Preface to the Chinese Edition of The Color Purple, revised, November, 2000
 
by Alice Walker   
 
 
In 1981 when I finished writing The Color Purple, I did so with a sense of having faithfully preserved certain aspects of my immediate ancestors’ - parents and grandparents - culture.  Their folk speech, for example; which I considered key to being able to empathize with and enjoy their rich inner spiritual and emotional life.   And of having honestly portrayed the oppression of women which was then and unfortunately continues to be, a large part of the world’s reality.
 
Though poorly reviewed and much attacked by critics after it appeared, The Color Purple, with its entirely ignored theological subtext, went on to win the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize of 1983.  It became extremely controversial, especially after Steven Speilberg produced it as an internationally acclaimed film, in 1985, and was a bestseller for several years - selling roughly seven million copies - while remaining on the new York Times bestseller list for a year and a half.
 
It was a major hit among women of all colors, classes and countries, which surprised and pleased me.  When I travelled to China in 1984 I was amazed to learn it had already been translated into Chinese and was being read there.  When I asked how this was possible - that my book should find such an enthusiastic audience among the Chinese - I was told with utmost sincerity:  “But Alice, it is a very Chinese story.”
 
Having read many Chinese stories and seen many Chinese films, as well as having visited China, I’ve come to understand why this is so.  Any story about the suffering, the struggle, the defeat or triumph of a peasant or working class woman whose life is thought worthless and not even her own, would seem familiar to readers who are Chinese.  Patriarchy, male rule, does, after all, look almost identical wherever it appears, anwhere in the world.
 
What I personally love about The Color Purple is its emphasis on human growth, on solidarity among women, on the possibility that men can soften, increase their ability to know joy, and to change.  I like its main character’s belated sense of being made whole through her friendship with and love of another woman; her vision of herself as being as precious as any other part of Creation.
 
It is a book I am delighted to share with the Chinese reader, male and female.  It speaks to the heart of what it means to be spiritually, emotionally and politically oppressed. And it does so in the voice of a poor woman of color who has experienced mostly hard, discouraging times in her life.  This woman, Celie, finds her way at last.  She finds love and meaningful work,  self respect and freedom, after a struggle so intense that it threatens to nullify her very soul.  The people in The Color Purple, women and men, never give up. They learn to love the changes they feared; and to sit calmly near each other at the end of the book, a reunited family and community, respectful of all its members, at last.

That this reunion happens at all was ignored by most reviewers.  
 
Years later I realize many of them had no idea such a coming together of people who have caused each other horrific suffering, is possible.  I also realize it was asking a lot of people who harbor prejudice against women, against men who love women, against women who love women,  against men who grow to appreciate friendship with women, and against people who worship nature,  to comprehend a novel in which all these things are possible.  It was asking a lot of people who considered the sound of their ancestors’ “broken” speech embarrassing.  
 
And yet, within that “broken” speech can be heard, and learned, the entire history of what was done to them.
 
In writing to serve the culture, in this case specifically my own culture of Southern African Americans, I felt I was holding up a mirror to a largeness and a freedom in them, and a capacity to love every last aspect of themselves,  and an absence of shame, that they all too often feared.
 
What is the writer’s job after all?  I believe it is exactly to serve the culture, to examine it, to recreate it in art, and to return it to the source, i.e., the culture; thereby making culture visible to itself.
 
As I write this, I realize it is what Black Elk teaches in the famous book about his life: Black Elk Speaks.  Each of us is given, if we are lucky, a “great vision” of how Life is, he says. It is our responsibility to create our vision so that others might see it;  that, he implies, is how knowledge, self-acceptance and awareness grows.  It is, in short, the raison d’etre of the artist, whether painting, writing, dancing or making music. It is a role, really, and one that ancient peoples have long identified as a medicinal one. One’s work is understood to be medicine for the healing of the tribe.  There was a time when people commonly understood this. When the role of the artist is understood in this light, it becomes much easier to function creatively. There is less fear and less likelihood of being misunderstood.  One is protected by a common understanding and a common tolerance. Oh, yes, one says, in such a community:  So and So is our local Crazy person;  their medicine often looks peculiar but it comes straight from dreams, passion and the heart.  It’s meant to help us cope, it is meant to help us heal.
 
I have written before of the centerpiece of my first novel The Third Life of Grange Copeland: the murder of a woman by her husband. Inspired by a woman who in real life was the mother of one of my classmates when I was thirteen years old. I was invited by my sister, who worked in the funeral home, to see this woman’s shattered remains.  It was a vision I will never lose.  When I began to write my novel, over a decade later, her partly blown away face and newspaper stuffed shoe floated back into the forefront of my consciousness, along with the understanding that as an educated woman who had learned to write, I held the power to mark her dreary, violent and completely undeserved end. That if I did this well, actual lives might be protected. I sat out to create a story that memorializes this woman’s life with a gratitude for the opportunity that grows stronger with the years.  This was before “domestic violence” had a name.  Not having a name made it easy to remain unseen.  I am intensely grateful that through writing this book, I helped give it one.
 
My own grandmother, as a young mother of five, had been murdered by a man who wanted to be her lover.  By the time I heard the story, she was being blamed for the man’s fanatic desire for her.  Her crime:  She was beautiful.  And so, in The Color Purple, I have the opportunity to serve my own family, by writing of such a tragedy, and about the hurt and confusion her children, including my father, in whose lap she died, must have felt, but were silenced from expressing by the way her death came to be described.

©2008 Alice Walker