2014-08 - The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

08 - The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
WHY I PICKED IT: Book Club
ELAPSED TIME: 2 days
RATING: Very Very Good

What a fantastic story.  Celie is a black woman in the Southern USA, and this is her story.  Told through letters that she writes to God, and her sister (Nettie), and letters her sister writes to her. 

Walker does a great job at writing a story that raises so many issues (and in a believable voice!):
- Race - From the prison-industrial complex, to the lynching of successful black people. From the impact on white kids of being raised by black women, to how white people treat black folks.
- Gender - From forced marriage and rape, to gender roles within the family.
- Sexuality - Homosexuality occurs without any internal bias; it's simply about emotional connection and physical gratification.
- Family - A family can be many different things, and is ultimately what you make for yourself.
- God and Religion - Love that poor and relatively uneducated people also ask questions like: What is God? and Why do we exist?

More than these themes though, this is a story of a woman with few choices who navigates a life and builds a family for herself.  It is warm and loving, and I highly recommend it.