paula Giddings's book, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Power in America, Bantam, 1985, p. 114.

  Williams discusses the historical attitude of black men toward black women, an attitude that devalued black women and assumed they were not virtuous.