Womanism Basics
What term did Alice Walker coin to describe a Black feminist or feminist of color perspective?
What is Womanism?
At the beginning of the novel, who does Celie address her letters to?
Who is God?
Who is Sofia married to?
Who is Harpo?
What is Shug Avery’s profession?
What is a singer and performer?
what does the color purple symbolize in the novel?
What are beauty, joy, spiritual presence, and recognizing one’s own worth?
Womanism often studies gender together with what two other forms of inequality?
What are race and class?
Name one woman who helps Celie develop confidence and voice.
Who is Nettie, Shug Avery, or Sofia?
Complete Sofia’s statement: “All my life I had to _____.”
What is “fight”?
How does Shug challenge expectations of a “proper” woman?
What is her independence, outspoken personality, artistic freedom, and refusal to follow restrictive social rules?
What do pants symbolize in Celie’s life?
What are freedom, creativity, gender-role reversal, and economic independence?
Why can a narrow version of traditional Western feminism be limited for reading The Color Purple?
What is its tendency to focus mainly on gender while overlooking race, poverty, community, and Black women’s specific experiences?
What business symbolizes Celie’s creativity and financial independence?
What is her pants-making and sewing business?
What does Sofia’s punishment by white authority show about her oppression?
What is the fact that her struggle is shaped by both racism and sexism, not gender alone?
What does Shug help Celie understand about herself?
What is that Celie has value, deserves love, and can think about her body, faith, and life without shame?
What do letters symbolize in the novel?
What are voice, survival, memory, truth-telling, and connection between women?
What larger goal does womanism emphasize beyond individual independence?
What is the survival, healing, and wholeness of the entire community?
Why is Celie’s dialect important to her identity?
What is the idea that Celie develops her own voice rather than changing herself to sound “proper”?
How does Sofia challenge Harpo’s expectations of womanhood?
What is her refusal to be submissive and her insistence on her own freedom instead of simply staying home and obeying?
Why is Shug important to a womanist reading of the novel?
What is her demonstration that female love, friendship, and support can help another woman become free?
What does Sofia mean when she says, “A girl child ain’t safe in a family of men”?
What is the idea that patriarchy and male violence can exist even inside the home, where women are supposed to be protected?
How does womanism help explain the novel better than a gender-only lens?
What is the idea that freedom involves race, gender, class, economic independence, sisterhood, and community healing together?
Why is Celie’s liberation more than simply leaving Mr. _____?
What is her gaining self-worth, income, supportive relationships, spiritual confidence, and the power to define her own life?
Why does Sofia’s story prove that personal strength is not always enough?
What is the fact that even a strong individual can be harmed by larger racist and sexist systems of power?
How does Shug challenge both patriarchy and respectability politics?
What is her refusal of male control and of the belief that women must be quiet, modest, or socially acceptable to be worthy?
How does the ending support a womanist message?
What is its emphasis on reunion, healing, family, community, and self-defined relationships rather than revenge alone?