The Compromises Of 'The Color Purple'

Another dazzling adaptation of Alice Walker’s iconic 1982 novel hits theaters — again raising the question of whether Hollywood is equipped to handle it.

There was a time when you couldn’t go to a Black woman’s home and there wasn’t a copy of Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” lying around somewhere, probably dogeared with highlighted passages. Published in 1982, the novel comforted, challenged and mirrored many Black women. It was the literary form of saying, “I see you, I hear you, I am you.”

Tracing the journey of a demure Black girl named Celie in early 1900s Mississippi who finds her way out of decades of abuse by men in her family through the help and love of Black women, “The Color Purple” was for Black women, about Black women and by a Black woman.

Particularly in the ’80s, when Black women’s voices, accomplishments and experiences were not only devalued but unacknowledged, that trusting, intimate dialogue the book sparked was special. Spectacular even.

So, it meant something when the novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1983. It even meant something when it was later adapted into a 1985 movie starring Whoopi Goldberg as Celie, and Oprah Winfrey as her friend and stepdaughter-in-law, Sofia. But, it was helmed by Steven Spielberg, a white male director.

That was supposed to mean that more people would see and engage with an indelible Black women’s story.