physical transformation from slavery to freedom.
After her mother dies, Celie’s stepfather arranges
her marriage to a much older man, Albert, con-
tinuing her involuntary servitude. Left alone to
fend off her “father’s” advances, Nettie runs away
and joins Celie in her new home, but Albert throws
Nettie out when she soundly rebuffs his sexual ad-
vances. Nettie is, coincidentally and miraculously,
taken in by the missionary couple who is raising
Celie’s “stolen” babies; Nettie subsequently travels
with the family to Africa. In her pre-enlighten-
ment letters, Celie refers to her husband simply as
Mr. __. She does not learn his first name until
Shug Avery, his BLUES-singing lover, arrives.
Celie develops a meaningful relationship with
Shug Avery, whom she nurses back to physical
health after Albert moves her into their home.
Celie and Shug become first friends and then lov-
ers. Walker stresses reciprocity in the relationship
between Shug and Celie; each woman helps the
other toward physical, psychological, and spiritual
health. In a parallel movement that many of her
harshest critics seem to miss, Walker also depicts a
similar transformation in the male characters, par-
ticularly Albert. The new community that Walker
imagines is cooperative and egalitarian. In a series
of events that befits the optimistic fable (almost
utopian) quality of the novel, Alphonso dies, Celie
and Nettie inherit the property that their real fa-
ther left for them, and the two sisters are subse-
quently reunited when Nettie returns from Africa
with Celie’s children.
In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, The Color Pur-
ple garnered for Walker the prestigious National
Book Award. The 1985 film version, directed by
Steven Spielberg, was nominated for an Academy
Award. The novel has since become a mainstay of
the African-American literary tradition.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bloom, Harold, ed. The Color Purple. Modern Criti-
cal Interpretations Series. Philadelphia: Chelsea
House Publishers, 2000.
Bobo, Jacqueline. “Watching The Color Purple: Tw o
Interviews.” In Black Women as Cultural Readers,
91–132. New York: Columbia University Press,
1995.
Dieke, Ikenna, ed. Critical Essays on Alice Walker.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and Kwame Anthony Appiah,
eds. Alice Walker: Critical Perspectives Past and
Present. Amistad Literary Series. New York: Amis-
tad, 1993.
Lauret, Maria. Alice Walker. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2000.
Lovalerie KingColter, Cyrus (1910– )
Before winning the University of Iowa Prize School
of Letters Award for Short Fiction in 1970, Colter,
then a 60-year-old attorney, had been a commis-
sioner of commerce for Chicago, Illinois. Born in
Noblesville, Indiana, the second child of James Al-
exander Colter and Ethel Marietta Bassett Colter,
Colter attended Youngstown, Ohio’s Rayen Acad-
emy and Youngstown University. He received his
L.L.B. degree from Chicago-Kent College of Law.
He had worked for both the YMCA and YWCA,
served as deputy collector of internal revenue, and
was a captain in the U.S. Army before serving as as-
sistant commissioner of commerce and then com-
missioner of public utilities in Chicago. In 1973,
Colter became the Chester D. Tripp Professor of
Humanities and chairman of the department of
African-American studies at Northwestern Univer-
sity in Evanston, Illinois. The University of Illinois,
Chicago Circle, conferred on him the honorary
degree of doctor of letters in 1977.
Convinced that his short story, “The Beach
Umbrella,” identified Colter as a “master in theme
and style from the very beginning of his career”
(O’Brien, 17), the Friends of Literary Prize and
the Patron Saints Award of the Society of Midland
Authors joined the University of Iowa in recogniz-
ing Colter with accolades and awards for the lead
story in his collection The Beach Umbrella, (1970).
Previously, Colter had made the Honor Roll of
Best American Short Stories in 1962 and 1967. His
stories had also appeared in The Best Short Stories
by Negro Writers (1967).
The author of four novels—The River of Eros
(1972), The Hippodrome (1973), Night StudiesColter, Cyrus 113