Literary Analysis Paper
The Author and His or Her Times
The Color Purple was written by Alice Walker. She was born on February 9,1944, and lived in Putnam County, Georgia. She lived in a time where there was still Jim Crow laws, so she lived a very tough life. Because she lived in a time where segregation was around, her novels and poems have a similar theme that revolve oppression of the the African American people. When she was 14, she got shot in the eye, and became blind. Later on in life, she realized that her blindness actually gave her a new perspective. During her college years, Walker found herself to become involved with the Civil Right Movement. Her influence came from none only Howard Zinn, who at the time was her professor. After college, she returned home to the South to help the oppressed.
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She put out two novels and some magazine articles before he best known work was published: The Color Purple. When it was published in 1982, it had outstanding reviews. It was so good, that it was made into a movie, which featured Oprah Winfrey, and Whoopi Goldberg. For The Color Purple, she won many awards, such as the Pulitzer Prize of Fiction, and the National Book Award for Fiction.
This novel was not only popular in its own day, but in the present day as well. Although it is fiction, it is based on true events that happened to those who were colored, especially women. Alice Walker is a feminist and an activist, and because of that, she wrote an excellent novel that captures the essence of what it was like to live during the time of Jim Crow