up again with Shug” (85). The sense of value that
Celie gets from Shug helps form the foundation on
which she builds the courage not only to stand up
to Mr. ___ but also to leave his house and create a
life for herself.
Finally, Celie’s relationship and friendship with
her sister, Nettie, ensures Celie’s ultimate transfor-
mation. Nettie writes letters (which Albert keeps
from Celie) while she is serving as a missionary in
Africa. She desperately tries to find and reconnect
with her sister and ultimately helps Celie reshape
and redefine her identity and reshape her image of
God. Once Nettie reenters Celie’s life, Celie no lon-
ger needs to keep secrets that only God can know.
Nettie successfully “conveys to Celie her belief that
Celie is of value” (Proudfit, 23). Upon her return
to the United States, Nettie joins Celie to become a
family, which includes Celie’s children, Adam and
Ophelia, who had been adopted by Nettie’s Chris-
tian surrogate family that took her to Africa.
At the end of the novel, Celie emerges trans-
formed by a combination of Albert’s red rage and
Shug’s BLUES in order to redefine herself as purple:
the color of God, creation, and power. Perhaps she
is transformed by love of self and family. Walker
makes the transformative power of love the central
theme of the novel.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Interpretations: Alice
Walker’s The Color Purple. Philadelphia: Chelsea
House Publishers, 2000.
Brown-Clark, Sarah. “The Community of Black
Women in The Color Purple.” In Women in History,
Literature, and the Arts: A Festschrift for Hildegard
Schuttgen in honor of her Thirty Years of Outstand-
ing Service at Youngstown State University, edited
by Lorrayne Y. Baird-Lange and Thomas Cope-
land, 295–305. Youngstown: Youngstown State
University, 1989.
Proudfit, Charles. “Celie’s Search for Identity: a
Psychoanalytic Developmental Reading of Alice
Walker’s The Color Purple.” Contemporary Litera-
ture 32 (Spring 1991): 12–37.
Ross, Daniel. “A Fairy-Tale Life: The Making of Celie
in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.” In Teach-
ing American Ethnic Literatures: Nineteen Essays,
159–174, edited by John R. Maitino and David
R. Peck. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1996.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Pocket
Books, 1982.
———. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. New York:
Harcourt Brace & Company, 1983.
LaJuan SimpsonChanner, Colin (1963– )
Jamaican born and a naturalized American citizen,
Colin Channer is a journalist and musician who
lives in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. After
graduating from high school, Channer migrated
to America at age 19; he later earned a degree in
media communication from Hunter College of
the City University of New York. Like G. WIN-
STON JAMES and Patricia Young, as well as CLAUDE
MCKAY, JAMAICA KINCAID, and PAULE MARSHALL
before them, Channer joins a group of Carib-
bean writers who, after becoming American citi-
zens, meld their medley of accents and cultures to
augment, supplement, and expand the chorus of
voices that join to create the black experience in
America and, consequently, that proclaim a more
dynamic African-American literary tradition and
experience.
Channer does exactly this in Waiting in Vain
(1998), his debut novel that is at once a postmod-
ern romance (though some may even argue it is a
sentimental novel), black erotic novel, black post-
colonial novel, and existential novel. These varied
genres and their related themes emerge from the
torrid love affair that Jamaican Adrian “Fire” Heath,
an artist/writer, and Sylvia Lucas, a writer/editor,
develop after their accidental (or fated) meeting
in New York City. Fire is closer to Janie’s TEA CAKE
in THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD and Sethe’s
Paul D in BELOVED than to CELIE’s Mr.____ in THE
COLOR PURPLE. After she gets to know Fire, Sylvia
concludes that he has “more than the strength of a
man. He also had the strength of a woman. A penis
as a totem could not fully represent him. For he was
more than the giver of pleasure. He was the giver
of life” (65). Fire, who had been celibate when heChanner, Colin 95