The Color Purple

            The Color Purple by Alice Walker is a book about a young girl named Celie whose character undergoes a huge transformation in attitude from a passive and quite girl to a strong and courageously confident woman (Color 1). Alice Walker is an incredible woman who uses her writings to portray the hardships and struggles of black people, especially women, throughout history.
             Alice Walker was born on February 9th, 1944 to Willie Lee and Minnie Grant Walker in Eatonton, Georgia. Just like many of her characters Walker was the daughter of black sharecroppers from the rural South. Walker's mother was a very hard working wife. She recalled that her mother always kept up the faith that no matter how hard things got they would always turn out right in the end (Kort 225). Alice graduated from her High School as valedictorian, and furthered her education by attending Spelman College (Evory 514).
             Both of her parents were storytellers who made profound influences in her life. Her mother especially influenced her life; she described her as "a walking history of out community." Alice was in an accident at the age of eight, which left her blind, and scarred in one eye, it was partially corrected when she was fourteen. Not only did this accident allow her to receive a rehabilitation scholarship to Spelman College; she said it also left a profound influence on her. Walker says, "I believe that it was from this period, from my solitary, lonely position, the position of an out cast that I began to really see people and things, really to notice relationships and to learn to be patient enough to care about how they turned out I retreated into solitude, and read stories and began to write poems" (Alice 1). It was from this thought that Walker began her writing career and this thought also influenced many of her books. .
             Walker was an excellent student and received a scholarship to go on to Sarah Lawrence College in New York (Alice 2).