THE SHADOWED IDENTITY: A STUDY OF ALICE WALKER’S THE COLOR PURPLE

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THE SHADOWED IDENTITY: A STUDY OF ALICE WALKER’S THE COLOR PURPLE

Journal Title: Academic Research International - Year 2012, Vol 2, Issue 2

Abstract

 The term Afro-American as a literary genre started to be considered from the so-called Harlem Renaissance at the beginning of the twentieth century; in fact, Harlem Renaissance can be considered as the spring of Afro-American voice: it was the moment in which scholars started to revive all the forgotten texts written by American Blacks, considering them within the frame of a literary tradition rooted in the time of slavery. In this way, this new perspective intends to articulate a new concept in literature in which the Black voice plays a role. Women struggle everyday against discrimination: color, gender, illiteracy, violence, insecurity, lack of equal opportunities; the list is long and bleak. Celie is an example of an African-American woman exerting her right of self-defining. She represents any black woman’s experience but, above all, her own. Her voice stands for a whole community but, at the same time, she also claims her right of speaking as an individual voice. Her experience is similar to that of many other black women: she had to bear the same type of discrimination, being always “the other” (the non- white and the non- man.) and she finds her path towards her own self through the written language. Therefore, Celie is, above all, an individual searching for her place in society. In the same way, Alice Walker is also female Afro-American but, most of all, a writer searching for her place in literature; and the great popularity of her book together with the Pulizer Prize for Fiction in 1983 to The Color Purple confirm that she has found that space.

Authors and Affiliations

Shilpa Shukla, Niroj Banerji

Keywords

Shadowed Identity Alice Walker Color Purple

EP ID EP161315
DOI -
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