precis&bib5n6

Tucker,Lindsey . "Alice Walker's The Color Purple: Emergent Woman, Emergent Text ." Black American Literature Forum 22.1 (1988): 81-95. Depaul Umiversity Chicago,IL. May 5, 2009 http://www.jstor.com/.

Alice Walker, aware of black women as a particularly muted group, has addressed herself in much of her work to the problem of the black woman as a creator. "You'd better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kil your mammy" These words, uttered by the presumed farther who is also the rapist of his daughter and who has twice impregnated her, astablish not only the primacy of a male text, but also convey the essence of patriarchal repression-a silencing of the young Celie that leaves no recourse but communication with a transcendent white male diety. Celie needs to be able to name in order to establish selfhood.Quilting in particular operates as a rich metaphor for Walker because it involves the making of a useful object form material which is customarily regarded as worthlelss: scraps and throwaways. needlework is also the means by which Nettie uncovers the proof of Celie's maternity. Having become intrgued by the quilting of the Olinka, the children's adoptive mother decides to begin a quilt, and in hunting for scraps for it Nettie comes upon the material that Corrine had purchased when Celie and the adoptive years before.

6

Hamilton,cynthia . "Alice Walker's Politics or the Politics of The Color Purple" Journal of Black Studies vol. 18.3(1988): 379-391. Depaul Umiversity Chicago,IL. May 18, 2009 http://www.jstor.com/.

in this atmosphere it is safe to return to the Moynihan thesis; it is safe for white American to exonerate the black matriarchy and for lack men to denounce it; safe to look at dereriorating black family life and proclaim its cause as the historcally mounting antagonism between black men and women. only though individual initiative, she implies, can the solutions be found: women must find their solutions outside the home and motherhood, in enterprise, entertainment, and education.All of these writers miss theirs is not the vision of a new society,
but rather the old society in black and now female face. in fact that may be the very issue that ought to be addressed. it is the voice of the victim, particularly the victim of rape. the resulting degradation has manifested itself in particular socioeconomic conditions for blacks and more specifically to a set of stereotypes to explain and characterize black women.in attempting to break away from these stereotypes to find their own historial subject, black women writers have explored the idea of women as victims, of their own anger and frustration, of genderlessness in a world dominated by gender roles. some may argue that Walker has not used stereotypes but rather "metephors" to point out irony in what others see as "the progress of the group." yet another irony in the treatment of the female characters in the book concerns "motherhood."

precis 3 & 4

#3

ON THE COLOR PURPLE, STEREOTYPES AND SILENCE

The tale of the novel's popularity is the tale of the media' ability, once again, to dictate the tastes of the reading public, and to attemkpt to shape what is acceptable creation by black American writers. These readers, who do not identify with the chareacters and who do not feel the intensity of their pain, stand back and view the events of the novel as a cirxus of black human interactions that rivals anything Daniel Patrick Moynihan concocted. The spectator readers show what damage the novel can have; for them, the book reinforces racist stereotypes they may have been heir to and others of which they may have only dreamed. After all, a large number of readers, usually vocal and white, and decided that The Color Purple is the quintessential statement on Afro-American women and a certain kind of black lifestyle in these United States. what matters is cruelty, vilence, keeping the truth from others who need it, suppressing someone's will of talent, taking more that you need from people of nature, and failing to choose for yourself.

Selzer, linda."Race and Domesticity in The Color Purple" African American Review,29.1(1995):67-82 JStor Depaul U. Chicago, may 5th, 2009

#4

Race and Domesticity in The Color Purple

An important jucture in Alice Walker's The Color Purple is reached when Celie first recovers the missing letter from her ling list sister Nettie. This discovery not only signals the introduction of a new narrator to this spistolaru novel but also begins the transformation of Celie from writher to reader. Indeed, critics from vrious aesthetic and political camps have commented on what they perceive as a tension between public and private discourse in the novel. Thus, in analyzing Celie's representation of national indentity...discourages in the novel and concludes that Celie's narrative ultimately emphasizes "individual essence in false opposition to institutional history". Thus, Butler Evans finds that Celie's "private life preempts the exploration of the publiclives of blacks". ...Celie's family oriented point of view and modes of expression can displace race and class analyses to the point that the "nonbiological abstraction of class relations virtually disappears".

Harris , Trudier. "ON THE COLOR PURPLE, STEREOTYPE, AND SILENCE." Black American Literature Forum,18.4(1985): 155-161. JStor Depaul U. Chicago, may 5th, 2009