I just finished
The Colour Purple by
Alice Walker (1983)
This novel was interesting, even though it was difficult to overcome the narrative. It was perhaps one technique Walker used to convey how maltreated/misunderstood the black people were: by making the reader consciously aware of the effort we have to make to understand the protagonist, it was bringing out our understanding that perhaps it was that little bit of effort many people were/are not willing to make for people of a different colour.
But was it just black and white-ness that she was confronting? The 'heroine' was a black lesbian woman, from the country, who was uneducated because of who she is and who she was before she was born.
Her life was riddled with tragedy; rape, abandonment, loss, abuse and yet through it all she has her faith. Her belief and trust without apparent return earns her (1) strength, (2) the same belief and trust without return from her sister and (3) a final revelation in how to see the return that has always been there had she looked in the right places - that God was not a (white, male) figure, but instead an amorphous force to be found in the nature of things - the trees, the stars, the wind and herself.
The thing that caught my curiosity was how the enslaved African-American people was not recognised by the native African people (so the book tells me) as their own, nor as owed an apology (of any sort) for their betrayal/abandonment. I don't know if this is true and I am going to find out more about it. I guess I find it peculiar that when I think of Africa, I know of no single historical tapestry. I know bits and pieces, from the first hominids to Egypt to South Africa to Rwanda to slavery to malaria, all of which sum to one thing: ignorance. But I am having an inner conundrum over how to help those who don't want to change. If people's customs and heritage are their most valued assets, then is it right to impose change even if that change is necessary for their survival? I suppose the only thing you can do is offer them that choice - to open that door and it is up to them to walk through it.
I also find it interesting that purple is at one of the limits of the human colour perception, while Shug (sugar as one which can sustain life and Shug as the personification of life in the novel) says, "I think it pisses God off if you walk by the colour purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it." As if to say we are not doing life justice if we do not see more.
