By Alice Walker
This epistolary novel, set in the American south of the 1920s-40s, is told primarily through the words of Celie, a poor black woman who suffers abuse initially at the hands of her stepfather, by whom she bears two children, and later by her husband, a widower who seems to see Celie as a stepmother for his six children and a maid. We learn of Celie's lot through letters she writes to God. Though she is not happy, her letters are uncomplaining. But she is pleased when her husband takes a lover, Shug Avery, who is kind to Celie and helps her find strength and learn to love.
Early in the story, Celie is separated from her beloved sister Nettie, who goes off to Liberia as a missionary. Nettie writes to Celie, but Celie's husband Albert (whom she refers to as Mr ______) has hidden the letters. When Shug finds the letters, Celie is furious with Mr _____ but delighted that her sister is alive. Nettie's life is centered on teaching and helping to care for the children of the missionary family with whom she lives. Nettie writes of great changes in the Olinkas' way of life, reminiscent of the Africans in Achebe's Things Fall Apart.
Meanwhile, changes are ever so slowly coming to the south as seen in the treatment of Sofia, the wife of Celie's stepson Harpo. Sofia is jailed when she and the town's white mayor have an argument; Sofia ends up working as a maid to the family, and eventually decides to quit. In a scene near the story's end, Sofia shares her true feelings with the family's daughter who brings her baby son to show off to Sofia.
Celie's voice feels authentic and her story pulls the reader in. Alice Walker says she was influenced by the writer Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God.
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