Sitting in her company gave me such deep insight into her level of empathy. I understood Celie’s arc more by being in Alice Walker’s presence in Philo, California. Walker’s writings inspired Tillet’s own activism, moving her to cofound A Long Walk Home, a national nonprofit that uses art to empower young people to end violence against girls and women. Tillet, a contributing critic at large for The New York Times and the Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University, first read the story of Celie as a teenager, and the book has served as guidepost for her at various times in her life.
In Salamishah Tillet’s latest work, In Search of The Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece, Tillet delves into the backstory of the novel, explores why Walker’s book continues to resonate, and explains how the literary work became a cultural phenomenon, all while masterfully weaving together personal, cultural, and historical conversations about the text, including original interviews with Walker herself and players in the film and musical such as Oprah Winfrey, Quincy Jones, and Danny Glover. But the novel’s influence didn’t stop there.
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