Thursday, May 06, 2021

"The Color Purple" - Against all odds.

 'The Color Purple" a novel by Alice Walker made into a movie by Steven Spielberg tells of the endurance of two sisters who grew up in the South and were separated by fate and unfortunate events in their lives. Played by Danny Glover and Whoopie Goldberg in the leading roles the movie to me is a classic that encapsulates the spirit of the Colored South. The movie tells of the strength and deep faith that the African American had to keep them struggling to survive while enduring the post slavery age in their history and the history of the Southern States. It exposes the raw deals that the Black families subjected to while crawling out from under the foot stools of the Whites as well as their own family traumas due to ignorance and social pressures. The African Americans has proven that perseverance and resilience in spirit can overcome all odds and adversities no matter how harsh and bitter life can be. Hope is hope no matter how small and bleak it may seem, it was hope that kept Ms.Celie alive and enduring the abuses of her husband,the hope that she would one day see her sister Ms.Nettie and her children again and she would triumph over it all at the end of the day.

"The Color Purple documents the traumas and gradual triumph of Celie, an African American teenager raised in rural isolation in Georgia, as she comes to resist the paralyzing self-concept forced on her by others. Celie narrates her life through painfully honest letters to God."...Britannica.

The story by Alice Walker and co-authored by Oprah Winfrey I feel is a must read for college literature and cultural studies of the post Slavery life the African Americans or the South. It may be a work of fiction, but it has all the ear marks of a cultural history that began at the very root of the family life and expanded into the society at large reflecting a struggle for a cultural heritage that would lay claim in history as a triumph of the human spirit against all odds. It is a story that could be told of by any given society anywhere on this planet. It is a microcosmic drama played out at the most raw and sensitive level of the human emotional and psychological family level to the level of a community as well as into the macrocosmic level of the global level. Notches in the tree of life of the African American history captured on a screen by great minds that pooled together such as Director Steen Spielberg and Producer Quincy Jones and superb actors such as Danny Glover, Whoopie Golberg and Oprah Winfrey, and many others that played major and linor role in this movie to bring it to life a documentary of a piece of human history.

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