The Color Purple

50 Books for 50 years

Powell's anniversary list: 1971-2021

Alice Walker’s beautifully crafted epistolary tale about Celie, a poor Black woman finding her way to fulfillment and love in an ugly world, is an important book about race, identity, sisterhood, and human connection, and is more than worthy of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award it won. A brilliant work that is as timely today as when it was published almost 40 years ago. Recommended By Gigi L., Powells.com

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Alice Walker's iconic modern classic is now a Penguin Book.

A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery and Sofia and their experience. The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery. Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, Alice Walker's epic carries readers on a spirit-affirming journey towards redemption and love.

"Reading The Color Purple was the first time I had seen Southern, Black women's literature as world literature. In writing us into the world — bravely, unapologetically, and honestly — Alice Walker has given us a gift we will never be able to repay." Tayari Jones

"The Color Purple was what church should have been, what honest familial reckoning could have been, and it is still the only art object in the world by which all three generations of Black artists in my family judge American art." Kiese Laymon

"Indelibly affecting... Alice Walker is a lavishly gifted writer." The New York Times Book Review

"A work to stand beside literature of any time and place." San Francisco Chronicle

"A saga filled with joy and pain, humor and bitterness, and an array of characters who live, breathe, and illuminate the world." Publishers Weekly

Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for her novel The Color Purple. Her other novels include By the Light of My Father's Smile and Possessing the Secret of Joy. She is also the author of three collections of short stories, three collections of essays, seven volumes of poetry, and several children's books. Born in Eatonton, Georgia, Walker now lives in Northern California.