Reviews with content warning for Child death - The Color Purple

I’m always a bit afraid to dive into books that are canonically accepted as “classics”. We can talk for ages and ages about what it takes for a book to be a classic, and the status of classic books, but that doesn’t take away that some books are classics, and others aren’t. The Colour Purple, by all means, is a classic. An American classic to be exact.

The reason I’m always so afraid to read classics is that I’m afraid I won’t get it. Dense writing? I can do that. Slow moving plots? Not every book can be a Young Adult fast-paced fantasy, and once there’s no actual action in the traditional sense of the word (monsters, guns blazing, corrupt government), a book tends to be “slow moving” pretty quickly. How can the words run if the characters don’t? Plus, I’ve read Anna Karenina and NOTHING can ever bore me as much as that one did. But in classics, authors try to say something more, have striking commentary on the times or social movements. Think of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, about the wish of a black girl to be white. But these stories are so ridden with metaphors and references that I always feel like I’m falling short of understanding it. This fear has only been exacerbated by my own studies in English literature, where you simply HAD to analyse a book over and over again and pick out the tiniest meaning. Therefore, whenever I read a classic, I notice that I cannot review it in a “this is what I liked and this is what I didn’t like” sorta way; I can only analyse it. Which sucks, by the way.

Yet here I am, having read The Colour Purple, trying to write a sensible review and the only thing I can think of is how jarring the writing is and how well it (obviously) reflects Celie’s education; non-existent. I mean, it’s letters she writes herself, it would have been weird if she did have perfect grammar right? Even though the writing is so jarring, so inconsistent, and so hard to get into, it is exactly what makes this book a masterpiece. It is the perfect example of “show not tell”; we know Celie isn’t the brightest, and can’t write, not because she says so (well she does as well), but because it’s visible in her writing.

In terms of story; sure it moves slow, but we’re following Celie over years and years. The book isn’t actually as slow as it could have been. It was also surprisingly engaging, as we slowly witness Celie emancipate herself, stand up for herself. It was empowering to read it.

All-in-all, whether I understood it to the extent of which it needed to be understood or not, I really enjoyed reading this book, and definitely would recommend it to others if you’re looking for something thought provoking, or simply an easy classic to get into.

Content Warnings