Now I understand what the fuss was all about. In the heart of this novel, is the search for authentic love. A love that respects, redeems and inspires. Set in rural Georgia, against the backdrop of racial inequality and slavery, the book is presented in epistolary form, a format I particularly like. Celie writes to God about the sexual and physical abuses she has experienced from her Pa and her now husband, Mr. ____. She writes of her oppressed life and how she misses her sister Nettie who she presumes is dead. She accepts her fate until she finds love, and later her true self and voice in the most unlikely character of Shug Avery, her husband's ex-girlfriend who has come to live with them. A very powerful and moving read.
'You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy.'(opening line)
'She say, To tell the truth, you remind me of my mama. She under my daddy thumb. Naw, she under my daddy foot. Anything he say, goes. She never say nothing back. She never stand up for herself. Try to make a little half stand sometime for the children but that always backfire. More she stands up for us, the harder time he give her. He hate children and he hate where they come from. Tho from all the children he got, you'd never know it.'(46)
'I remember one time you said your life made you fell so ashamed you couldn't even talk about it to God, you had to write it, bad as you thought your writing was. Well, now I know what you meant. And whether God will read letters or no, I know you will go on writing them; which is guidance enough for me.'(122)
'There is always someone to look after the Olinka woman. A father. An uncle. A brother or nephew. Do not be offended, Sister Nettie, but our people pity women such as you who are cast out, we know not from where, into a world unknown to you, where you must struggle all alone, for yourself.'(149)
'There is a way that the men speak to women that reminds me too much of Pa. They listen just long enough to issue instructions. They don't even look at women when women are speaking. They look at the ground and bend their heads toward the ground. The women also do not "look in a man's face" as they say. To "look in a man's face" is a brazen thing to do. They look instead at his feet or his knees. And what can I say to this? Again, it is our own behavior around Pa.'(149)
'I think Africans are very much like white people back home, in that they think they are the center of the universe and that everything that is done is done for them.'(155)
'Maybe just living together, loving people makes them look like you, I said. You know how much some old married people look alike.'(158)
'...unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.'(169)
'She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.'(176)
'Here's the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everything else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don't know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit.'(177)
'Yeah, it. God ain't a he or a she, but a it.
But what do it look like? I ast.
Don't look like nothing, she say. It ain't a picture show. It ain't somethng you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you've found it.'(177-178)
'Well, us talk and talk bout God, but I'm still adrift. Trying to chase that old man out of my head. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?). Not the little wildflowers. Nothing.'(179)
'There's something in all of us that wants a medal for what we have done. That wants to be appreciated.'(210)
'I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering bout the big things and asting bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things that you start out with. The more I wonder, he say, the more I love.
And people start to love you back, I bet, I say.'(247)
First Washington Square Press printing June, 1983
251 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge
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# 62 - Petty
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