Banned Book Review: The Color Purple
May. 3rd, 2009 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricThere wasn't much point in listing reasons why The Handmaid's Tale might be banned, and there's REALLY no point listing reasons for the banning of The Color Purple. We start with rape and incest, and move on to forced marriage and marital rape, lesbian desire, masturbation, lesbian sex, casting doubt on the bible and the masculinity of god, anti-colonialism, casting whitefolks in a bad light, more sex, implying that god likes sex (including lesbian sex)... you get the idea. If you're looking for something to ban, you can probably find something here to object to.
What I was intrigued by was a comment in the reading notes/ class activities at the end of the book which informed me that one of the most common objections to the book is on the basis, not of its plot or message, but it's language. The Color Purple is written in black patois - I can't speak for the accuracy of its representation of 1920s black patois, but under the heading of "complaints against the book's language", apparently a portion of objectors feel that the book is a demeaning caricature of black people and their conversation. On the other hand, apparently people object to the patois because 'it sets a bad example to children'.
I have to say that at first I was put off by Celie's (the narrator's) language. It was just plain hard to read, and I didn't find much to interest me in her character - shrinking, full of self-doubt, uninterested in learning (huh, guess I really am an intellectual snob), completely submissive. If it weren't for the fact that I'd heard good things about the book and Decided To Read It, I might've put it down and forgotten about it. The language continued to annoy me through the first half of the book, but as more characters were introduced and Celie's relationships started to become more complex, I kept reminding myself that I read Old and Middle English for FUN: if anyone who should be able to put up with Language That's Not Quite Like Mine, I should.
Halfway through the book I stopped noticing Celie's language at all (interestingly, it's only in the last part of the book that the subject of speech comes up, as one of Celie's employees in her trouser-making business tries to teach her to speak correctly. It must be no accident that Alice Walker throws that in at the point when most of the readers will have adjusted). I'm not sure if Celie's powers of expression improve as she grows stronger (it be a cool technique if this were so), or if I simply adjusted. When I realised that I was no longer having to fight against the language, it struck me that I was supposed to.
The Color Purple isn't written in patois for the sake of accuracy alone - it could've been written in third-person and had only direct speech in patois, for example. It's written in first person, in an unfamiliar dialect, in order to be alienating. In order to say, in every sentence: these people are not like you. These people are human, and have rights, and needs and joys and sorrows just as you do, but they are not just like you. They live different lives, speak different words, think different thoughts. Although Celie's grasp of English does seem to improve, particularly her spelling, over the course of the book, in her narration of the closing scene she's still conjugating her verbs differently and using her pronouns differently; she still rarely uses conjunctions or complex sentence structures. By the end of the book, an active reader will have adjusted to Celie's language: they will have learnt to listen to her, and care about her, even though she remains demonstrably Not Like You.
(I'm assuming that You here is a white reader: Celie's first person narration could also be alienating to modern POC readers, but I cannot speak authoritatively on the reading dynamic for non-white groups.)
I'm not sure what place Nettie's letters have in all this: unlike her sister, Nettie is strongly engaged with school and learning. Her story is told through the letters she sends to Celie, written in everyday "correct" English. Perhaps it's that Nettie and the missionary family with whom she travels to Africa are caught between "not like you" and trying to live like you.
Moving on from the language, there was one more thing which particularly fascinated me about this book. I really loved it for its complex poly dynamic, and the depth in all the various character relationships. I say it's complex, because firstly the POV character has only one erotic and romantic relationship, that which she has with Shug Avery. Secondly, there's a reasonable level of jealousy and competition between the women in the novel: direct romantic/marital competition; competition for the attention and affection of their children, especially in the many cases of shared parenting; jealousy on the basis of personal traits, such as Celie's envy of Sofia's strong will. But there's not as much as you'd expect. It's possibly unrealistic that Sofia and Squeak should negotiate and share their relationships with Harpo and the children they each have by him (and with them Sofia's last child by an unnamed man), but they do.
Moments of peace and coming-together stand out in the narrative, and many of them are anchored around three or more people involved in mutual erotic or romantic relationships. The first comes when Celie, Shug Avery and Mr ____ face down Mr ____'s relatives, and this triad recurs throughout the novel. There is the uneasy quartet of Celie, Shug, Mr ____ and Grady; Sofia, Harpo and Squeak; Celie, Shug, Grady and Squeak; and we conclude the novel with all those closest to Celie brought together around the core group of Celie, Shug and Mr _____ once more. The resolution doesn't tell us who is and is not sleeping with whom anymore: we simply know that Celie and Mr ____ have established a non-sexual friendship, and accepted their common love for Shug Avery. The novel resolves itself in food, family, and friendship, and I dearly loved the way that, although we know that powerful sexual relationships both negative and positive lie between all these characters, in the end that's just a small part of their common bond.
