Double Discrimination Exposed in The Color Purple

African-American people have had to mount over many obstacles to get their standing today. First was the selling of their people into slavery. Then, they endured slavery itself, being treated like animals. After slavery was abolished, colored people still had to deal with racial discrimination, demoralization, subjugation and hatred, especially colored women. Black women have had to face unbelievable odds at obtaining self-assurance.

African-American woman have had to deal with being black and female, a double-edged sword. In her novel, The Color Purple, author Alice Walker introduces southern black female characters that not only faced slavery, but sexism, racism and oppression. Through a series of letters, mostly addressed to god, by the main character Celie, we travel through a span of thirty to forty years in the early nineteenth century. Throughout the novel, Walker not only describes the injustices against African-Americans, but forces us to become a member of an oppressed race as we struggle to hear the rhythm and sway of Celie's mind. The Color Purple is an extraordinary account of a black women's plight as she strives towards acceptance, freedom and independence.

Much of the narrative in Alice Walker's novel is derived from her own personal experience, growing up in the rural south as an uneducated and abused child. Like many other novels by Walker that are devoted to the mistreatment of black women and how black women interact with and are abused by men, she dedicates to inspiring and motivating colored women to stand up for their rights. Celie in The Color Purple undergoes an inne...

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Alice Walker conveys the importance of the need to unite. Walker sees the possibility of empowerment for the black women if they create a community of sisters that often can alter the unnatural definitions of woman and men. The only way Celie is able to find her individuality is through the help of the women in her life. With the encouragement of these women, Celie successfully reaches the point in which she, too, is strong and self-able. No one should face his or her problems alone. Standing alone will only diminish our self-confidence. Together, as a group, venturing for a common cause or simply just to share experiences will strengthen and help one grow spiritually. It will also establish our self-determination, as it did for the female in The Color Purple.