Race and Class in Alice Walkers Color Purple Essay -- Color Purple Es

Essay on Race and Class in The glossary Purple An importantjuncture in Alice Walkers The Color Purple is reached whenCelie first recovers the lacking(p) letters from her long-lost sister Nettie.This discovery not only signals the introduction of a new narrator to thisepistolary novel but also begins the transformation of Celie from writer toreader. Indeed, the passage in which Celie struggles to puzzle out themarkings on her first envelope from Nettie provides a concrete illustrationof both Celies particular horizon of interpretation and Walkers chosenapproach to the epistolary formSaturday morning Shug put Nettie letter in my lap. Little fat queen ofEngland stamps on it, plus stamps that got peanuts, coconuts, rubber treesand say Africa. I dont know where England at. Dont know where Africa ateither. So I stir dont know where Nettie at. (102)Revealing Celies ignorance of even the most rudimentary outlines of thelarger world, this passage clearly defines the internal site she oc cupiesas the novels main narrator.(1) In particular, the difficulty Celie hasinterpreting this envelope underscores her tendency to understand events interms of personal consequences rather than political categories. Whatmatters ab... .... 99-111.Shelton, open W. Alienation and Integration in Alice Walkers The Color Purple. CLA Journal 28 (1985) 382-92.Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Explanation and Culture Marginalia. Humanities and Society 2 (1974) 201-21.Stade, George. Womanist Fiction and Male Characters. Partisan brush up 52 (1985) 264-70.Tate, Claudia. Domestic Allegories of Political Desire The Black Heroines Text at the Turn of the Century. New York Oxford UP, 1992.Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs The Cultural Work of American Fiction. New York Oxford UP, 1985.Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York Harcourt, 1982.