What I was intrigued by was a comment in the reading notes/ class activities at the end of the book which informed me that one of the most common objections to the book is on the basis, not of its plot or message, but it's language. The Color Purple is written in black patois - I can't speak for the accuracy of its representation of 1920s black patois, but under the heading of "complaints against the book's language", apparently a portion of objectors feel that the book is a demeaning caricature of black people and their conversation. On the other hand, apparently people object to the patois because 'it sets a bad example to children'.
I have to say that at first I was put off by Celie's (the narrator's) language. It was just plain hard to read, and I didn't find much to interest me in her character - shrinking, full of self-doubt, uninterested in learning (huh, guess I really am an intellectual snob), completely submissive. If it weren't for the fact that I'd heard good things about the book and Decided To Read It, I might've put it down and forgotten about it. The language continued to annoy me through the first half of the book, but as more characters were introduced and Celie's relationships started to become more complex, I kept reminding myself that I read Old and Middle English for FUN: if anyone who should be able to put up with Language That's Not Quite Like Mine, I should.
Halfway through the book I stopped noticing Celie's language at all (interestingly, it's only in the last part of the book that the subject of speech comes up, as one of Celie's employees in her trouser-making business tries to teach her to speak correctly. It must be no accident that Alice Walker throws that in at the point when most of the readers will have adjusted). I'm not sure if Celie's powers of expression improve as she grows stronger (it be a cool technique if this were so), or if I simply adjusted. When I realised that I was no longer having to fight against the language, it struck me that I was supposed to.
The Color Purple isn't written in patois for the sake of accuracy alone - it could've been written in third-person and had only direct speech in patois, for example. It's written in first person, in an unfamiliar dialect, in order to be alienating. In order to say, in every sentence: these people are not like you. These people are human, and have rights, and needs and joys and sorrows just as you do, but they are not just like you. They live different lives, speak different words, think different thoughts. Although Celie's grasp of English does seem to improve, particularly her spelling, over the course of the book, in her narration of the closing scene she's still conjugating her verbs differently and using her pronouns differently; she still rarely uses conjunctions or complex sentence structures. By the end of the book, an active reader will have adjusted to Celie's language: they will have learnt to listen to her, and care about her, even though she remains demonstrably Not Like You.
(I'm assuming that You here is a white reader: Celie's first person narration could also be alienating to modern POC readers, but I cannot speak authoritatively on the reading dynamic for non-white groups.)
I'm not sure what place Nettie's letters have in all this: unlike her sister, Nettie is strongly engaged with school and learning. Her story is told through the letters she sends to Celie, written in everyday "correct" English. Perhaps it's that Nettie and the missionary family with whom she travels to Africa are caught between "not like you" and trying to live like you.
Moving on from the language, there was one more thing which particularly fascinated me about this book. I really loved it for its complex poly dynamic, and the depth in all the various character relationships. I say it's complex, because firstly the POV character has only one erotic and romantic relationship, that which she has with Shug Avery. Secondly, there's a reasonable level of jealousy and competition between the women in the novel: direct romantic/marital competition; competition for the attention and affection of their children, especially in the many cases of shared parenting; jealousy on the basis of personal traits, such as Celie's envy of Sofia's strong will. But there's not as much as you'd expect. It's possibly unrealistic that Sofia and Squeak should negotiate and share their relationships with Harpo and the children they each have by him (and with them Sofia's last child by an unnamed man), but they do.
Moments of peace and coming-together stand out in the narrative, and many of them are anchored around three or more people involved in mutual erotic or romantic relationships. The first comes when Celie, Shug Avery and Mr ____ face down Mr ____'s relatives, and this triad recurs throughout the novel. There is the uneasy quartet of Celie, Shug, Mr ____ and Grady; Sofia, Harpo and Squeak; Celie, Shug, Grady and Squeak; and we conclude the novel with all those closest to Celie brought together around the core group of Celie, Shug and Mr _____ once more. The resolution doesn't tell us who is and is not sleeping with whom anymore: we simply know that Celie and Mr ____ have established a non-sexual friendship, and accepted their common love for Shug Avery. The novel resolves itself in food, family, and friendship, and I dearly loved the way that, although we know that powerful sexual relationships both negative and positive lie between all these characters, in the end that's just a small part of their common bond.