Color Purple Banned

Why are books challenged and further on banned? To challenge a book is an attempt to remove the material from schools and/or libraries, and to ban a book is to successfully remove the material from these places. Books are usually challenged to protect children from the censors of these books. This book was banned for all the wrong reasons. This paper will focus on racism, sexism, homosexuality, and violence since these were reasons the book got banned which on the contrary should have given it much more motive to let high school students read and learn from it.

The Color Purple was published in 1982 and was first challenged in 1984 in Oakland, CA (“Banned And/ or Challenged Books). It has also been removed from the VA school library in 1986,

Reporters have discovered that numerous books written by great African American authors, including Alice Walker, are often challenged (Edemariam). Reviews from the guardian interview have said that the real reasons behind the banning of these great books are because the author wrote about the truth (Edemariam).

In The Color Purple, Walker does not sugar coat the actions men would take upon women. Walker exposes how things really were back then. Walker has admitted to wanting to relate the novel to her parent’s, grandparent’s, and great-grandparent’s life. In an interview, Walker reveals how her exposure of the past got her into problems with her husband, daughter, and black males and females. Walker was accused of hating black men, damaging black relationships, betraying her black race, and lover of queer

Reading this novel gave readers a related experience to the character of Celie because of the knowledge we acquire about the past centuries. Walker wanted to expose the racism, violence, and sexism of the early era and she did in fact do it correctly. This book has been banned in several places because of the contents of the novel. This just goes to show that Miss Walker accomplished the message that she was trying to get through to her readers. Of course, parents did not approve of her novel because it was too visual even though children learn about a rhetorical device called imagery in middle