Celestine’s poems are reflective—autobio-
graphical. He is interested in exploring significant
episodes of his life and the African-American past.
In “A Walk in the Winter Rain,” his speaker de-
clares, “This poem has a pain worth looking at. /
Its best lines wake at the crack of daybreak / car-
rying the wastes of night to the page.” In “The Let-
ters and Numbers of Straw,” published in the James
White Review with the works of ESSEX HEMPHILL,
the speaker candidly discusses his sexuality: “I was
schooled in sex: first women, then men.” What re-
mains important to him in the end, however, is the
sanctity of his own voice and his independence:
“both / gave out diplomas, / but I tore them up.”
His speaker in “The Witchdoctor’s Wife Looks
Towards the New World” imagines the Middle
Passage—“In the hold of memory events packed
/ Together so tightly are stories lost”—surmising
the possible devastation of stories lost.
Ultimately, though, Celestine is concerned
throughout his work with the role of the artist, in
particular the black artist, who must work within
the boundaries of the language of former oppres-
sors to find self validation and worth:
I don’t know if I make myself clear.
English the language you tried to teach me
Its Word is unkempt in the House on Fleet
Street.....
I’m not-looking, before the words
slowly disappear from sight. I am Caliban.
In 1975, Celestine became an expatriate, mov-
ing to London, England, where he continues to live
and where he completed, though never published,
Nights of Gethsemane, his first novel.
Wilfred D. SamuelsCelie
is the heroine in Alice Walker’s award-winning
novel-turned-screenplay The Color Purple. Writ-
ten in epistolary form, the novel invites readers
to share in Celie’s transformation from a helpless
abused teenage girl to an audacious, independent
businesswoman. At the beginning of the novel,
Celie is described as a 14-year-old girl who is con-
tinuously raped by her stepfather. She is pregnant
for the second time with his child. He has threat-
ened her into silence and made her feel she is com-
plicit in his nefarious act: “You better not never tell
nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy” (3). Her be-
lief in God becomes her sanctuary, and her letters
to him her lifeline.
To rob her of any remaining self-esteem, Celie’s
stepfather tells her she is ugly, stupid, and old. To
cover his abuse, he puts the baby up for adoption
and marries Celie off to Mr. ____. In her father’s
transaction with Mr. ____, Celie becomes no more
than the property of men, a bondswoman. Walker
creates Celie’s identity as slave through the setting,
particularly the porch, where she stands silently to
be examined during the transaction. The porch
becomes a symbolic slave auction block where
Celie is denied voice or agency. She is equated with
the cow she takes as dowry to Mr. ____’s property.
In the end, they are both only chattel, a source of
profit for their owner, Mr. _____.
Significantly, other women in the community
provide models for Celie and enhance Celie’s
transformation through their varied experience
as she shapes and molds a new identity. Sofia,
Mr. ____’s daughter-in-law, represents the free-
dom and strength Celie seeks; she is a powerful,
self-defining black woman who refuses to be
domestically obedient to her husband, Harpo,
Mr. ____’s son. Sofia, who has been abused by her
stepfather, refuses to be abused by Harpo, whose
eyes she blackens when he tries to beat her.
Shug Avery, Mr. ___’s former lover who returns
into his life after he marries Celie, is equally crucial
to Celie’s transformation. Shug teaches Celie to
appreciate herself physically, spiritually, and emo-
tionally and to stop being Albert’s (Mr. ____’s real
name) metaphoric mule. Shug opens Celie’s eyes
to her complex self as woman. As a consequence,
Celie begins to learn the true meaning of what it
is to love and be loved. Through a lesbian relation-
ship and the deepening friendship, Celie embarks
on a path to healing and wholeness. She states,
“My life stop when I left home, I think. But then I
think again. It stop with Mr. ___ maybe, but it start94 Celie