%0 Journal Article
%T Toward the Survival and Wholeness of the African American Community: A Womanist Reading of Alice Walker¡¯s The Color Purple (1982)
%A Terrence Musanga
%A Theophilus Mukhuba
%J Journal of Black Studies
%@ 1552-4566
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0021934719835083
%X This article attempts a womanist reading of Alice Walker¡¯s The Color Purple. Walker provides a gendered perspective of what it means to be ¡°black,¡± ¡°ugly,¡± ¡°poor,¡± and a ¡°woman¡± in America. This perspective is ignored in the majority of male-authored African American texts that privilege race and class issues. Being ¡°black,¡± ¡°poor,¡± ¡°ugly,¡± and a ¡°woman,¡± underscores the complexity of the African American woman¡¯s experience as it condemns African American women into invisibility. However, Walker¡¯s characters like Celie, Sofia, Shug, Mary Agnes, and Nettie fight for visibility and assist each other as African American women in their quest for freedom and independence in a capitalist, patriarchal, and racially polarized America. This article therefore maps out Celie¡¯s evolution from being a submissive and uneducated ¡°nobody¡± (invisible/voiceless) to a mature and independent ¡°someone¡± (visibility/having a voice). Two important womanist concepts namely ¡°family¡± and ¡°sisterhood¡± inform this metamorphosis as Walker underscores her commitment to the survival and wholeness of African American people
%K womanism
%K African American experience
%K gender
%K sisterhood
%K family
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0021934719835083