'I think I was longing, really, to know my ancestors better - the immediate ancestors. She had published seven books and was working at Ms magazine with Gloria Steinem (her daughter's godmother) when she had the idea for The Color Purple.

She calls herself a 'born-again pagan' but there's a Buddha in the garden and a sign in the doorway that says 'namaste'. 'I went to check on some women that I support, and to find an orphanage that I want to befriend.' Her voice is calm, musical, often very quiet her conversation a disconcerting mixture of the fiercely political and insightful, with a kind of warm blanket of pick-and-mix spirituality. She is a member of Women for Women International (a non-profit organisation that supports women survivors of war). When we met, in the spring, she was tired, having just returned from Rwanda where she went for a conference on gender, but she still looks 20 years younger than 63. Her house in Berkeley, California, where she lives for part of the year, is surrounded by green and birdsong. The book altered the face of African-American literature, and Walker's life both for better and worse: it earned her years of abuse from other African-Americans its reception damaged her relationship with her partner, from whom she eventually separated, and with her only daughter. The 1985 Steven Spielberg movie made over $100m (of which she feels she didn't get quite the cut she should have) the musical has been a hit in New York, Atlanta, Chicago audiences have bought over $5m-worth of The Color Purple souvenirs. It has sold 5m copies and has been translated into 25 languages. Then he grab hold my titties.'Ĭelie's story won Walker a Pulitzer prize for fiction, the first for an African-American woman. First he put his thing up gainst my hip and sort of wiggle it around.

Just say You gonna do what your mammy wouldn't. The voice Walker establishes for Celie is both insightful and limited, unsentimental and direct, and, controversially when it was published, 25 years ago this Thursday, is written in what Walker calls 'folk speech': 'He never had a kine word to say to me. It'd kill your mammy' - there are four short paragraphs in them Celie, aged 14, is raped by her stepfather, becomes pregnant, and starts writing letters to God about it. After the first line on the first page - 'You better not never tell nobody but God. T he Color Purple has such an uncompromising beginning that many never got any further, including, to Alice Walker's sorrow, her mother.

The color purple book author