The Color Purple

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Summary: Must Read!!
Review: I highly recommend this book to anyone! The story of how a young, abused, uneducated black woman living in seclusion should be an inspiration to us all. It does get a little explicit at times when Celie discusses such sexual aspects of her life, but the literary quality and heartwarming message by far outweigh that

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Summary: One of my all time favorites!!
Review: Alice Walker deserves the highest honors for writting one of the best books of all times. Her descriptive style is one to marvel at and wonder "how can she see through the eyes of the women?" This book should be read by men and women, blacks people and white people, the old and the young. No matter what stage you are in life, The Color Purple has something to offer you. Nettie, Celie, Shug and Sofia are now part of my family and I had a hard time putting the book down, so I just read it again for the third time

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Summary: Definatly should not be on any schools required reading list
Review: Although the author probobly had good intentions of writing a good book she failed. The entire book is full of descriptive sex. Including man to woman and woman to woman. It is gross and an all around bad read. Why would any school require 15 year olds to read it

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Summary: I owned it, I shared it, I lost it, I need to buy it again!
Review: This book makes you laugh, cry, learn and think. It is the most extraordinarily written account of a girl-child and the woman that she grew to be, that I have ever read. The relationships she had with men and women are vivid in their detail and stunning in their impact. The main character, Celie portrays a strength combined with dependency that is remarkably real

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Summary: This is a wonderful book that I have ever read.
Review: I can not stop of reading "The Color Purple." This is a wonderful book that I have ever read. She, the main character, had her father's babies. She is her children's mother and sister. What kind of life does she have? Could you imagine

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Summary: beauty in words
Review: Simple beauty. The beauty about what life is. Sisters, friends, love, money, family, sex. Celie found the beauty even while being treated like an animal. These are life lessons, not black lessons. And I for one have learned more about life, love and myself for having read it.

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Summary: Teenagers love it
Review: I marvel at how many teenagers want to read this book when it is an alternative

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Summary: A Celebration of the Human Spirit ?
Review: As an objective study of racism, feminism, and personal development, "The Color Purple" stretches fiction's limits. Difficult to determine the literary value of this book, there is a fine line between genius and insanity. What the novel imparts to its reader is debatable as well. At first glance, it appears a poorly written hodge-podge collection of an abused woman's diary entries, a black sympathy story whose publication can be justified by the author's ethnic heritage. There must, however, be something more. There is a certain quality, charisma, ambiance difficult to positively identify: Could it be hope? The strength of the human spirit? The eventual triumph of eclectic characters over their impoverished circumstances, motivated by personal ethos? If "The Color Purple" represents joie de vivre in strange places, the novel accomplishes its title mission. Perhaps I, the mystified reader, have missed the point entirely. An epic literary work this book is not; an exercise in reading between the R-rated lines seems more likely. Regarding the minimal inspiration squeezed from pages dripping with violence, anger, confusion, bisexuality and despair, "The Color Purple" is not for those reflective readers looking for the meaning of life on a Sunday afternoon. Finding some thematic value on an unlikely Wednesday is somehow satisfactory.

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Summary: A powerful, uplifting book
Review: "The Color Purple" is one of the strongest statements of how love transforms and cruelty disfigures the human spirit that this reviewer has ever read. Alice Walker gives us Celie, 14 years old when the book opens, who has been raped, abused, degraded and twice impregnated by her stepfather. After he takes her children away from her without a so much as a word, he marries her off like a piece of chattel to her husband, who is so cold, distant and inhuman to her that she can only refer to him as Mr; and this person deprives her of her sister Nettie, the only one who ever loved her. Celie manages to survive by living one day at a time. Her life is a series of flat, lifeless panoramas painted in browns and grays. Into this existence, if you can call it that, comes Shug Avery, her husband's mistress, who shows Celie her own specialness and uniqueness. A lot has been made about lesbianism in this book and all of it is beside the point. Celie isn't a lesbian, she is a human being in need of love and Shug Avery helps Celie realize that she is somebody worth loving and caring about. When Celie hurls her defiance into Mr's face -- "I'm poor, I'm black, I may be ugly... but I'm here", she is making an affirmation not only to him, but to the whole world; the reader can only say, along with Shug Avery, "Amen". When Celie finds the strength to leave Mr, he is left to face the reality of himself and what he sees isn't pretty; his transformation humanizes him and allows Celie to call him Albert, recognizing him as a person, as he finally recognizes her as one. The final chapter, in which Celie is reunited with her sister, makes many readers go through half a box of Kleenex, but Walker doesn't play cheap with the reader's emotions; she has a powerful story to tell and she tells it with such consummate skill and sensitivity that she brings us into it and makes it ours. This is a book to be treasured and read over and over again.

Rating:
Summary: Magnificent book!
Review: This is the most magnificent books I have read. Filled with sadness and turmoil, so full of truth....so determined. I came from a life of abuse (child). Though I have read mostly memoirs like NIGHTMARES ECHO, I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS and BEAUTY FOR ASHES to try and help aide in the healing process. I have found that this book COLOR PURPLE has also helped me in so many ways to understand the feelings that go on inside someone that comes from abuse. This is truly a page turner. So Magnificent.