~The Color Purple~ Now THIS is my kinda book!, February 1, 2001
Reviewer: *Noel Jackson* from LA
     Written by Alice Walker and published in 1982, The Color Purple is tremendously under rated. Although it won a Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for fiction, it didn't go well with the male population because they said it was a "makes men look bad" kind of book. I personally think that men didn't want to believe they could be so cruel. The Color Purple is about a puzzled young girl named Celie who grows within from her many wonderful and many not-so-wonderful experiences to have the courage to ask for more, and to fight for true happiness. The book is written in the form of letters to God and to Celie's sister, one of the gracious people who gave her hope and saved Celie from a life of grief. Throughout the story Celie learns how to read, learns how to fight back, and learns how to love. The thing I liked most about The Color Purple is it's captivating form- the letters. It makes the pages go by quickly, like you are reading a diary or a journal of someone important. Because you are seeing things from her perspective, it genuinely makes you feel her pain and see the hell she is going through. When she is abused, you want to sob with her, and when she is victorious a smile runs from ear to ear. The big things that kind of take away from the book, though, are the letters from Nettie. The Color Purple is going strong until Nettie's letters intrude with stories of Africa and Celie's long lost children. The letters were very repetitive, and not to mention never ending! I've barely heard or seen of her sister or kids and all of a sudden they cut in while the book is approaching its climax. I want to know what Celie is going to do about her wicked husband, her relative in jail, and the best friend she has ever known that is trying to leave. I don't care about anything else right now. Although I could've lived without them, the precious letters of Nettie contributed to the book by letting Celie know that her only blood family was still alive, and that they would be coming home to her shortly. From reading this book, I learned that you truly are what you believe you are, and you only accomplish what you believe you can. In the beginning, Celie thought she was nothing because everyone who knew her, excluding Nettie, told her that. As the book goes on, Celie gets more confidence within from the people surrounding her and makes her way to the top. Instead of lying there, when Celie gets knocked down, she gets right back up again and keeps on climbing. By the end of the story, she is everything she ever dreamed of. Celie is a working lady with her own pants shop, she is a mother with her two returned children, and she is a role model for women who were once like her. I think this is exactly what Walker hoped for in writing this. The Color Purple is a good read for inspiration, but its audience should be a mature one. The book's print has adult language and explicit sexual content. I recommend The Color Purple to anyone above the age of thirteen, who wants to read an original, remarkably outstanding novel.

An Amazing Book, January 16, 2001
Reviewer: Christie Brees from Hamilton, Oh, U.S.A.
     I recently read The Color Purple by Alice Walker. I thought it was an amazing novel. I definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking for a heartfelt story with many lessons to be learned from it. Many themes were presented in this book. The relationships between white and black people were shown. And also the relationships between men and women. Whites treated blacks as if they we're below them, and men were always dominant over women. Throughout the novel, Celie, the main character, struggles to find herself and to overcome the burdens placed on her by society for being a black woman. Through her letters to God, the reader learns Celie's true feelings about the world around her. With the help of her sister Nettie and her lover Shug, Celie truly does find herself and learns many lessons along the way. She learns to stand up for herself, and to be proud of what she is. She is a great role model. Alice Walker did an excellent job of making the characters seem real. When I read this book, I felt for the characters in a way I've never felt reading any other novel. When Celie was sad, I was sad. When she was happy, so was I. I felt like I knew her as a friend. All of the emotions in The Color Purple really had an effect on me. All in all, this novel is inspiring, emotional, and extremely powerful. I would recommend it to anyone. 

My Thoughts, January 21, 2001
Reviewer: Ashley from Hamilton, OH USA
The Color Purple:

     The novel The Color Purple is a very interesting book. After reading the first few journal entries that Celie has written to God, the author Alice Walker has the reader hooked. In this novel she uses the characters to show the contrast between the blacks and whites, men and women, and how they were separated in the early years of the 20th century. In this novel the reader is even shown how a woman's husband can be her husband whether she loves him or not, and how he has the capability to keep her from having any contact with her sister for almost her whole life. In this case that is when Celie is not even allowed to receive the letters her sister has been writing her for years, because Mr. ______ is keeping them from her. This novel can be difficult to read at certain points due to the way Alice Walker uses a certain dialect with Celie, and everything isn't grammatically correct. Also the way that she uses proper grammar whenever there is a letter from Nettie, to show how well educated she is, although she's a black woman. The way that the author switches back and forth using the two different ways of speaking in the letters they are writing, it can get confusing. But this makes the book interesting to read, because she (Alice Walker) has incorporated everything very well, it's the way it actually would be, and it keeps the reader hooked, and not wanting to put the book down. Everything in the book is believable, although when trying to make it believable, some parts can be a bit disturbing, such as the scenes between Celie and Shug, and when Celie is describing things to God that happened between her father and her. The events that occur in the book show how Celie can go from being a woman and being put through so many bad things in her life, and towards the end of the book, with everything she's gone through, she has become a strong woman who can now stand up for herself and what she believes in. If you want to know more about what happens to the characters, you'll just have to go get the book yourself and read it, because I would recommend it to anyone. This is one very good book, that expresses some problems with discrimination that we still experience in our society today. It's worth it.

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